But busyness has a way of stealing creativity from you. Generative work, like art and writing, requires long periods of nothingness: it’s only in that wide empty space that ideas emerge. Long runs, hot showers, commutes that don’t involve harried Slack messages and listening to podcasts at 2x speed. Sitting at the edge of a dock, listening to the ocean breathe. Novels that make you daydream.
Saved by Ben Cuan and
To come up with new ideas, you have to have space to be messy, to procrastinate, and to let your mind wander and free-associate. But there needs to be a balance. You eventually need to channel it into something concrete, or you won’t produce anything.
from Jon Rafman and Dasha Nekrasova on the Horror We Call Life by Dasha Nekrasova
Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom. The best ideas come to us when we stop actively trying to coax the muse into manifesting and let the fragments of experience float around our unconscious mind in order to click i
... See morein her 1938 classic, If You Want to Write, Brenda Ueland declares aimless attention essential to good work and deep thought: So you see the imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering. These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas… bu
... See more