Cultivating Creativity in the Mundane

Creativity is essential to building a good life. Everything we see, touch, and enjoy today was merely a creative idea before it existed. My creativity is strongest when I allow myself to be still, and maybe even a little bored. Finding small pockets of stillness and solitude in our days is becoming increasingly challenging. Boredom is a lost art, and busy is a badge many of us wear with honor. We expect to be stimulated and entertained at all times and consider any intermission as something that needs to be filled. What if we challenged our view of stillness? Not as something to avoid and fill but as a moment to allow our mind to align with our spirit and body. White space is creativity’s playground of possibility. Our stories are the most important creative project we’ll ever be assigned. We can foster and optimize creativity when we prime, prompt, and protect that playground. 

Prime

Have you ever decided to hop on Pinterest or YouTube when short on inspiration? I’ve been there. We’ll go down the rabbit hole of entertaining distractions from real work. If we keep shoveling content into our minds without taking time to fast or dump it, it’s bound to get a little backed up and clogged. Creativity is meant to flow. It’s challenging to create if we never take a break from consumption.

Do you ever wonder why we have great ideas while showering, blow-drying our hair, or trying to sleep? These might be the few moments we give our minds time and space to think uninterrupted. As a passionate learner, I’m guilty of bingeing books and podcasts. When I started writing, I realized I struggled with developing an idea deeply enough to merit sharing. My morning shower was one of the few times in my days that I cultivated ideas long enough for them to grow into substantial concepts. Once I made the connection that this was one of the few times in my day I didn’t have some form of audio playing in the background, I immediately tested it by spending the first part of each morning fasting from content. Have you ever walked on the treadmill with no entertainment for thirty minutes? It felt like an eternity the first time. But I was committed, so on day 2, I repeated the challenge. Sure enough, my mind realized it had the floor. It began developing so many creative ideas that I had difficulty choosing what I’d work on next. I highly recommend a content fast for anyone looking to prime their creativity. Here are a few great methods: 

Fueling Creativity through Fasting from Content:

• Digital Sabbath: select one day each week to fast from screens/digital devices/tech
• Digital Sunrise & Sunset: abstain from screens 30-90 minutes before bedtime or after waking (your sleep will also improve as you honor your natural circadian rhythm by avoiding artificial blue light from screens)
• Digital Dock: reduce accessibility by storing your devices until you are ready to use them (proactive vs. reactive)
  • Ex: Store your phone in a drawer while working, eating, connecting, etc. 
  • Ex: Unplug your TV and store the remote away until you’re ready to watch it
  • Ex: Shut down your laptop at the end of the workday and store it in your office  

Prompt

Sometimes creativity needs to be prompted. I’ve learned a few strategies that help me enter a creative mindset. For starters, it’s helpful to have a set time and space so creativity knows how to find us. Having the discipline to consistently engage in creative work as part of our daily routines allows us to make creativity a habit. As a writer, I sit down at 7 AM and write 6 days a week whether I feel creative or not. In this boring execution of redundancy, I find my creative spark to write. If we only start when we feel creative, we’ll never begin. Before I begin my creative work, I start my workday with a little ritual. I take 4 centering breaths, dedicate my work to my Creator, and start my favorite pop classical playlist. There’s nothing magical about this ritual, but it tells my spirit, mind, and body that it’s time to focus on what’s important now, my work as a creator. 

Sparking Creativity through Mundane Rituals: 

• Designate a space to work. Schedule a time block to work. 
• Plan tomorrow’s work with a prompt/reminder/idea, so you don’t have to begin with a blank page/canvas/board. 
• Build a ritual that tells your spirit, mind, and body that it’s time to engage in creative work. Feel free to modify my pre-work routine to work best for you:
  1. Box Breathing: Breathe in 4 counts, Hold 4 counts, Breathe out 4 counts, Hold 4 counts (Repeat for four rounds)
  2. Dedication Prayer: I commit everything I am and all I have for Your perfect will, as I eagerly await Your Kingdom without neglecting the work You prepared for me here. 
  3. Focus Music Playlist: I start a playlist of classical pop songs with a familiar beat without distracting lyrics.

Protect 

Inevitably, as we set out to accomplish our important creative work, something urgent, shiny, or unavoidable will clamor for our attention. How we choose to respond is within our power. We should never aim to manage something that should have been eliminated. When dealing with distractions, we must first determine if they add enough value to warrant managing with proper boundaries, or if they can be eliminated completely. For instance, Pinterest can be a distraction, but I pull a lot of inspiration as I work on interior design and layouts for our rental property renovations. To manage Pinterest, I disabled notifications, removed the app from my home screen, and set usage limits. This allows me to share design ideas with contractors, without losing chunks of my afternoon scrolling. Facebook, on the other hand, was easy to deactivate and delete after comparing the value extracted from time invested. Finding strategies to eliminate, reduce, and manage distractions is key to protecting our creative power. 

Next, we must positively reinforce behaviors we wish to continue. We need to know what a win looks like for us. For me, it’s completing my work ritual and opening my current work, putting on my workout gear and stepping into our home gym, or standing up to head outside when my ninety-minute deep work timer sounds. I have a tiny celebration when I take immediate action at these cues because the momentum of completing the easy steps carries me through the challenging work that will follow. Enjoying micro-celebrations along the way keeps us motivated and on track. 

Refueling our spirit, mind, and body is a practical way to boost our creative productivity. Although we can increase our capacity, our body and mind focus perform much better as oscillate between focused and relaxed states. The law of diminishing returns has humbled great creators throughout history, and we’re not immune. It’s important to recognize our point of diminishing returns as we develop our creative capacity. Ultradian rhythms are ninety-minute biological cycles within the circadian rhythm that greatly impact our ability to focus deeply on creative work. It serves as a great road map for accessing peak creative flows. When I neglect my recovery breaks, I typically lose my sense of curiosity and become frustrated or irritable. I work best in 60-75 minute blocks with a hard stop at 90 minutes. I learned active recovery is essential for my creative process, so I step away from my office for at least twenty minutes when my ninety-minute deep work alarm goes off. I’ll take a walk, dig in the garden, or work on some housekeeping tasks which allow my mind to recover and play. That quick refuel gives my mind the time and space needed to solve problems. Next time we hit a proverbial wall in our work, let’s resist the temptation to reach for our phone or muscling through to get it done, and instead, try a refueling technique. Smoothly oscillating between deep work and intentional recovery maximizes our creativity. 

My Favorite Refuel Habits (mix, match, and combine): 

• Walk, garden, or sit outside (especially surrounded by nature) 
• Hydrate and have a healthy snack 
• Take a quick nap 
• Repetitive housekeeping tasks like laundry, dishes, dusting
• Prayer, breathwork, or meditation 
• Quick energy burst (jumping jacks, burpees, pushups, etc.)

Chief Executive Creator 

I recently went to the San Diego Safari Park and saw a plethora of majestically unique animals, but the “Optimizing Aubrey Favorite Award” goes to the black-crowned crane. This bird looks crazy-bananas in the most fantastic way possible. Who comes up with a design like that? It’s an incredible and inspiring reminder to challenge our creative capacity. What creation will you bring into the world? Will it be the love, encouragement, and joy that radiates from your life? Will your creative mission result in moving a vision into something material? You may not consider yourself an artist in the traditional sense, but I can assure you that we are created in God’s image, and Chief Executive Creator is the first role in which we have a record of God! The greatest creation we will ever be responsible for designing is our story. This important work requires us to seek God’s will in an effort to match our vision to the exceedingly, abundantly more that He has prepared for our lives. It’s a tall order, but hopefully, it helps us realize how important cultivating creativity is for our thriving. How will you design a life that best supports your calling as a creator? 

Faith Encouragement: 

Genesis 1:27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. 

Albert Einstein: “You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.”
Pablo Picasso: “Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.”