Taking Time to be Creative
Monday, June 7, 2010 at 10:02AM This weekend I had the unusual opportunity to have the house to myself for an entire 24 hours. No kids running in and out of my studio, no students, just a quiet rain falling outside.
As I settled into a night of working on a new song I've been writing for over a month I began to realize that the process of being creative may not be built exclusively on the time in the studio, some of it must be spent getting your mind and heart in the right place.
Before I actually sat down and started working I took time to finish a book, take a shower, relax into a pot of green tea and sit out back for a few minutes to watch the birds flit about on my back porch. When I finally hit record, I was relaxed and had an empty mind. I spent the next six hours working straight and focused on my new track, what a luxury!
The Argument against multitasking
There are many distractions that can derail a creative thought. Cell phones, texts, Facebook, kids, even personal hygiene can all take us from the task of being creative. There is growing evidence that the brain is only able to process two tasks at a time. In this NPR article the argument is made that multitasking divides the brain. The scientists in the article point to an experiment that shows the brain "can't maintain more than two tasks" at a time without pushing something out. If I'm writing my song and in my flow and suddenly my kid comes into the room and then I get a text on my phone...its over. I don't need a neuro-scientist to tell me this, it happens every freakin' day!
It takes four hours to get one hour of work done
The mental preparation it takes to get into your flow may be obvious to some people, However with modern diversions of email, Facebook, Twitter, texting, not to mention family responsibilities, it is easy to lose that singular focus and allow ourselves to get distracted. The result is a lot of small movements in many directions which rarely move us along our creative path.
In the end it really takes a concerted clearing of the mind to get into the space to be creative, a process that is not always possible to turn on or off at will. We've all had those moments when we had an amazing intuitive thought that we neglected. When we returned to it later in the day, its gone and we spend the rest of the day searching our minds to find it.
These days, my goal is to figure out how much time I have to focus creatively and then push some time out in front to clear my mind, open pathways, and turn off my email, cell phone, and Facebook!
As always, I love to hear your thoughts on creativity and practice.
Reader Comments (4)
I love it man. It seems I find myself looking for a "quick fix" especially in the realms of composition or just creatively accessing ideas, and this is not always possible. However, time and time again I am reminded of how much a little 'quiet time' can accomplish. The best part about quietness, when done correctly is that it proves that all endeavors in your life are intertwined because you may have stilled your mind to get some music done, but you now find you have more tolerance for your loved ones or other projects your working on.
Great stuff Ben!
Hey Ben,
You're so right. I find my mind so scattered by the constant flow of information. I wonder where my creativity goes, but I'm beginning to believe that it's like my cat hiding under the bed until the noise dies down. When I studied watercolors, I read a book on zen ink paintings. The process to "paint" the painting happens in about 20 seconds. you can imagine the brush getting dipped in the ink, then flowing on the paper in just the right form. However, the artist spends a couple of hours meditating, framing the idea, the scene, the process of the brush before even mixing the ink. The work exists in the artist's mind before starting to paint. Sound proofing for the mind is what we need.
Right on Ben. In David Lynch's book he says something along those lines of getting only an hours worth of painting done in four. You can scratch the surface in that first hour, but the real stuff is buried as you know.
Thanks for sharin with us
-sk-
Right on Phil, Sean, and Jake, this is the fabric life is made of -talking and figuring out creativity -I believe this is the key to understanding our modern relationship to evolution (which is real), thanks for putting in your word!
B