One of my 2023 goals has been to spend an hour every day on a creative pursuit, such as writing, blogging, or photography. I wanted to do this for several reasons.
Creativity is essential to my full-time work as a marketing executive and to my photography business, and I want to keep my skills sharp. It’s difficult to lead and inspire other creatives if my own creativity is lagging.
I also wanted to stave off burnout after several trying years leading and living through a pandemic. I think we can all agree that the challenges of making family, health, and work decisions during lockdowns and ever-evolving guidance were completely exhausting.
Most importantly, carving out time to be creative is critical to my mental health. Getting lost in making art for fun helps keep my stress levels in check. Picking up my camera for a photoshoot or my pen to write instantly transports me to a more peaceful state of mind.
Eight months into this experiment, I’ve learned some things that may inspire you to fit more creative time into your life.
- If an hour a day feels overwhelming, start smaller. It’s more important to focus on making creativity a daily pursuit than obsess over a specific amount of time. Making creative time a daily habit is essential because creativity breeds creativity. Like muscles that get stronger with regular exercise, the more consistently you give your brain opportunities to be creative, the better.
- Try different approaches to fitting creative time in. I sometimes break my creative time into four 15-minute increments on busy work days. These short creative bursts occur before work, during lunch, or while I’m taking a quick walk. On the weekends, I can fit in longer stretches of creativity. Both approaches have value and yield different results. The short creative bursts leave me feeling energized with ideas to pursue later, while the lengthier periods produce more finished works and the satisfaction that comes along with completing something.
I hope these tips help you find ways to embed more creative time in your life. What other strategies work for you?
These are helpful. With anything we try to do, when we say we’re going to spend an hour doing it, well that can backfire because carving an hour out of the day is overwhelming. Allowing for shorter bursts is a great way to get around that wall.
It absolutely can backfire! Sometimes those short bursts save the day. Thank you for reading!