When You Can't Do, Learn
There are days that I am on fire. The creative juices are flowing like Niagara Falls. I find myself at an ideal state of mind. Inspiration is constantly pouring into my head. Suddenly I am writing content for a book I haven't touched in a long time, I finish editing a short film that has been on my shelf for months, etc. The way my creativity works, I often need to feel that jolt of inspiration in order to progress with my work. This can be very bad when I find myself uninspired. At those times very little gets produced and I take myself on a field trip of guilt and self-resentment. Even when I do feel inspired, a simple and short interruption can completely disrupt my flow.
Being creative and constantly producing is not an easy thing. Many times you will naturally find yourself drained. This is normal, we are humans after all. When I feel uninspired and unwilling to sit down and try to squeeze blood from a stone, I instead move on to learning.
Switching gears in your brain by doing something constructive helps the creative side rest and recharge its energy while you're not wasting time numbing your mind. Personally, I am a big fan of self-improvement books and thanks to audio books I can binge on it like it's Netflix. I just love the idea of tapping into someone else's experiences to add value to my life, reflect on my actions, and attempt to re-wire my subconscious to take better action in the future.
So say I had an amazingly inspired Monday. The words are spilling out of me, I just can't put the pencil down. Then comes Tuesday and I have a sudden mood swing. I have no inspiration and for whichever reason I feel down in the dumps. If I do nothing and allow myself to stay in this state I am likely to propagate this into Wednesday, Thursday, maybe the whole week. That feeling will likely grow as I tune in more and more to it and allow it to consume me. By switching to learning, even though I am not producing I still feel like I am doing something of value. And it doesn't have to be listening to self-improvement audio books, exercising can cause the same effect, or something else you give value to. The point is to do something that switches gears but also doesn't make you feel like you've been wasting your time.
Then, like magic, the following or a couple of days later I'm on fire once again. I managed to maintain the momentum of accomplishment without forcing myself to create without inspiration, which would likely result in something not so great. Your brain, much like the rest of your body, needs proper nourishment and rest in order to perform at its best.
Hope you were able to get some value out of this. If you did and know of someone else that can also get value, I would love for you to share it with them.
Thank you for reading,
Let's create!
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