529 - Escape Your Creative Rut with This 5 Part Creative Hygiene Checklist

0:20So this episode is about creative block. You might not feel like you're blocked creatively because you're actively making stuff. Maybe you've made a bunch of stuff in the past week or month or year. But have you been creative? Have you really gotten into that state? There are lots of times in my creative journey where I get afraid that my best creative work is all in the past, that I haven't been able to tap into my creative potential or that creative brain state that really gets my best work cooking. And yet every other year or so, I am able to surprise myself with something that feels better than anything I've ever made.

1:03I'm currently working on a book with my wife, Sophie, right now that feels like it might be the best thing we've ever made. And that feeling is just so, so good. And so if you are struggling to get into your highest creative state recently, you're feeling a bit blocked in that area, this episode is going to give you five different things, five different tools that are going to help you create the conditions to access that flow, that creativity, that stuff that is just the juiciest, meatiest creativity that we all love and want to fill our creative work up with. Um, and if you stick until the end, I'm going to review all five and you're going to try to feel out which one you need to employ today to make the difference.

1:50So let's get into it.

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3:36Creative block is so frustrating because it's not fully in your control. You can't force your brain to enter the creative state. And you probably experience this where you're in the place where creativity is supposed to happen. You're in the spot. You're doing the things that's supposed to make creativity appear. Maybe even you are typing the words on the page. You're painting. You're drawing onto the paper or the canvas. but you have a sense that even though you're technically doing creative work, you haven't entered the creative state. And that's what I think is the misconception around creative block.

4:25You know, you have some people that get really, really blocked. Other creative people that are like creative block isn't even a thing. And I think the reason why we feel like maybe it's not a thing is because you can, of course, force yourself to put the paint on the canvas. You can force yourself to put the words onto the page, but words on a page and images on a canvas are not necessarily being creative. And I think it's a lot like sleep. If we could scan your brain laying in bed in the spot where it's supposed to happen, you're closing your eyes, you could even look like someone watched you, they'd be like, yeah, that person is probably sleeping, but we could see with the brain scan when you actually enter the state of sleep.

5:11And I think the same is true for creativity. You can't force yourself to go to sleep. You can't control whether you enter the sleep state, but there is a huge difference between not being able to control something and having no influence on it. And you know that you have a lot of influence on whether you're able to sleep at night or not, that there are conditions that can be met. You can create the right environment. You can do the right things throughout the day and then leading up to the moment where you're about to enter the state that you're desiring and that it can have a huge influence, a huge impact on whether you can enter that state that you're after.

6:08In this way, I think that creative block is a thing. It's a lot like insomnia. It is this state that we're trying to get our brains in that we are not in control of and can't quite force but can influence. And when it comes to sleep, these ways that you influence and create the conditions for making this elusive state happen are called sleep hygiene. So we're going to call this five ways to smash creative blocks and unlock your flow again. And it's all about creative hygiene. How do we put ourselves in the place where creativity is likely to show up? So let's talk about five different ways to maximize your creative hygiene so that that creativity happens.

7:17All right, number one is the artist date. You might have heard of this, but I have a little fresh take, a little fresh spin on this one. The artist date comes from the book, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. And it's essentially having a date with yourself, having a date with your creativity, going and doing an activity that you know usually fills up your creative cup. It usually makes you feel like creating. And so the little spin that I want to put on this is within this idea of sleep hygiene or creative hygiene. I mean, when you read about, like if you have insomnia, you're struggling to go to sleep at night, one of the things they say, the experts tell you, do all these things, create the conditions for you to be likely to go to sleep.

8:07But if you're laid in bed, you're in that spot where creativity, I mean sleep, is supposed to happen and it's not happening after a good 30 minutes, don't just lay there because you're going to get yourself more and more worked up. You're going to get upset. It's going to activate all these other things in your brain that are going to make it even harder to get to sleep. If you have given it a good college try, a good 30 minutes, and it's not happening, get out of bed, go do something, but do things that will likely lead you to go to sleep. Don't do things that are going to be activating brain states that you know are going to do the opposite of what you're looking for.

8:46Do things that usually tire you out, that usually make you feel sleepy. Go do those things. Don't just sit there and wait. And the way I want to inject this and apply this to your creative practice is we all have a limited amount of time to create. Now, at different times in my creative journey, I've had more and less, but there's always a limit. You don't just have infinite amount of time. It's one of the reasons why you get that anxiety when you have a creative block because you're wasting the precious time that you have. And the same goes for sleep. You know, if you don't go to sleep and you have to wake up early and you know you have a limited amount of time, you're counting the hours and you're realizing like, well, if I go to sleep now, I'm going to get this much time.

9:28If I go to sleep now, I'm going to get this much time to get smaller and smaller. And that anxiety is putting you into a part of your brain that is further and further away from the desired state that you're after. And the same is true for creativity. If you sit in your studio and you're like, all right, 15 minutes in, still not feeling that creativity hitting or 30 minutes in, still not like I'm still hating everything that I'm doing. I feel like it's a good practice to say, if you've got, let's say you got a two hour window, I think it's a good practice to go through the motions. You know, one of the things you're going to hear in, uh, anytime sleep comes up is it's a funny thing.

10:06Cause you have to pretend to do it for it to happen. And that's because you can't force it. But the same is true for creativity. That creativity, that flow is much more likely to happen if you have a paintbrush in your hand, if you're typing, if you're at the easel, at the computer, going through the motions. And so I'm a big believer in showing up, giving it a go. But if after 30 minutes, after 45 minutes, it is not working and you are bashing your head against the wall, I would say it's a good idea to consider giving yourself permission to do an artist date. Now, that doesn't have to be pack up your things and go to the museum.

10:51That can literally be a search on Pinterest. It can go back through all the saved stuff that you have on Instagram. That could be, look at those things, beautiful things, books. Go get some books that every time you pick them up, every time you read them, it's not even about direct inspiration. It's about just remembering why you love doing what you're doing. One of my go-tos that I've talked about too much on this show is Mike Birbiglia's podcast. And the reason why I love it, I love his comedy. I love the guest, the stand-up guest that he has on the show. But the thing I love about it is, it is really all about the love of creativity.

11:30And when I am feeling blocked, I love listening to that show because it reminds me the value, the kind of, the very hard to grasp value of art and making art. and the reason I say it's hard to grasp, it's hard to hold on. In a world that is so obsessed with ROI and money, it is so hard to remember that transcendent value of creative work until you're in it, you're soaking it, you're hearing other people nerd out about it and they're like, man, you know that thing? Like when you really have a break or you show up and it's not working for a while and then it clicks, Like that feeling, listening to that always puts me in that zone.

12:18And so what are your go-tos? Instead of just beating your head against the easel, how can you, if after you've shown up, you're pretending to do the thing, you're waiting to do the thing, you've been disciplined in that. If it's 30 minutes in, 40 minutes in, and the flow is just not happening, I think you have to give yourself some permission to do a waste half of your creative time just trying to remember why this feels so good. And that is going to require you to tap into when are those times when I'm feeling that way. And I think give yourself to, and sometimes give yourself a bigger permission slip to go on an actual field trip because it's that important because it's telling you you're not full.

12:59Now, one of the things I wanted to mention is this idea that creative state is similar to the sleep state came from this book, Master and His Emissary by Ian McGilchrist. about 50 % of the way through. It's like a 22-hour audiobook or something. But in that, he talks about how there are certain brain states that you are not in command of. You're not in control. He says sleep. I think he mentions creativity even specifically, but I can't be sure. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought about this idea of sleep hygiene and how it compares to creative hygiene and how it can put you in that place.

13:37Another reason I bring that up is because I've made over 500 episodes of this show. And sometimes people are like, how do you have new ideas for more shows? And some of it is that we cover the same ground over and over because it's hard to internalize. It's good to kind of look at it from a different angle. It's good to have a refresh. All that's true. But then also one of the main reasons I keep having ideas is because I keep putting stuff in here. You know, that book by Ian McGilchrist, these books that I read and consume and things that fire me up that inspire me to make this show. And so if you're hitting that block, it might be because the flow has stopped on the input, not just the output.

14:20And that's so, so essential. I love this Mirakami quote that says, if you read the same books as everybody else, you're gonna have the same ideas. And that's not because you're taking the ideas from those books, it's because those books are sparking your own dialogue, your own comments. It's one of the things I love about this show is being able to interview some of my favorite authors because when I read a book that's really firing me up, I wanna have a conversation. I'm having, those things are connecting to other things I've read or other experiences I've had and all of a sudden, it's making stuff happen in me.

14:52And so if you're not having those chemical reactions happen, it might be because you're not letting anything in and you need some inspiration, you need the permission to go have an artist date.

15:17All right, number two is solidify your foundation. What this is about is kind of getting at the Maslow's hierarchy of needs thing. You're probably familiar with that. You learned about it in high school and psychology class. But it's essentially this idea that we have basic needs that we have to build up until we get to those more transcendent needs, the self-transcendence where creativity lies, self-actualization and self-transcendence. I think that's kind of where it fits in that hierarchy. I don't think it really works as systematically as might be suggested by Maslow, but who am I to question such a brilliant thinker?

16:00However, here's what I'm saying. And this is something that's been central to the show since day one. This show has never been about quit your job, reckless abandon, pursue your creativity at all costs to you and to people that you love. It's never been like that. And the reason why isn't just because, like, I do believe in taking calculated risks. I do believe in following your current hyperfixation and curiosity and getting passionate and excited about what you're doing. I am a big believer in all those things. However, in my own personal experience, I have also found that if I don't have my basic needs met, I have an incredibly difficult time entering that creative state.

16:49Because the creative state is not survival mode. It's not how am I going to put the food on the table and that when I am in those spaces, I can't really access that creative side of me because that creative side is a playful space. And so there's kind of two areas where if they're threatened, I am almost, it's not impossible, but it's really, really difficult to access my creativity. One is kind of the basic needs survival. If I don't know how the bills are going to get paid, if I don't know how we're going to afford groceries, all of those things, if I don't feel like those things are met, I have this animalistic survival mode that comes up and it gets in the way of truly creative ideas because it's just housed in a different part of the brain.

17:45And so I'm a big believer in taking care of yourself by the means necessary, even if that means non-creative work. I actually think if you are struggling in a major way financially, then I would say do whatever you got to do, whether it's a part-time job or a full-time job, to meet those needs because it's going to be so much easier to be creative in the time that you have. You could have all the time in the world, but if your brain is obsessing over how you're going to meet your needs, you're not going to be creative. And so I highly recommend making sure that you do what you got to do to meet those needs and put the pressure off of your creative work from meeting all of your survival needs.

18:35The second thing that I think, if you have it threatened, means you're going to have about hard time accessing your creativity is your identity. Now, this is a funny one because so much of us really identify as creative people. We really wrap our identity up in our output as a creative person. It might be the first way that you think about your identity, the primary way. And I actually think that's not all bad. you know there's there's a value in saying you're an artist and saying you're a writer and you gotta be the thing before you do the thing i think there's some truth to that however if all of your identity is wrapped up on one particular creative pursuit that's a type of pressure again that's going to put you in that survival mode and not able to access your creative side because your creative side is a playful side.

19:37Your creative side is something that you are able to do with the risk of no reward. And so for me, what this looks like, it doesn't look like just having an identity as a dad or an identity as a husband or a person in a community or whatever. It goes beyond that of it's really helped me to have an identity as both an illustrator and a podcaster or an illustrator and an author and having these different arms to what I do so that the pressure is never all on one. And if this one's not going so well, I can channel some of my energy over here. And even though I was an illustrator before I was a podcaster, some of my best illustration ideas didn't come out until I had spread out my sense of self through a few different creative outlets.

20:26And then once I took the pressure off illustration, some of that creativity was really able to flow. And so it reminds me of something that Phil Stutz talks about in the documentary that Jonah Hill did on him. He's his therapist. And he talks about when you're really, really struggling and nothing's going right, you can't get yourself to do anything, focus on cultivating your life force. That's what he calls it. And it's really about eating well, sleeping well, taking care of the things that you need to take care of And I think if you do all those things, if you cultivate your general life force and well-being, that creative state will be so much more second nature.

21:28all right we're gonna work through the last three a little bit faster because i'm kind of ranting. I'm getting excited. Just going a bit too long on all these. But here, number three is get under the microscope. Let me explain what I mean by that. The idea here is that you need to get in observational mode about who you are, when creativity is likely to happen conventionally or traditionally or historically for you, when does creativity show up? And the idea behind this point came from Jim Collins, who is this famous business writer. He has this practice he calls Jim the bug. And I've talked about it a couple times throughout the run of this show, but I've been thinking about it a lot more recently.

22:15And what he does is he gives every day a score between negative two and two and plus two, right? So every day can be a negative two, a negative one, a zero, a one, or a two, depending on just generally how much he enjoyed it, how much it felt right. And so every day gets a score and then there's a little description that says, these are the contributing factors of kind of the stuff that I was doing that day. Now, that's a little bit nerdy, Jim. I mean, I love it. I wish I could do it, but I just don't think I am that disciplined. But I don't think you have to be. I think it can look like, hey, if you wanna do that, go for it.

22:59I think it could be a really valuable experience, but I don't think you have to go that far. What I recommend you do is say, when am I most creative? What is the place that I'm in physically? Am I at a coffee shop? Am I in the bathtub? That's one of the reasons why I write in the bathtub every day is because of that self-reflection of realizing so many of my best ideas came from being in the bath. And the fact of the matter is you actually see this reflected in the literature around creative research. They have this thing they call the three B's and they're the places where creativity tends to show up.

23:35They tend to be these liminal spaces and the three B's as they define them are baths, bathtubs or showers, the bus or bedtime in the bed. and that there are these places where you're really not doing anything. You're kind of waiting. You're kind of reflecting. You're in between. And that's where creativity usually shows up. So it might be the three Bs for you or it might not, but it's incredibly important to remember that these are the conditions. This is the hygiene where it's likely to happen. And you might be surprised if you just take a moment to step back and think about it, how few of those scenarios you are regularly and routinely putting into your every day and into your creative practice.

24:23Because it's easy to fall into what's the most convenient time and space to create for myself and my family and everyone around me or my job and not realize that if you just made an extra effort to put yourself in those spaces where creativity tends to happen for you, you are so much more likely to enter that state. So treat yourself like the bug, put yourself under the microscope, give yourself a moment to just think back to when were the times where my best ideas came to me? What was I doing? What was I eating? What was I thinking about? Who was I talking to? All of these things matter. For me, one of the things that, one example that's kind of unusual is some of my best work happened randomly on a day in vacation where I took a day to work or I took a day to create.

25:14And it was after this moment of not doing anything and feeling zero pressure because I'd already decided I'm not going to be productive. I'm not going to contribute to shareholder values in this week or two. And in that space, you know, the time that I posted my invisible things was on vacation. There was an editorial illustration that was really key to building my style that happened on vacation. I don't recommend working your whole vacation. That's not what a vacation is, but that's an example of where those moments happen. And so that could look like instead of taking the next few weeks and using that creative block that you have to make work, it could look like how could I tour my own city?

26:01How could I use those hours to goof off and do whatever I want and maybe keep a sketchbook at the same time and put something into that if and when the moment strikes? But it's all about self-reflection and kind of getting that outsider's perspective to see when do these things happen? What are the conditions? All right, number four is employ precision, creative precision. so here's what i mean by that i i you i don't know how much you've watched this show but you might have noticed that i'm often wearing this same shirt it's if you're not if you're just listening to the show and you can't see it it's a shirt that says the arts it's one that i designed i have six or seven copies of this shirt and i wear them most days and part of the reason is is the same reason that you've heard other people talk about creating this cartoon wardrobe it's the idea that we have a limited amount of decision making potential in every day every decision you make is leading towards a fatigue of your ability to make decisions and a lot of creativity is making decisions and so there are so many ways that i've tried to eliminate that decision fatigue and be precise with where i channel the creativity to make sure it's the places where it needs to go, where it really counts.

27:26And so this looks like, yes, things I wear, but it also looks like the work itself. And sometimes this manifests in style. So I think one of the reasons why established creative people sometimes talk down about style and how it's not really about style, like don't get caught up on style. That's not really the point. And I think some, when I was starting out, I was so obsessed with finding my style that I hated when they said that because I was like, yeah, it's one of the reasons I love your work is your aesthetic and your voice and the consistency in this world that you've created, this vernacular, if you will.

28:01I love to say that word. It's got so many good consonants in it. But now that I've been making art for 15 plus years, I've started to realize even though I still have a real appreciation for style and I love certain aspects of the style that I've been able to develop, I think I get what they mean. In my mind, when I look at a Wes Anderson, who's kind of the extreme example of style, I have to guess that part of that is less about creativity and more about creative precision. Because instead of worrying about how are we going to block this shot, how are we going to frame it, what's the wardrobe, all these different decisions, so many of those decisions are made with the style and aesthetic that he has established.

28:52Now, there's an argument that says sometimes you need to blow that up and rethink it all. And I think there's a good argument for that. But what I think happens is as you develop an aesthetic in a way of an approach, a sensibility to your work, you're deciding so many different things before you even get started. And you can channel your the truest most potent creativity towards a very specific thing and that might be the theme of the movie that might be the dialogue it might be it doesn't really matter what matters is that you know what matters to you that you know where the creativity really really counts and that you reserve some of that for those things so for me as a picture book artist or as a picture book author the most important aspect of the writing is what is this about primarily?

29:48Like what is the arc that we're looking for with this character? And then secondly, I'm thinking about how do we structure the three acts to be sort of an equation that really comes together in the third act. And once we have those two things, like I want to save so much for that. And then all the rest of it, I want to just play and kind of have fun and apply style and make jokes and everything else. But that's where I'm really concentrating the lion's share of my creative juices, if you will. And the same goes for a podcast. There are elements of a podcast where I am pouring the most potent piece, the most potent reserve of my creativity.