Those who struggle with creativity– or have an abundance of it– often shy away from productivity tips because they believe it’s the same old routine of producing more at the cost of sacrificing your creativity. That’s not the case. At all.
Today, we’re going to be discussing why productivity is essential to creatives and how to produce more!
Suppose you want a perfect example of how productivity and creativity feed each other and are proportional-integral to one another. In that case, there’s this book by Mason Currey called “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.
It’s a manual on productivity, and it uses examples of some of the most brilliant and successful creative minds in history. Mason Currey maps out the successful and even unorthodox habits of the “greatest minds of the last four hundred years.
It lists the daily rituals of Jane Austen, Andy Warhol, and the likes of Charles Darwin and Benjamin Franklin as they overcome everyday obstacles. These history-changing individuals didn’t adhere to the normal repetitive routines that society tells us are the right and only ways.
Most of these people were night owls. They drank excessive amounts of coffee, wrote and painted in all the hours of day and night, and just about did everything they could to make their creativity tangible while increasing their productivity.
Here are some unconventional ways these great people employed that show just how important productivity is to creatives.
Productivity self-help methods often call for early mornings. And there’s still no disputing that entirely. For example, take Ernest Hemingway, who was up with the birds and the ravens every morning at 5:30 A.M.
Beethoven personally counted out 60 coffee beans each morning that went into his morning cup. Benjamin Franklin swore up and down that the secret to his success was “air baths,” a fancy, political term for saying he sat around nude in the morning.
There’s a point to this, we promise. See, a lot of people swear that the early morning drowsiness is helpful for creativity. Novelist Nicholson Baker liked to wake up at the mind-numbing hour of 4:30 A.M each day because he thought, “the mind is newly cleansed, but it’s also befuddled… I found that I wrote differently then.”These great minds had figured out the secret a lot of people aren’t privy to.
The War of Art
by Steven Pressfield
⏱ 15 minutes reading time
🎧 Audio version available
Productivity tackles the bigger problems, making way for creativity
One of the most popular misconceptions about productivity is that its definition deals with the same tasks again and again as efficiently as possible. When you begin to think like this, when your boss and coworkers encourage you to think like, you may fall into the mindset of “we’ve always done things this way.”This is where creativity dies a slow, emotionless death.
And no! That’s not what productivity is. This is laziness. When you encourage productivity in the form of creative thinking and allow people to see the bigger, more beautiful, and impactful image, their creativity will turn out faster and better results. When you encourage the transfer of traditional, menial work and onto the bigger picture, employees’ productivity becomes more meaningful.
Productivity is vital to the creative mind. See, when you’re on a roll, whether you’re producing books, thousands of words per day, or you’re painting like there’s no tomorrow, there’s that fear of failure that gets removed.
That fear and the same old routine of coloring strictly between the lines are what’s halting all possibilities of creating new, and get this: effective ways to work.
As a creator, you have to understand the importance of productivity and how to get more done while not sacrificing a lot at the same time. You have nailed the first step already, and that’s self-awareness.
Creativity overlaps with productivity at this point because creativity boldly questions the current production methods and invents new, innovative, and effective ways to improve on old solutions.You can’t be creative if you’re not productive.
To understand this staple point of productivity, here are some examples of definitions and examples related to productivity.
So first up is being organized. Artists are notoriously unorganized. So are writers and just about every branch of life that required intense focus. But you know what? Something as simple as cleaning off your desk leads to greater productivity and makes enough space on your desk, in your room, and your mind for more creative thinking.
Having a Process Produces More
Creatives cringe at routine, but the truth is anything, including art in any form, can be made into a process or a system that can be improved upon to produce more.
And there’s a misconception that productivity is a straight line down completing repetitive things more efficiently. That’s not the truth. It’s better to take a meandering but still, productive path to reach a solution.
Productivity and Creativity Get the Same Advice
You’ll find that a lot of advice that applies to increasing your productivityalso applies to being more creative.
Studies have shown that listening to music gets all those creative juices flowing and turns productivity up.
Do you want to know one of the best-kept secrets of the creators who produce work like crazy? Their secret isn’t nonstop work. Although that may work for some cases, more often than not, allowing yourself to take breaks, even if it’s to daydream a little, allows your overworked mind to rest and restart.
Daydreaming boosts creativity. And as the saying goes, “being busy doesn’t always mean you’re productive.” In truth, doing too much and at too fast, a rate isn’t the best strategy. Not only will your creativity lessen and refuse to come out, but the productivity that’s supposed to feed it also won’t be there. If your body is overworked, your mind is burned out.
The Efficiency in Productivity Does Wonders
Productivity means getting more things done in a shorter time. Some artists don’t like to be confined to deadlines and specific quantities that they want to produce, but we have deadlines and quotas to meet in the real world. Franz Kafka crammed all his writings between 10:30 P.M and the early hours of the morning.
Does cramming your schedule work? Take this genius as well. Author William Faulker. He had a job working the night shift at a power plant. He wrote “As I Lay Dying” in the afternoon, and guess what? He’s one of the greatest authors of all time. If he could cram his writing in before he went to work, so can we.
The self-discipline and limited timeline that productivity calls for maybe feeding into your creative brain. That self-discipline you employ trickles into your artistic process.
It Frees Your Mind
Next up, we have what one of the daily routine habits productive people does to creativity. Ask a successful, productive person what’s the first or last thing they did during the day, and the answer will most likely be having a predetermined thought of what they want to accomplish that day.
When you decide what you want to do with the day and do it at the same moment every day, “passion will give you no trouble.” This method is encouraged by the modern psychologist, William James, who thought a strict routine works best to unleash the imagination. He felt that by making many aspects of daily life automatic and habitual, people could free their minds to “advance to really interesting fields of action.”
So if you have already determined that you will write your novel for 30 minutes each morning before the day begins, you’re more likely to stick to that decision. This is a piece of golden advice when it comes to increasing productivity.
Write Things Down
Now, we’re moving on to tips that will exceptionally make you produce more!
This is another piece of advice that drastically makes you produce more content. It’s writing things down. When you do so, you free up room in your head and allow yourself to focus on getting things done.
And hey, when you’re trying to determine which tasks you should finish first, choose the ones that actively make you work towards achieving your goals instead of wasting time with activities that hold no real value. If you’re ever doubtful of the outcome, keep the Pareto principle in mind, which is the 80/20, and it says that 80% of the results are achieved from only 20% of our work. So go right ahead and start working!
Learn to Say No
For the love of everything inspiring, if you ever want to get things done, you need to learn when to say no to things—being productive means refusing and saying no to things that hinder your progress towards your goals.
This boils down to productivity being about not necessarily the thing right, but about doing the right thing. Saying no to unnecessary things just removed obstacles.
And for our final few tips, in the spirit of productivity and efficiency, here are some creative tips to get more things done!
We’ve got the routine thing down, but we want to talk about other simple tips next. So remember that bit about how being busy doesn’t always mean you’re productive? We’re adding to that and saying that you shouldn’t take too much on your plate. Not unless you’re ready to be overwhelmed to the point that you’re not able to get half of these things done.
Social media is a big no-no in the productive/creative world. Not only will it disrupt your day if you check it too often, but it leads to comparing your work to others in a negative way, and that’s a path no one wants to go on.
And lastly! Remember that you don’t need to wait around for the perfect time or perfect space to stay creating!
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