How To Un-F#@k Your Creative Brain

Creating stuff is hard. Like really fucking hard.

We have this ability to imagine a future version of ourselves that easily makes stuff. This future us can write, draw, paint, film YouTube videos, play guitar.

Anything really.

But the present version of ourselves has a deep struggle actually doing these things in the present moment.

We get trapped in a huge variety of pitfalls. Let me know if any of these resonate with you?

We can:

• Stare at a blank page/canvas unable to think of an idea

• Spend hours on just one more course so we can actually execute our vision

• Spend even more hours perfecting the current work so that we don’t have to start a new project

• Avoid shipping the project so that no one will ever see it and judge us

• Research what our inspirations do - whether tools, techniques, the courses they took, who their inspirations were, what time they get out of bed in the morning, which hand they wipe their asses with…

It’s never ending. We don’t like sitting down and actually doing the work.

Before I began writing this article I watched a video game YouTube video for a game I don’t even play. I ordered 6 new shirts from Target that I don’t really need. I meditated. I put some coffee and protein together in a cup. I walked. I listened to a library book that is due in a few days.

Did I need to do any of these things before beginning to write? No.

Am I the paradigm of perfection when it comes to my own creative work? Fuck no.

But here I am, writing this draft that I won’t obsess over and will email out. Actually, I should probably finish editing last week’s post so I can send it... Instead, I’m doing this writing because somehow it’s a little bit easier for me.

I even just paused so I could look up different switches for my keyboard since I’m feeling like the typing experience isn’t exactly what I want. Something about it kind of hurts my fingers over time. Ha ha.

Why do we struggle so damn much? Shouldn’t it be easy for us to just sit down and do the thing?

Well, it isn’t easy. It may actually be the most difficult thing in the entire world for humans to do. Harder than staying in a committed relationship. Harder than waking up at 5AM and going for a long run.

Why?

It really comes down to one reason. We judge ourselves. We are absolutely fucking brutal with ourselves in a way that our biggest grade school bully wouldn’t ever dare.

I’m not even talking about the voice in the back of our head self judgement - I’m talking about the tiniest of feelings. A sliver of insecurity and doubt that is the tip of a gigantic iceberg the size of our ego. This is crippling.

When we sit down to do creative work and there is any kind of outcome dependent on that work - whether it’s money, status, or love - we will struggle to do that work.

I’m going to explore both of the two reasons for this and then give you some simple solutions. Yes, they actually are simple.

The first reason for this is a pure logical fallacy. We are doing creative work, which is inherently subjective. You might love my writing, or you might hate it. The fact that my post is 3,532 words long is objective. The fact that you think my style of writing and points are hot garbage is subjective. Remember this distinction.

So when we write, or draw, or sing, the outcome in the eyes or ears of the observer is subjective. Random internet person may love your work. Or they may call you a shit stain on Satan's diaper.

Yes, there are some objective skills involved. Are your sentences legible? Are you singing mostly in key? But even these lines get blurred.

U can tipe randum stuffz n peeps wil stillll git it.

Then there’s the message we are trying to convey with our work. This is where we begin to obsess and the choo-choo falls off the track.

We have an idea about what we want to say and our technical ability to get the idea out comes into play. Both the quality of that idea and our tangible skill at expressing that idea are judge-able.

Now we’ve created a multi-level marketing scheme in our own brains related to our own abilities. Yuck.

At level one there’s the core idea itself and we judge it’s quality.

At level two there’s our ability to express that idea in our given medium, our skill.

At level three there’s our audience’s ability to understand said idea.

At level four there’s our ability to attract an audience in the first place.

On some unconscious level all of these processes are happening and we are judging ourselves. To make matters worse this happens before we even begin. We sit down to work and we don’t know if we can pull even one of these levels off successfully.

No wonder we struggle to create.

We are mixing up subjective and objective skills and judging ourselves based on both. Do you care about my grammar when reading this? Do you care if I draw in procreate or photoshop? Probably not, unless you’re a dick.

We care about the end result of other’s work. And if we don’t like something we ignore it quickly and move onto the next.

But for our own work, it’s not the same! I can hear you cry out, “Everyone obsesses over every tiny detail of my work!”

Do you do this for others? “Well, no, but everyone does it to me!”

Mmhmm…sure they do.

Look up clinical studies about how often we think about other people vs. how often we think about ourselves. Our society is a million percent narcissistic. We don’t give a flying fuck what anyone else has for breakfast or if their makeup is a little off today. Yet we obsess over the details in our own lives.

The only times we actually judge others is when we’re insecure with ourselves and we begin to project onto them in some way. Or when they rank above us in a status game and we think that bringing them down will somehow bring us up. Or if they're a celebrity...but who really cares about celebrities?

The second piece of this internal struggle-puzzle is our dependence on an outcome. The moment we attach a desired outcome to an action we ruin it. We completely fuck it up!

Why the intensity? Think about this for a second - if looking great in the mirror with your clothes off wasn't a benefit would you exercise hard? Lift weights?

Even after being an athlete becomes part of your identity, some deeper part inside motivates you to continue because of this self judgement. This is why meditation is so damn hard for people.

We start meditating because of some perceived benefit. It will reduce our stress or give us more control over our daily reactions. Then, when we don't immediately get this benefit, we grow annoyed with meditation. We aren't meditating for the sake of meditation, but for the reward.

We take on an identity around not being a meditator. "I'm not one of those people."

This is due to us protecting ourselves from not achieving some imagined, desired outcome from doing the activity itself. If your goal with meditation was to simply not look at your phone for 3 minutes you could achieve this every time you sit down.

Instead, there is a bigger internal goal — one that can't be reached every time you sit down. Consequently, we get frustrated and give up. The same process happens with exercise.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

If it can take months to see any perceived benefit from meditation or exercise, you need to find a different reason to undertake these activities or they will be stopped. Why would you continue with a behavior when you're not getting the results you want from it?

As a creator, the exact same principle applies.

If you're expecting love, or readers, or moneys from your work it might be years until you see any of these things. Well, your mom will probably love it, so that's a start.

If you practice what many "gurus" preach, and envision this beautiful future where you achieve everything you want. And then start doing the tasks day-to-day and don't receive any of the benefits, why would you continue doing this work??

When you take this meta-level step back and examine your motivation everything comes crumbling down. It's obvious why you don't stick with things. It's obvious why you have resistance.

Back to the little kid explanation from earlier — are kids running and playing because they want 6-pack abs for the beach? Are they drawing because they want millions of adoring fans? Or are they doing these behaviors for fun and to show what they make to their moms and friends?

Which type or process do you think will fuel you to take repeated action over the years necessary to actually arrive at your imagined, guru-fueled destination?

Hopefully, I've made things painfully obvious at this point. You need to rewire how you think about what you're doing with your time. Resistance exists because there's a disconnect between the possibility of a potential outcome from the actions we are taking right now.

If I'm sitting down to write a song and it needs to be a Grammy-winning song every single time. A Billboard-topping hit that can elevate me to superstardom. How long do you think I'll continue making songs before I feel burnout and a crazy level of resistance?

This is a form of self-torture, yet we all do it again and again and again. It sucks.

Tips For An Easy Creative Life

Thankfully, there are some steps you can take today to change this. There are people throughout history who don't suffer the way we do and we can emulate their behaviors. Not their early-morning after-dump routines, but their mental routines.

The first step is to be honest with yourself and admit that you have a problem. You are pursuing an unknown, creative act. The outcome will never be a foregone conclusion.

After this here are the actions I'd recommend we all do a little more often:

1. PLAY, like actually fucking play with your work. Do goofy dumb things and don’t try to be “correct”. This is how you find a voice and this is also how you enjoy the work. This is what little kids do, we should do it as grown-ups as well.
   
   The more you're able to tap into this space, the longer your career in your given craft will last. Resistance is the opposite of play.
   

2. Create for yourself. If you have kids or a brother or a friend who loves your work then you can create for them too. But you need to make things that you think are cool. And you need to be okay with them sucking and not being very cool for a long time. You can look up Ira Glass' talk about The Gap if you're not familiar with the concept.
   
   Essentially, it takes a long time for our work to resemble that of our idols. The process of getting there and how to intentionally practice I'll save for another post.
   
   In the meanwhile we need to find the tiny, special parts of our own work that makes us excited. Did you write a character who you think is awesome? Did you draw a hero with badass powers? Is there one line in the song you made that you're really proud of?
   
   Perfect. This is your starting point. The goal is to just have more of these moments over time in your work without needing to have them happen.
   

3. Make it small. This means write one sentence. Draw an outline. Make some drums or a melody.
   
   Everything can be boiled down into it's smallest components. When we try to create a whole, huge work it often becomes overwhelming and we struggle to start. When I write, my goal is 5 minutes.
   
   I don't do a word count. Some days my writing is garbage. Some days it flows like ambrosia from Zeus. I don't get to consciously choose these days and if I push through until I maybe make something good then I will be exhausted later in the day.
   
   Test out what works for you. I'm more of a carrot person than a stick person.
   

4. Actually try. Do your best. Say to yourself, "Is this the best I can do right now?" Not is this perfect... but is this my current best?
   
   This is important because it prevents you from coping out when things get difficult or challenging. Everything you do doesn't need to be level 10 maximum hard. But you need to push just past your comfort zone for a little while to be able to grow.
   
   You also need to be honest with your current skill or ability with your craft.
   
   I'm a 1200 chess player. How much fun do you think I'll have playing against a 2000 chess player every day? Statistically speaking they will embarrass me within 8 moves every single game. Sounds like a fucking blast.
   
   What if I instead play against a 1300 or 1400 player? I'll probably level up more. This is how all sports and video games work for a reason.
   
   With our artistic endeavors we can do the same thing.
   

5. Watch a course after you've done your creation for the day, not before. You don't need to learn before doing. Do what you can do, right now. Then watch something to fill in the gaps. Then you can do more if you'd like. Or wait until tomorrow.
   
   The point is that we escape the doing by learning. I'm incredibly guilty of this.
   
   Whenever I have a course or book I'm excited by I'll spend hours consuming it instead of creating. I'll take notes on the millions of things I can do in the future when some imagined scenario comes up.
   
   I have notes on how to hire C-Suite executives for a Fortune 500 company. Why? Will I ever be in a position of actually doing this?? Who knows. But I'm not today and I don't need to spend my time or energy learning how to do something random that I'm not practically going to use today.
   
   And even if I am going to use it today, I need to try doing it on my own first so that I understand where my knowledge gaps are and what I need help with. Only then will the course actually help me.
   
   We use courses as a way to lessen the psychological pain of not knowing. This is why play is so critical — a playful person doesn't need to know. They just do and have fun along the way.
   
   Try drawing 3 houses before you watch a video on perspective. The tools will make sense then and you can apply them immediately.
   

6. This is a hot take: Don’t practice until after you’ve done your creation.
   
   I actually think morning pages are a great form of procrastination. Especially when you have limited time to do your creative work.
   
   If you’re a professional artist already and have 8 hours of time to write then maybe they help. But you have a whole different set of problems because people are looking for you to maintain a high-quality. The worry about other's view of yourself creates a different problem. Your ego gets in the way because it doesn't want to lose anything.
   
   For the rest of us, get to work like you've been starved of food for a week and each second you get to work is that meal you've been dreaming of. Be ravenous. Don't avoid.
   

7. The last tip is to do the damn thing in the same way as much as your can.
   
   Same place, same time, same equipment, same music, same everything. Make all of this automatic — take out your decisions.
   
   Just like tying your shoes. If you have to think about it, it'll be more challenging. I write in the same program, on the same computer, at the same coffee shop (or a new one if traveling).
   
   Take this as far as you need to. The point is to test what works for you to be consistent. I need headphones on. I have one playlist on Spotify I've used for 10 years. I'm currently testing Brain.fm to see if I like it too.
   
   Repetition is the key to success. Have fun making your routine and test small parts of it out. Are you better fasted? In the morning or evening? With your phone in another room? Discover what works for you.

Hopefully this has given you some inspiration to change your evil ways, repent, and become the creative genius you're destined to be.

I promise it is inside of you. Once you stop getting in your own way and let it out.

The power is yoursssssss 😉

-Nick