WTF is a Creative System

I’ve noticed more and more people feel disconnected from their creativity today.

From passing conversations at the coffee shop to deep talks while waiting for waves, it’s a recurring theme.

People are damn tired of sacrificing creativity in the name of easily quantifiable results.

But here’s the paradox:

94% of business leaders believe creativity is paramount for economic competitiveness…

• more than 75% of individuals feel they’re not maximizing their creative potential.

• 67% of workers in the creative industry admitted to burnout in the last year

• 1 in 3 of those workers confessed to emotional burnout (though this is suspected to be higher)

It’s obvious that the system at large rewards tangible results and quantifiable metrics, but I don’t believe that creativity needs to be sacrificed in the name of linear thinking (nor emotional well-being)

It’s easy to hear in the voice of one’s yearning for more creative expression that this issue is tender, deep, and filled with a sense of grief.

I wholeheartedly believe there is another way because I’m a very imperfect example of creative resilience, albeit- still an example.

To preface:

• I’ve burned out hard

• Grew sick of serving the wrong clients

• Struggled financially to the point of selling my surfboards for rent (sacred ground = no no)

• re-considered my relationship with creativity multiple times - existential crisis included.

But I’ve also believed in my creative potential with so much fervor that I lived in my metal workshop with an over-drafted bank account because I knew with every fiber of my being that I am capable.

So here’s how I approach creative work in a way that prioritizes my well-being, focus , and sustainability.

(as a recovering perfectionist and creative free-radical)

1.The BIG why

The biggest missing link I see for most creatives is a creative system - myself included.

I recently read @kellywildemiller’s Creative Dysregulation and it speaks to this idea incredibly (she also wrote the entirety of the o 5 days - hint, hint: system!)

She speaks to the root causes of the creative chaos that so many of us struggle with.

The problem is in the way we perceive an approach creativity.

We treat the creative act like a mystic amorphous gas.

We know when we’re induced by it, and we are frustrated when we aren’t.

How on earth could we depend on this mystic creature to sustainably nourish our creative relationship day in and day out?

Everyone’s relationship to creativity in unique, but there is a system beneath the seeming chaos that we often aren’t attuning to.

A system for creativity is a system to support a deep fundamental need in life.

I used to believe that creativity cannot be contained, that it was spontaneous and seducing like the fantasies within a devoted sex life.

But guess what, it’s safe to create intentional space for sex in a relationship because it’s extremely unrealistic to depend on spontaneity as your guide.

The same is equally true for creativity.

as my partner says, #planningissexy

It’s safe to change the way your relate to creativity.

It doesn’t need to be an abstract mystic force that we are often led to believe - despite how truly mystic creative connection truly is.

This doubles as a change in the way we relate to ourselves,

we can know the creative part of ourselves intimately but we have to actually turn the lights, look at it, and invite the conversation.

Creativity can be nurtured like a system for tending to a garden.

2.Create everyday space for a check-in.

You can only be held accountable for what you are aware of.

So get keen on daylighting your creative tasks, current emotional states, and what is feeling real to you right now.

Take inventory on your creativity.

What am I actually working on today?

What is the 1 thing I can do to embrace that with full focus?

Where am I at with my daily goals?

AM i creating space each to day create an artifact - analogically or digitally ( i used to make a sculpture a day, but space does become an issue, even on a ranch)

How connected do i feel to my larger picture goals?

Am i even clear about what they are?

Avoidance is the fulfilment of everything you don’t want.

So if you avoid getting clear on creative tasks, goals, and organization then lean into those things.

3. Create an avoidance list.

I don’t operate super well with to-do lists, so I use avoidance lists instead.

I can fill a to-do list with things I’m not super jazzed on so I don’t end getting things done.

When i switch to a more energetic and emotional system, I immediately become more alive.

Here’s a list of the things I’m avoiding - they must be pretty important because why would I avoid something unless it’s the things that I actually need to be doing / feeling.

so list out all tasks and emotions that you are avoiding.

• taxes

• hitting send on that email

• writing out my goals for the quarter

• telling my client that the timeline needs to be pushed back

• reflecting on my discoveries from my last somatic therapy session

When I frame my to-do list like this, I attune more deeply into my emotional state-which simultaneously activates more of my creative state.

It also helps my put that little healthy dose of urgency on leaning into the things I’m resisting.

I find this to be incredibly helpful in my creative life because I get all f*cked up with processes.

I can’t keep a system straight in my mind, but my body?

My body has a great track record of telling me what needs to happen next, so the more i trust that natural system the more sh*t tends to happen a bit more naturally in my outer environment.

4. Clear Communication

I make a living through my creative work as an architectural designer + fabricator and now as a writer / consultant.

I’ve made it a practice to communicate clearly and regularly to all my clients.

On monday morning I send out progress emails, even if nothing has changed.

But the communication is actually more for me than my clients. It keeps me clear about where I am in time + space in relationship to my projects.

It keeps me honest and in integrity with myself, my word, and embracing circumstance openly.

I’ve learning the more I communicate effectively with myself and what is actually going on, the more effectively I keep my emotional and mental systems flowing in balance.

to be clear, by balance i don’t mean within my default emotions all the time.

What I mean is that I am embracing the flow of my inner state within my window of tolerance without needing to force it to be a different way.

The more I embrace these states, the more creative I naturally feel WHILE remaining productive.

5. Creative Productivity

This is a concept I’m expanding on from my buddy Sanjiv Spiral.

In his tangible thinking method, sanj outlines the spectrum between the extremes of creativity and productivity.

Traditional productivity must be quantifiably measured. How does it lead to $$$?

Traditional creativity is the opposite of that.

It’s exploring all the avenues of thought and intuition in the process of arriving at a choice.

Sanj has literally created an entire system to exploring creative ideas and has even outlined clear processes within each step.

This is creative productivity - the diagrammatical system within creativity that creates order in the ‘chaos’

Creative output can be wild and messy, but that doesn’t mean there is the absence of a system in place to guide the process.

Imagine creative wildness and directionality working in symbiotica.

That’s a powerful idea.

Get clear that you’re in deep creative expression, but map out the process of ‘summitting ideas’ as sanj puts it.

Well, I wrote heaps more than I thought.

The concepts are simple and ready to integrate, but not necesarrily easy.

We have heaps of conditioned patterns in the way.

But, creative systems may be exactly what you need, so I hope this helps y’all.

-yeehaw.