> I would set everything else aside. I wouldn't look at my emails. I wouldn't have any meetings. I wouldn't do anything for the podcast. Just music. It allowed some space for my brain to get bored.
I feel creatively dead, but mostly only at work. Never have enough time/space to let things just settle down, it seems like.
This might be why I still resist management stuff: I dislike accepting responsibility for the problems of the org because I know they will eat up more time and energy than any accompanying pay increase. And then I get resentful because I'm supposed to be the one holding things together.
My 2c—I went ahead and took the pay increase and added responsibility, then used it as an excuse to only do the most impactful thing possible at any given time. Leads to telling people “no” a lot, but also less stress.
I thought I must have written that myself in some kind of fugue state. I'm in the same boat.
What I find strange about it, is that I'm the opposite outside of work. Life life is just great, I'm improving at sports and learning new things in my side projects.
But at work I feel like I've got writers block. Any progress is super hard earned.
I’m jealous as hell. I can only improve when given a list of tasks and a carrot/stick. Tried for decades to figure out how to self impose and have not had luck yet!
This may dampen my claims a little, but I roller skate (inline) and play tennis. And I wouldn't say I'm great at either, so maybe it's just because there's a lot of clear air above me that I'm able to make noticeable improvements.
However, I've needed a target in order to make those improvements. For roller skating it was skating backwards, and for tennis it was changing (correcting) my forehand grip.
With tennis it's been 12+ months of inconsistent hitting (including losing a grand final game 0-9 playing almost the worst tennis of my life) before I really started consistently being "better". There was a valley separating where I was from where I wanted to be, the depths of which had to be trudged through.
With inlines it was one of those situations where it feels like no progress is being made for a long time and then it all clicks quite suddenly. It took me about 18 months to go from tentatively rolling backwards after pushing off from the wall to can satisfactorily speed skate backwards.
Gotta have a target, gotta commit to crossing the valley.
Welcome to the rat race. Just wait until you get the responsibilities of a manager anyway without the pay increase! Might as well fight for that title...
Work is what you make of it, you can definitely prove yourself to be competent and valuable while not becoming critical. Just be respected enough to get your yearly raise/bonus, survive layoffs and get future referrals and recommendations. Not super complicated really.
Is it really so inevitable? I sure hope not. Unless I get a meaningful amount of real autonomy, I am not cut out for management. Fortunately, any vague promises I've ever been given for more managerial roles have not actually materialized. I want to say no if they ever do.
It's not, at least not from my experience, but you have to be vocal about what you want.
I was offered a managerial position multiple times and declined it every time saying that it would be a loss for both myself and the company. I'm way more useful in an individual contributor role and a better way to leverage my experience would be to be a cross-team IC and help on the more demanding projects/initiatives.
Eventually, after being vocal about it for a while and actively helping other teams with parts of the system they didn't have experience with, that's what I got. The bad part is that most challenging work often ends up in my lap. The good part is that most challenging work ends up in my lap.
Eeh, at some point, a nepotic Manager will move resources around in a way that an IC (should be manager) will be banging head on the railing with a question why am I not calling the shots.
Unless this kind of dysfunctional management style burns you out. The you’re dying a little every day at work and don’t have the energy or ability to look for other work.
I’ve seen this happen so many times in my career it’s not even funny.
A colleague of mine is stuck in this, tried to fight it all his life. Then they fired half the org and expected the survivors to self manage in the it ruins without the knowledge of the fired predecessors. And so he is in meetings every day as they manage the recovering. Hardly gets to code..
1. Not wasting your energy on irrelevant things, that is temperance. Everyone knows what those things are. It seems obvious that without this inner energy, you can't turn any of the creative ideas into reality. At most you'd be a passive observer of those ideas.
2. Not cluttering your mind with rubbish. This is poetically called the inner peace, and it's often confused with boredom. It's not necessary to retreat into a cabin in the mountains, as the inner peace comes from within. Once that state is reached, you can start seeing reflections of the stars in the sky - the higher ideas that inspire creativity.
Creativity, in essense, is the need to express yourself. It's the reason behind the desire to live or any existence at all. Even savages are driven by this need, they just find different outlets for self expression. It's also what gives such power to the need for pro-creation.
> I think it means that you get to a place where you feel comfortable being vulnerable with someone else. It's sort of a shared environment that gets created between both people, where everyone involved in the conversation can say, yeah, I'm going to let down my guard. I'm going to reveal something true about myself
This would be exceedingly difficult for me to do, especially with someone I just met. I pretty much don't do it with anyone, to be honest. Seems like there are only downsides, especially in the age of social media where someone says something that is is then quoted out of context and follows you forever. Also why I'm not on social media.
There is tremendous upside to intimacy (which I admittedly struggle with too). By closing yourself off, you foreclose the possibility of deep relationships in which you are truly seem for the whole person you are. We are all deeply flawed and that is almost paradoxically what makes lovable. It is wise to protect yourself but the walks we build to protect ourselves become a prison.
I recently stumbled upon "Artists Way a Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity" and really resonate with a practice it puts forward: "morning pages" and "artist dates." The exact nomenclature isn't important, but the idea of a "signal and response" pattern is, in my opinion, spot on. Like meditation, it's one of those things that sounds far fetched but that you can try for yourself -- and the results will speak for themselves.
I saw another post here about this book a few months ago and gave it a shot. I lasted about four weeks before giving up on it. I found the process of writing morning pages to be thoroughly unpleasant and it did nothing to spark any creativity in me. I also found the premise of 'someone in your past told you not to be creative' pretty hard to relate to.
Similar to meditation, really. My experience seems at odds with everyone else and I'm clearly the weirdo for not getting anything out of it.
Meditation is a good analogy. I haven't found sitting and meditating for 15-30 minutes especially mind-expanding. Listening to music and walking my dogs, however, sometimes takes me somewhere expansive. That is to say, I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all rule here. More like we should experiment with ourselves and our patterns, and that we can use the signs left behind by fellow travelers as a cue to look more closely in certain areas.
With all that said, 1) I don't think it's important to literally write "morning pages" (nor does Ms. Cameron, in my reading). It's important to find the correct medium _for you_ that manifests ideas in the world. 2) I think the signal-response pattern _is important_. It's not enough to put thoughts/feelings/whatever into the world. You need some means for things to return to you.
Flip it around though, as a fellow weirdo -- what stimulates your creativity?
I was fortunate to stumble upon the practice by accident. I was journaling just because, and my two dogs ensure I have plenty of solitary walks through nature. It really is incredibly important to have that time, and to maintain a curious, open mind.
Likely there are other ingredients. Some sort of catalyst may be needed for the process to get into gear. (Full disclosure, I'm still partway through the book so perhaps Ms. Cameron discloses them, but I stand by signal-response practice from direct experience.)
To hazard a guess, I would say joy/wonder may that catalyst. Or rather, our sense of wonder will lead us to joy which triggers the necessary inner reaction.
I too had a journey with journaling already, but the very specific and clear parameters of the morning pages really made it click. I still actually journal on my laptop, but the purpose of journaling has become clearer. The morning pages are not intended to be read, but the journal is.
> Likely there are other ingredients. Some sort of catalyst may be needed for the process to get into gear.
Are you talking about the process outlined by the whole book and her philosophy, or something else? If so I think it's just life. If I had picked up this book 10 years ago I would not have been able to read past all the allusions to god. I still reject that concept, but I'm a lot more spiritual and I'm able to translate into my own beliefs or look past it when it gets a bit too heavy.
I think it's hard to start from absolute 0 and pick up this book and follow through. I was already on the path of nurturing my inner artists and general self discovery and this book reached me through a dear friend and it was exactly what I wanted.
What week are you on? I had an interesting 4th week because I'm a heavy reader, and I decided to cut off social media too.
Thanks for sharing, that's interesting to read. I've just finished the third chapter -- but I'm really just reading through at this point, not following the course. I've just come out of a long creative project, so I'm grazing. I agree with you that the book can be off putting if you aren't in the right frame of mind. I, too, would have scoffed reading it in the past.
The catalyst comment was more my ruminating about the creative process. Like I said, I think the signal-response element is critical, but perhaps not sufficient. Could you spend years in that pattern and not experience any benefits? If so, what's the missing ingredient? I wonder...
> If so, what's the missing ingredient? I wonder...
I see what you mean, I think personally that ingredient is belief in a higher purpose, in the sense that my creative act is not just a capricious enjoyment on my part, or even a key component of my mental health, but that it can serve a function for other people and that that is the opposite of being selfish.
I'm still coming to terms with this idea.
I'm curious about your project if you don't mind sharing. I had a moment like that a few months ago and this book reached me after that. And FWIW my friend mentioned she re-reads the book and does the exercises every year, I can see myself doing that, and it's made it easier to not berate myself for not doing all of the exercises.
That's an interesting theory and certainly meshes well with the book's thesis!
My project was a video game I co-created called "You Will Die Here Tonight." After many years, we finally shipped! I find there's something special about actually finishing work. That growth occurs up in the thin air at the summit, if you catch my drift.
For me there's something akin to "postpartum depression" too, an achievement but an emptiness too. The summit for me is right when about to finish, not when it's released.
Congrats on the game, I know games are a lot of hard work! I love resident evil, might give it a go if it runs on linux/proton.
"HIRWAY: ...Just music. It allowed some space for my brain to get bored. Another thing that I learned was how much boredom was, like, an essential part of creativity. Maybe boredom is too strong of a word for it, but it's something like..." mindfulness.
I remember hearing Sam Harris (I think) say something to the effect of 'once you reach some stage/awareness of mindfulness, you can never be truly bored.' Like, if you're bored, you're not paying attention. That's stuck with me.
Same. I've had a lot of game design ideas while driving on the road.
Doesn't work for me if I have music with lyrics on, though. Sometimes podcasts work, because something they say might spark an idea, but songs with lyrics don't work at all.
I started doing Song Exploder as a kind of distraction, you know, a little side hobby idea that could also be a way to hopefully give myself a day job in between tours and making records and things like that.
It might even be the opposite of "boredom" but I think this is pretty common and a neat technique if you're feeling "blocked" in your pursuits: do something that pushes your buttons but still uses other aspects of your knowledge and skills, and you can find another way through.
I might be suffering from imposter syndrome, but I feel like I'm not the right audience for "taking advantage of boredom".
I feel people who benefit from this "diffuse state" are those who already have a base level of competence in their field or challenging problems they're trying to solve, and so boredom gives their brain an opportunity to express creativity in that domain.
For me, my brain is just "quiet" when bored. It doesn't come up with "novel ways to solve problem X", or "a brand new idea". When it is at all noisy, it is mostly regurgitation of thoughts I've already had before, replays of conversations from the past week, mundane things like that.
I think this is a learnt skill. If you're not constantly engaging with new material, asking questions on what you're reading, learning with intent, then your brain isn't going to evolve from this baseline on its own randomly.
I say this as someone trying to move the needle towards this same thing.
Some days I am suprised at my motivation to learn new things, and questions I ask / relationships I form - much more so when i've been putting in time deliberarely practicing how I learn each day.
For me it depends on the projects I worked on intensly. After months of delivery, I sometimes stumble upon some example that might trigger an idea later on when I can't fall asleep that gives me new insights of some of those projects.
Make time and space to be alone with your thoughts until you are inspired to return to productivity. Or something like that. For me. Instead of music making (which I would do forever if you let me) it’s going out hiking or backpacking and completely disconnecting from tech where I can explore my thoughts and think about the inspirational things that come to mind.
Meta: Why are there fads like this? Like do people not see this? Everyone's suddenly so interested in how great boredom is, before this it was some other crap, then something else. I don't have a point but I just find it mildly irritating for some reason. It does make sense to collectively research things and exchange ideas but at the same time there's something off about it when it comes to mass media, like it's lazy or something.
People have been interested in intentionally inducing boredom for literally hundreds of thousands of years (under the name "meditation"), so I think it is safe to say it is not a fad by now.
Meditation is more about learning to focus attention on boring things and discovering that the effort itself is rewarding. It's a lame materialistic description, but it's much closer to the truth. Doing gym stuff is a good analogy: moving weights around and to their original position looks silly to an outsider, but that's because the outsiders try to judge with their minds what can only be understood thru direct experience.
Meditation was originally used by monks to literally kill the ego/mind. It has nothing to with boredom and can become downright dangerous if practiced in excess - just look up dangers of meditation.
Herd mentality. We all have it to some extent, even when actively trying to suppress it (me for example). It made human society what it is, and most probably was a great survival advantage early on.
Now it makes masses susceptible to populists, but wasn't it always the case? Just that masses before were even more meaningless and powerless without things like voting rights.
It's like all trends. Think about fashion. Something new stands out because it's novel. Then it's everywhere because people are seeking it out first to be contrarian or seeking an edge, and then to feel safe. Then something new stands out, and it all repeats.
We know A, B and C are useful. Media just likes to copy each other so when one writes that one of those are good others wants to write the same thing so you see:
It’s even more hilarious when the media’s “source” turns out to be a 20 year old “life coach” with little formal training or other unique circumstance.
I didn’t have time to read the entire article, so forgive me if I blatantly state what it said.
But, isn’t “being bored” leading to enhanced productivity deeply rooted in neuroscience, particularly with regards to dopamine and the reward centers of the brain?
Dopamine is incredibly powerful when understood properly. It can both be the reason you can’t seem to start, and also the thing that allows you to accomplish your goals. Your brain uses dopamine to get you to do more stuff that’s “good for you.”
The problem is, everything in our lives today is engineered to release dopamine, so we get “rewarded” for doing nothing.
By being bored, you dilute yourself down to either doing nothing, or doing the thing you’ve been putting off. It doesn’t take long before the thing starts looking appealing, and you get rewarded for doing it.
This is essentially what people experience when they do a “dopamine fast,” which isn’t really a thing at all, it’s more of a fast from stuff that isn’t productive. It simply works because we really seem to have a dopamine limit within a short time period, where, once reached, things that used to be enjoyable simply aren’t anymore.
Same goes for creativity, motivation, etc. Just stepping away from all the stimulation brings those baseline levels back down and allows you to get excited about doing stuff again, even if it’s not insanely fun.
I feel creatively dead, but mostly only at work. Never have enough time/space to let things just settle down, it seems like.
This might be why I still resist management stuff: I dislike accepting responsibility for the problems of the org because I know they will eat up more time and energy than any accompanying pay increase. And then I get resentful because I'm supposed to be the one holding things together.