The difficulty of starting new creative ventures.
Did you ever catch yourself dreaming about creating more, but after weeks/months you’re still in the same position? And I’m not (necessarily) talking about your job. We all have other hobbies, interests, and passions outside the workplace.
This problem has been subtly nagging me for a while now.
Thinking about other creative ventures is far from doing them. I might call this problem procrastination, perfectionism, fear of making a fool of myself, whatever. One thing is certain. I found myself daydreaming about creating interactions and posters, writing articles, and posting designs, but did none of them.
And then I found a term that really resonated with my problem. Creative angst.
In my case, creative angst seems closely related to state orientation.
What’s state orientation? A way of responding to conflict and dilemmas with a prolonged analysis and assessment of alternatives rather than a quick assessment. The hesitation of state orientation thus leads to the preservation of current mental and behaviour state.
In simpler terms? I start overthinking so much that I end up in the same state. There’re too many options in my head with no clear path of actioning them. That’s when I freeze. My brain goes through all alternatives, questions, advantages and disadvantages then defaults to the current state. Comfort.
Creative angst might be a byproduct of creative freedom. In theory, having full creative freedom to do anything you want sounds ideal. But in reality, it’s rarely helpful.
Creativity responds very well to structures.
There’s a big difference between having a completely blank slate and one that tells you to create a loading animation for uploading a file. Less choice = more action. Direction and constraints help you take action faster. Instead of thinking of what you should be creating, looking at all possible options, analyzing which one would create a better outcome, you already have a tight brief.
You’re probably familiar with Parkinson’s Law. Work will stretch to fill the time allotted. Deadlines are incredible for finishing work faster.
Direction and constraints go hand in hand. Remove one and the effort to start something will be greater. It will fill all the time allotted, which is typically undefined.
I had the idea to write about this article for the last 2 months. But as time passed, I seemed nowhere closer to publishing it.
A simple framework that helped me was to define:
It took me about 6 hours to finish it. From research, to writing, to editing, to publishing. I split these into 4 days because my deadline was to spend a maximum of 1 and a half hours a day.
Is it groundbreaking? Hell no. I knew this before, I used it before. But even so, it took me a while to realise what was missing. I had the direction, even too many. I didn’t have the constraints. And surely I didn’t have a system to do it.
When I paired all of these together I finished this piece. And fast. It took me 4 months to realise I was in a limbo state, thinking too much about possible outcomes, taking too little action. Then it took me 4 days to publish something.
Based on: this Youtube video, therapy sessions.