Empowering Your Creative Genius: How to Break Free from 7 Limiting Habits
Habits are the building blocks of creative life.
They’re also the strongest indicators of how successful we’ll become in nearly everything.
As creatives, we face two categories of habits. The first are wellness habits.
Sleep
Exercise
Nutrition
Boundaries
We also deal with creative habits. They dictate what kind of creative person we’ll become.
We strive to create amazing works of art, design, and construction. But some of our poorer habits may have limited our full creative potential until now.
Today, let’s take a look at the top 7 creative habits holding us back.
The Top 7 Limiting Creative Habits
First we need to identify the worst of the worst bad habits creatives face.
Maker Madness
Procrastination
Boundaryless
Digital Chains
Perfectionism
Overthinking
Multi-tasking
Each of these habits makes it more difficult to live, not only a balanced creative lifestyle, but a meaningful one.
1. Maker Madness
Something I’ve been guilty of myself is what I’d call “Maker Madness.”
As an Architect, a writer, and a designer, I just really want to make things all day. If I were given complete control over the process, I would simply make whatever I wanted and move on to the next thing.
This of course would lead nowhere.
I wouldn’t be able to make a living because no one would even know I created anything to begin with.
You’re a maker of things, but you need to be more than that.
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Solution:
Put your work out there more often than you feel comfortable with.
A book worth reading about this specific topic is “Show Your Work!” by Austin Kleon
2. Procrastination
We make deadlines. We watch time pass. Sometimes we work towards the deadline. Sometimes we wait until the last minute possible.
When that becomes a repeated occurrence though, you stress yourself out. You start making mistakes and rash decisions. Decisions made late in the game can have unforeseen consequences.
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Solution:
Set the deadline for a project. Then write out each step you need to make to complete the project and meet the deadline. Then set aside specific time to complete the project.
3. Boundaryless
Some creatives thrive on the chaos of creative life. They enjoy having career goals and personal goals that intermingle and blend together. But when there’s no boundary between everything that happens in your professional life and everything else in your personal life, that chaos can eventually lead to burnout.
You get bogged down by too many things. Going in one direction for too long can deeply affect another area of your life.
If you answer emails and calls and texts 24/7, you’ll never be able to separate yourself from your work. If you go straight to your inbox before you do anything each day, you’ll constantly be letting others make decisions over your time for you.
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Solution:
Build better boundaries.
Look at your schedule. Start to identify areas that you push back on your current life’s expectations.
A simple fix is to set a regular time to shut down and leave work. Do that every day for two weeks. Let people around you know what your schedule is. Then set your phone to do not disturb in your off hours. Take your work email off your phone.
4. Digital Chains
I’m amazed at how many emerging professionals today START with digital tools before any kind of note-taking, sketching, or otherwise.
It’s especially odd in a profession like architecture with such a robust history of analog practices.
We’re so connected to the digital world, that we can’t see the benefits of shutting down.
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Solution:
Incorporate tactile analog practices into your day. Start with pen and paper first.
A friend of mine once challenged another to creating a specific building detail. The first friend used a felt tip marker and paper. The other friend used digital drafting (AutoCAD specifically). The first friend was done in about 10 minutes. The second friend was done in about half an hour. Did the results look different? Sure. But the first friend accurately communicated the same exact condition without any loss of information.
5. Perfectionism
There’s no such thing as perfect. But it’s hard to tell a creative that.
We toil over every last detail in the pursuit of perfect. We waste so much time searching for perfect that we can’t always see how done the project we’re working already is.
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Solution:
Let go of perfect and be clear about what “done” really looks like. Could the task you’re working on be done 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 days sooner?
Take the lessons you’ve learned from one project and use them on another. Then another. And another after that. While quality is important, it’s not nearly as important as completing the project well and moving to the next one.
Time is short. Get more done and keep going so you can share your creativity even more.
6. Overthinking
A sibling to perfectionism is overthinking. Overthinking for creatives though can take many forms. Sometimes we don’t think our work is good enough. Sometimes we can’t get started producing work until we’ve researched every last piece of the internet.
Overthinking sends us in circles and simply gives us more anxiety than it’s worth.
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Solution:
Let go of expectations that don’t serve you.
It’s easy to say and difficult to practice. But letting go of expectations, especially of others, will set your creative work free.
7. Multi-tasking
Some creatives might tell you that they’re excellent at multi-tasking. They’d be wrong. In fact, science has proven that many times over.
There’s no such thing as “Multi-Tasking.” What people believe is multi-tasking is actually juggling a lot of different things poorly.
The human mind is built for mono-tasking. Mono-tasking is when you do one thing at a time. People misjudge their monotasking for multitasking because of quantity.
What they don’t realize is that each time they switch between a task or get interrupted, it can take 5-20 minutes (or more) to refocus.
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Solution:
Time block. Rather than try to answer emails, then draw a sketch, then call a consultant, batch similar activities together for a set amount of time each day.
For me, I like to put as many creative-centric design problems in front of me during the early hours of the morning. I can focus on one creative problem. Then move to the next. And so on.
I leave administrative tasks such as email for the second half of the day after I’ve spent the higher quality energy earlier in the day.
Final Thoughts
Creative Pros have the challenging task of managing not only basic life habits for wellness, but also ones that affect our creative process directly.
Flipping any one of these bad habits into good ones will radically increase your chances of creative success.
By addressing them head on, we take back control of the future of our creative lives.
TL; DR
Habits strongly influence our creative lives
Creative Pros deal with wellness and creative habits
Bad habits should be the first things to change
Replace bad habits with better ones
Top 7 bad creative habits
Maker Madness
Procrastination
Boundaryless
Digital Chains
Perfectionism
Overthinking
Multitasking
Quote of the Week
Motivation for the days ahead of you.
“One bad habit often spoils a dozen good ones.”
— Napoleon Hill
That's all for now.
Stay creative, my friends—and have a great week!
