Creativity Affirmations

Not good enough. Already done. Not real work. No time for this today. Creative stuckness is usually made of verdicts like these, arriving before the idea has even finished forming; an actual shortage of ideas is rare. These lines answer the verdict, not the idea. I am allowed to make bad work has nothing to do with lowering your standards. It clears out the judge who shows up before the first sentence is written, so the sentence gets a chance to exist.

There’s good research behind this. In one study, people under stress who first affirmed something that mattered to them solved insight problems, the kind that need a mental leap rather than persistence, better than people who hadn’t. Affirmation seemed to free up the mental flexibility creative work runs on, especially when stress or self-doubt is what’s narrowing it. That’s why the lines here talk about permission and process rather than talent. Making things imperfectly is still making things works in the same spirit. It clears enough pressure out of the way that an idea gets a fair chance to surface, and on a stuck day that is often all it takes to begin.

The same permission covers comparison, which is often where the verdict starts. I don’t need to measure my work against anyone else’s doesn’t pretend other people’s work isn’t there. It keeps their starting point from standing in for a judgment on yours.

Source: Creswell et al., Self-affirmation improves problem-solving under stress (PLoS ONE, 2013).

Use the line as a way in, not a warm-up you do off to the side. Read it, then do the smallest possible version of starting: one sentence, one rough line, one bad sketch. I can start the work first and let it catch up to me is meant to be followed by beginning, not by more thinking about beginning.

Keep the line closest to the moment you stall, which for most people is right before showing anyone the first messy version, themselves included. I am allowed to make things that only I understand or only I enjoy is for that moment.

Let the same line cover very different kinds of making: a journal entry, a chord progression, a shelf you’re finally building. The lines don’t specialize by medium, because the block they answer doesn’t either. Starting is starting, whatever the material.

Keep the bar for a single session very low: ten minutes, one page, no plan for what happens after. I create with the time and tools I actually have helps on the days when waiting for better conditions is the real procrastination.

The blank first line, whether that’s a page, a canvas, or an empty document, when starting seems to need a better idea than the one you have. I don’t need the perfect idea to begin belongs to that exact minute.

The moment right after finishing something rough, when the instinct is to hide it rather than let it exist. The mess is where the good stuff hides answers that instinct, not the mess itself.

The project you can’t decide whether to finish or set aside. I don’t have to finish everything I start takes the guilt out of that decision either way, so the choice can be about the work instead of about proving something.

The long stretch with no visible progress, the weeks when the practice feels like nothing is adding up. These lines remind you that the stretch is still part of the work, and a normal part of it. A home-screen widget can keep one in view on the low days without turning the practice into homework.