Conscious Creative Action
There's a difference between creating for fun, creating for intention and then there’s a mashup of both.
In job settings we are often creating for intention. We often struggle with mind blocks and feel held back by restrictions, quotas and expectations.
In our hobbies we have the freedom to create purely for fun. We are free to dream, explore new ideas and create without abandon.
So what do we do when both of these methods of creativity cross paths?
Recently I had the idea to create a podcast. Last year I started Merge and it ran for 9 episodes- a season. I pretty much intended it to be a stand alone project, one, maybe two seasons. After the first season I planned a second one but then Covid and pregnancy happened and I decided it wasn't worth my precious energy anymore. I was satisfied with what took place and I moved on.
This go around though it is coming not from a place of work, but from a place of pure desire to simply create. I want to express myself and if more comes out of it, fantastic.
More on that soon as I'm still smoothing out the details before the February release, but I'm excited.
From this experience I've reignited something in me. An aspect of the creative process that I really hadn't tapped into in awhile.
The concept of taking conscious creative action.
It's having the self awareness to know which ideas to run with and which to take a pause on.
It's choosing to move forward with focus and put your brain into an intentional state of creativity.
So, why is this important?
Well as we've talked about quite a few times before this, creatives frequently burn out because we take on too much. Whether that is in quantity of projects or through the quality of just a few projects. We either take on far too much or we hold ourselves to impossible standards and give up.
It's easy to get excited about an idea and hype it up but never do anything about it.
The key, in my experience to intentional, conscious movement, is to never spend more time talking about what you're going to do than you do actually working on it. In fact, limit conversations about it as much as possible.
Once you start to say it out loud to other people, over and over again, you get the high of feeling like you've done it and by the time it comes around to actually do the work, the excitement has faded and you move on to your next big idea.
That's why you often see genuinely successful people keeping their heads down and only coming up to see the results of their hard work.
Now this doesn't mean that you can't gauge interest of a product, concept or an idea. You can do that vaguely and with intention.
You can also develop your thoughts verbally with others, but you must be intentional. Choose carefully who you discuss your ideas with. You want supportive individuals who understand you and your lifestyle but who won't sugar coat the truth.
So what does it look like to take conscious creative action?
What do you need to do?
Ask yourself questions. Lots of questions.
Run through the logistics of money, time, worth, audience, etc.
Create mini samples of the idea to know if you even jive with the process and the outcome.
Consider your desired impact and your audience.
Give yourself time to freely create but set goals beforehand so that you don't create yourself right out of that project.
Give yourself grace and humility to know when a project is supposed to simply stay an idea.
If you're supposed to move forward, work out the details, have it ready, THEN start pitching and advertising and releasing.
Conscious creative action is where the incredible creative process inside of you meets strategy and intentional spending of your resources and most importantly, time.
So whatever you've been dreaming up, I encourage you, life's too short to keep it in your head or to yourself. Play with the idea of taking it out of the box and just give it a shot. You truly never know until you try.