What are you doing to be creative today?

In the past few weeks, we’ve explored the theme and opportunity of giving full vent to our creativity. Of course, there’s no single way to do it, so what matters most is that we identify our own idiosyncratically resonant approaches. Which engenders a leading question that can guide our life in a most affirming and expansive way:

What am I doing to be creative today?

As we’ve noted in our journey thus far, the research is quite clear that channeling our creativity correlates to increasing our productivity, so not only does committing to creativity make our journey more enjoyable but more contributory and impactful as well. So how do you channel your creativity?

In my case, I find that the answers changed in the past five years. Specifically, as I age, I find that I’m ever less of a night owl and ever more of a morning person. So, in contrast to a decade ago when I would typically go to sleep around 11:00pm and awake by 6:30am – as had been my practice since I was a teenager, actually – I now find that I’m prone to begin to fall asleep after 9:30pm and awake at or before 5:00am. And, typically, within a half-hour of awaking, my brain attains full focus so that I can enter creative mode with a sense of delighted anticipation.

As I sip that first cup of coffee – typically at least 75% decaffeinated (so the purists will dispute whether it’s really coffee) – I’ll read and begin to let my mind percolate. Then, after a half-hour to hour, I’ll formulate and begin to craft what I’d like to write … and this piece is an example of the result.

Though I didn’t realize it when I first developed this new pattern, I’m enjoying the benefit of what author and professor Mike Irwin calls “solitude,” which he defines as “a state of mind, a space in which to focus one’s own thoughts without distraction — and where the mind can work through a problem on its own.” As he points out at the very beginning of his thematically-titled article “In a Distracted World, Solitude is Competitive Advantage”:

“Always remember: Your focus determines your reality.” Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn shares this advice with Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars, but in our hyper-distracted work world, it’s advice that we all need to hear.

How do you approach the creation of environments that encourage and perhaps maximize the opportunity for your creativity?

I find that this new morning routine – up early before the rest of the world has awakened and become rambunctious, sipping a cup of coffee, reading an informative (non-fiction) book or article and then settling into write – is the optimal way to encourage my creativity.

Therefore, I strongly suggest that you find your own best approach. And I suspect that it’ll be meaningfully different than mine and reflective of your unique biorhythms. The basis for this surmise is my experience with my friends, several of whom are clearly night owls: when I awake before dawn, I’ll see their social media posts from just a few hours before, suggesting that they were up after midnight (or suffering from a bout of insomnia as so many of us apparently do on occasion, or even regularly, at mid-life).

I can’t imagine trying to be creative at two o’clock in the morning now, though this was typical for me back in my college days. Which means that I’ve changed, as we all do. What worked for me some time ago no longer does today. So, I expect that your optimal creative focus time will be unique not only to who you are but to where you find yourself in your life journey. The key is to discern and embrace this, and then to leverage it.

It also helps to establish a routine or ritual to maximize your creative possibility: you’ll notice that I’ve identified a clear pattern in terms of how I start my days, and especially my ‘creative’ ones. Personally, I think of it more as a ritual than a routine, because while the latter can be a helpful repetition of conducive behaviors, the former – at least in my conception – carries with it a deeper meaning: truly, for me, these creative moments are sacred experiences. They enable me to access and then contribute aspects of myself that aren’t typically required or shared during a normal workday. They also enable me to touch on and explore areas of deep meaning for which I typically have little time during my routinely frenetic workdays.

In essence, they’re my own little sacred spaces, interludes of respite, succor and inspiration that establish the most positive of vibes and motivate me for the rest of the day. So not only do they enable me to be creative, which is one of my most meaningful and fulfilling experiences in life, but they also provide occasions for strategic reflection, consideration and alignment that help me live my best life not only in the moment but over the entirety of its course.

What routine or ritual can and should you establish to encourage your creativity and living your best life?

I’ll offer another Key Learning that’s enabled me to maximize my creative ritual: the practice of what I call “Disciplined Switching.” As highlighted in their article “To Be More Creative, Schedule Your Breaks,” Professors Jackson Lu, Modupe Akinola and Malia Mason have identified that engaging in a pattern of focus followed by a break and/or change to a new area of focus before returning to one’s original locus of attention can actually enhance your ability to concentrate and be in full command of one’s creative gifts.

To illustrate with my own routine: you’ll notice that I make some coffee, begin by reading and then switch to writing, typically effecting the latter transition after a prescribed duration (i.e., either a half-hour or hour). The progression of these activities makes it a comfortable experience and the ordered alignment of them amplifies their impact.

Don’t get me wrong, this was hard for me to learn: after having discovered Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow many years ago, I became an ardent proponent and practitioner thereof … so it’s very difficult for me to force myself to switch it up during a time when I find myself fully engaged and in the groove. Yet, as the professors’ research shows, doing just this is the secret to being able to sustain such creative focus for an extended period of time.

So, there you have it, my recommendations for how to create a ritual that encourages you to give full vent to your unique creativity on a regular basis. I hope that you’ll choose to adopt a practice of creating serial opportunities to learn, grow and share in idiosyncratically meaningful ways. And, as a result, I look forward to exploring what we can learn from each other.

In this spirit then, I return to the central, catalyzing question before us:

What are you doing to be creative today?

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(Photo credits: https://quotefancy.com/creativity-quotes; https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/g26948562/funny-coffee-quotes/?slide=21; https://www.fiverr.com/alisalemdezfuli/make-your-biorhythm-charts-calendar; https://quotefancy.com/quote/1532353/Algernon-Blackwood-Ritual-is-the-passage-way-of-the-soul-into-the-Infinite; https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/138274651045528838/; https://otpotential.com/blog/2015/8/25/occupational-therapy-quotes)