He felt 'creatively dead', then harnessed the power of boredom
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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.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve seen this happen so many times in my career it’s not even funny.
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.
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.
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?
From my reading, it seemed like literally writing pages was absolutely essential, regardless if writing is your preferred medium or not.
>what stimulates your creativity?
Nothing I've been able to find yet. That's why I'm willing to try weird new age-y books mentioned on HN.
The artist dates were harder to incorporate at first but I think I got the hang of it.
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'm curious to hear more about your experiences.
> 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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
I think what you say is right, too. There's something special in that last push, and there's a sense of loss afterwards.
But then you get down to earth and start over. Best of luck with your current or next project!
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.
It's hard to have your own thoughts when the entire world is constantly inputting its own in your psyche.
After long periods of silence, you start emptying and the mind fills the void. Ideas come in.
With practice, it will stop filling the void. But this isn't necessary if all you want is producing new ideas.
Even being bored is not necessary, but we are so not used to less input that we easily get bored.
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.
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 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.
Does anyone else feel this way, or is it just me?
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.
Perhaps the irritation comes from having seen enough media that you've started to see this meta-level pattern, which is stale and eternal.
[Snarky overused The Matrix movie reference goes here.]
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.
If I find myself in agreement with a majority of people, I usually don't have a long distance to travel to work out where I've gone wrong.
- Inverting an existing idea
- Excessively applying mechanistic explanations to human problems (see Huberman and dopamine)
To me it's really obvious, but I'm sure there's a constant supply of new buyers who don't know any better.
Media: A is the shit, everyone do A!
Media few years later: B is best, B B B!
Media even more later: C, never forget C!
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.