Why You're Not Doing Creative Work

In creative work there are two phases: exploration and execution. In the exploration phase, you don’t know what the thing is going to be, you don’t have all of the information or ideas you want to have, you don’t even know if what you’re thinking about is important, and any little breeze in the wrong direction might blow you off course. In the exec

If all you had to do was the execution phase of creative work, you’d be able to do it between meetings no problem. But the truly hard, terrible, nasty truth is that you need to do the exploration phase in order to get to the execution phase.

In the exploration phase, everything is different. There’s a non-linear relationship between time and work output. You’re not really sure what you’re making or whether it will be good. It’s harder to see the thing in your mind.

In the execution phase there is a linear relationship between time and work output. The more time you put in, generally, the more work you’ll be able to get done. In the execution phase it’s also easier to put in the time.

The Neuroscience of Value

Every goal you have gets assigned a value by your brain. It’s done by a piece of the brain called the orbitofrontal cortex or OFC. Your OFC figures out what kinds of rewards you’re likely to get by achieving a goal. It’s also highly connected to the amygdala (the fear circuit in your brain) which means it’s responsible for

The reason it’s hard to do creative work in the exploration phase is that it’s so uncertain that there aren’t many perceived rewards for accomplishing the goal, there’s little punishment in not accomplishing it, and there is a higher perceived value to pursuing other unrelated activities.

This gives us a roadmap to doing more creative work. What we need to do is, in the exploration phase, raise the perceived value of doing the work, raise the perceived costs of not doing the work, and lower the perceived value of doing other things.

Do it right when you wake up. This goes along with reducing or eliminating distractions. When you wake up your brain is reset, and there won’t usually be as many other pressing sources of reward present. If you can reserve time in the morning to do your creative work you may have an easier time staying focused.