Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind

by Jocelyn K. Glei

To stay creatively fit, we must keep our minds engaged and on the move—because the greatest enemy of creativity is nothing more than standing still.

“When was the last time you made something that someone wasn’t paying you for, and looking over your shoulder to make sure you got it right?” When I ask creatives this question, the answer that comes back all too often is, “I can’t remember.” It’s so easy for creativity to become a means to a very practical end—earning a paycheck and pleasing your client or manager. But that type of work only uses a small spectrum of your abilities. To truly excel, you must also continue to create for the most important audience of all: yourself.

Some of the most frustrated creative pros I’ve encountered are those who expect their day job to allow them to fully express their creativity and satisfy their curiosity. They push against the boundaries set by their manager or client and fret continuously that their best work never finds its way into the end product because of restrictions and compromises.

Obviously, there’s a gap between what many creatives actually do each day and what they feel they are capable of doing given more resources or less bureaucracy. But those limitations aren’t likely to change in the context of an organization, where there is little tolerance for risk and resources are scarcer than ever. If day-to-day project work is the only work that you are engaging in, it follows that you’re going to get frustrated. To break the cycle, keep a running list of projects you’d like to attempt in your spare time, and set aside a specific time each week (or each day) to make progress on that list. Sometimes this feels very inefficient in the moment, especially when there are so many other urgent priorities screaming for your attention, but it can be a key part of keeping your creative energy flowing for your day-to-day work. You’ll also want to get a notebook to record questions that you’d like to pursue, ideas that you have, or experiments that you’d like to try.

When you give yourself frequent permission to explore the “adjacent possible” with no restrictions on where it leads, you increase the likelihood of a creative breakthrough in all areas of your life and work.

Unnecessary Creation allows you to take risks and develop new skills that can later be applied to your on-demand creating. Have you ever felt like you were in a rut? Perhaps you keep mulling over the same ideas, going to the same wells for inspiration, or opening the same toolbox every time you have to solve a problem. Your tools can become dull and your senses numb when you consistently apply the same old methods. Yet, it’s difficult to learn new methods or develop new skills in the midst of your on-demand work because you are being paid to deliver predictable results. In his book The Heart Aroused, the British poet David Whyte writes, “Take any step toward our destiny through creative action (it may be as simple as lifting a pen over a blank sheet of paper), and we know intuitively that we are giving up whatever cover we had.”19 The creative act is inherently risky because it requires you to step out into uncertainty. When you have time scheduled for Unnecessary Creation, you create a safe space to experiment with new ways of working. You get to try and fail without dire consequences. You can create what’s in your head rather than adapting what’s in your head to someone else’s expectations. These acts of Unnecessary Creation grow your confidence in self-expression, and the skills you develop along the way become new tools in your toolbox that can be applied to your everyday work.

The most successful creative minds consistently lay the groundwork for ideas to germinate and evolve. They are always refining their personal approach to hijacking the brain’s neural pathways, developing a tool kit of tricks to spark the mind like flint on steel.

The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that you tend to undervalue the times when you’re apparently doing nothing, and those are very important times. It’s the equivalent of the dream time, in your daily life, times when things get sorted out and reshuffled. If you’re constantly awake work-wise you don’t allow that to happen. One of the reasons I have to take distinct breaks when I work is to allow the momentum of a particular direction to run down, so that another one can establish itself.

Instead of instilling fear, if a company offered a way for everyone in the business to dive within—to start expanding energy and intelligence—people would work overtime for free. They would be far more creative. And the company would just leap forward. This is the way it can be. It’s not the way it is, but it could be that way so easily.

What we do know for sure is that whenever your brain senses a pattern and gets too comfortable, creativity stagnates and it’s time to try something else. In the end, preparing for insight is all about being persistent, throwing a wrench into the works from time to time, and always working to stay one step ahead of complacency.

I try to do the most difficult things early in the morning. If I start with easy stuff, meaning if I start checking and answering e-mail, it’s very difficult to then convince myself to do difficult things later on.

There’s a wonderful story about a Nobel Prize winner…He was asked by some corporation to talk about time planning. He gets up in front of the group with a glass jar, and he says, “All I can tell you about time planning, I can show you in two minutes.” Then he takes out a bunch of big stones and puts them into the jar, filling it up to the top, then he takes out a pocketful of tiny stones and puts them in, then he pours some sand in, and then finally he pours some water into the jar—and that’s how it all fits. The moral was pretty clear, we have to put the big stones in first; otherwise, the other stuff won’t fit. So the big stones are our big creative projects in this case? Exactly, the stuff you really want to do. If you don’t put those things into your calendar and stand by that time, it’s never going to get done. All the small stuff will trickle in and there won’t be room. If you want do projects that you really love, you have to be aware of how difficult they are to do.

DREAD OF FEEDBACK The Creative Perfectionist Approach: If someone points out a mistake, has a different opinion, mentions something I didn’t include, or has anything other than incredibly positive things to say about a piece, I feel embarrassed and like a total failure. I worry that my expertise and respect is in question and that others will think I’m incompetent and an impostor. The Creative Pragmatist Approach: I appreciate feedback because it helps me to test and refine my work. I may agree or disagree with the input and I can choose how I respond to it. If I never open myself up to others’ insights, I might miss out on something really wonderful. My work is improved and my world is expanded through the input of others.

INSPIRATION DROUGHT When working on a large creative project, you may reach a point where your initial inspiration runs dry. You find it harder and harder to muster any enthusiasm for the work, let alone original ideas.

Take a leaf out of Twain’s book. Look out for the telltale signs that your tank is empty, and use them as a cue to take a break and let your unconscious take the strain. Relax or apply yourself to a completely different type of project.

MIXED MOTIVATIONS There’s quite a bit of evidence that extrinsic motivations—such as money and reputation—have a negative impact on creativity.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS Creativity demands focus, and it’s hard to concentrate if you’re getting divorced, dealing with a teething toddler, battling an addiction, falling out with your best friend, grieving someone special, moving houses, or locked in a dispute with a neighbor. If you’re lucky, you’ll only have to deal with these kinds of things one at a time—but troubles often come in twos or threes.

Treat your work as a refuge—an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re not on fire creatively every day—give yourself credit if you show up for work and make even a small amount of progress. When you put down your tools for the day, you may even see your personal situation with a fresh eye.