A couple weeks ago my friend Huan and I were talking about content creation and how to generate ideas for creative endeavors. We talked about several common methods such as journalizing, drawing inspiration from other creative works, and pouring your ideas onto paper until inspiration strikes.
While those are effective strategies in themselves, they’re also common. I’d like to use this post to instead discuss the simple creativity strategy people aren’t talking about. Going out and socializing every single day.
Writers, artists, musicians, etc. are notorious for being introverts. Whether that’s because they’re naturally introverts and they use art to express themselves, or because the time consuming nature of their art forces them to introversion is irrelevant.
The truth is you can’t spend the rest of your life in isolation if you want to be producing work to the best of your ability. Here’s why.
Isolation Causes Stress
We’re human beings and we become stressed when we spend too much time alone. Even if you’re doing things you find fulfilling such as reading, writing, etc. you still need some level of human contact in your life. Without it you’re going to be driven to literal insanity.
You don’t have to go to parties every night, but because we have a natural need to be loved and understood you do have to spend time with people you care about regularly.
You can try to get around this all you want in an effort to be “more productive,” but if you fail to fulfill these needs your stress levels are going to go through the roof and you’ll find yourself trying to escape from reality as a coping method to manage your emotions.
We’ve all heard of the depressed artist so this might seem reasonable to you. Sacrifice is necessary for success right? Yes, and no. Hard work and dedication are required to produce great work, but sacrificing your health in the form of stress isn’t.
The best artist is actually the relaxed one as stress inhibits creativity, and causes electromagnetic “brown outs” in the brain.
The Death Of The Daily Routine
In addition to helping your brain function properly there’s also another even more important reason socializing increases your potential to create. It gets you out of your daily routine.
Aside from going out my days are EXTREMELY routine, and habitual. I wake up, write, lift, read, juggle, etc. This is good because it allows me to optimize an effective daily routine, and consistently do the things that are important to me, but there’s also a problem with it.
If I go several days without going out I take in the exact same input every single day. I still enjoy the things I do, but my life becomes really predictable and mundane.
Every time I go out, however, it’s an exciting, novel adventure. My brain is able to use these unique experiences to make new connections, thus sparking creativity and motivation to share new insights.
Every time I’ve gotten stuck with writer’s block it’s because I’d been spending too much time by myself, and every time I’ve socialized with writer’s block it’s disappeared by the next day.
Even if you consider yourself an introvert I recommend going out both to spark creativity, and just to enjoy life. After all, you only get one so you might as well make the most of it.
[grwebform url=”http://app.getresponse.com/view_webform.js?wid=12610802&u=BS1kr” css=”on” center=”off” center_margin=”200″/]
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.