Tools for Creativity: Consistency
Issue 7: Exploring how a 21-day quarantine forced me into more consistent creative practices.
Howdy friends,
In last week’s issue, I toyed with the idea about announcing that December would be a slow month for this newsletter and for the sake of my sanity I wanted to publish two instead of four issues. I quickly retracted this statement after a few edits knowing that one of the best things to happen to me this year was becoming more consistent with my creative practice, and I have this newsletter to thank for that.
If you’re a stickler for schedules, you’ll notice that this newsletter is coming a couple days later and in a slightly different format than usual (read: a lot of rambling up ahead), mostly because my weekend didn’t allow for a ton of reading and considered writing. That said, I wanted to publish anyway, schedule be damned, for the selfish reason that by the end of the year, I want to be able to say that I started a newsletter and published consistently every week since I started.
As always, if you were forwarded this email by someone, feel free to check out all the past issues here and if you fancy this content in your inbox every week, please consider subscribing!
I’ve struggled with consistency all my life. In Issue 3, I talked in length about how daily rituals make way for creativity and I’ll be using this issue to dive more into my own rituals this year and how that has led into more creative practices.
At the end of September, I flew back from New York to Hong Kong and was immediately subjected to a 21-day quarantine in a hotel room. And while I received many a sympathetic note about my time there, I’ll also be the first to admit that it really wasn’t as bad as most people imagined it to be. Let’s set aside the government imposition, the fact that my windows were barred shut and I didn’t get any fresh air for three weeks, the forced aspect of the time-bound quarantine allowed for some delightful introspection. When I look back at the few months since, it’s hard for me not to recognize and acknowledge that the quarantine may have deeply affected the way I think, work and create — in the best way possible.
First off, I kept a routine, probably more so than any consecutive three weeks time block in my life. For the first time in a long time I worked out almost every day (always around dusk), ate meals promptly three times a day, and spaced out regular intervals of work and activity given the routine of it all.
An aside that some readers here should know is that since 2016, it’s been extremely difficult for me to form regular routines. For my work — and by extension my personal life — I travel pretty extensively between Hong Kong and New York. Obviously, this hasn’t quite been the case for the last year but even in a more micro week-over-week schedule, my Mondays and Tuesdays are already pretty different than other days in the week. Part of my schedule is that I carve out the first couple of days in the week for meetings with our team on the other side of the world, which makes for a pretty brutal sleep schedule that can throw my entire week into chaotic disarray. (After all, I am polishing this draft at 3:08am in the morning.)
These past few months, I’ve subscribed to the strange premise that my time in quarantine might have helped to form some welcomed new habits that I have — repeatable ones that have helped to fuel creative thought (note: it’s easy to mistake “repeatable” for “repetition” where the former can produce consistent creative output and the former is more task-based and outcome driven). To help thread this out a bit more, I’ve put together a very brief and loose timeline from the past couple months:
{Sep 20, 2021} - Daily logging in Notion. Since quarantine, I’ve kept a daily “tracker” where I log things moods, people, habits etc. (did I do exercise that day? how effective was I? what are the three ways to describe my day?) While there is still some tension between how I use the system and what works for me, I’ve found it to be a good way to help me log and track the cadence of my days. One thing I’m still trying to grapple with is this: what am I doing with the information I log and what does this information do for me? I’ve yet to figure out how to effectively extrapolate and find causality with the data I track. In the next few weeks, as I work on my yearly review, I’ll be sure to keep in mind that to only log what matters. I’ve been playing around with an app called Reporter which purports to do a similar thing via randomly spaced repetition and hopefully a few weeks of trying this out will help surface a few things in life I care enough about to make daily logging worthwhile. So far, it’s been an obtrusive way to track some key quantifiable metrics throughout the day.
{Oct 5, 2021} - Signed up + have been an active(ish) student in multiple online courses. I am currently a student of the following:
I contain multitudes!I’ve always loved learning and the flexibility by which the internet has allowed us to thrive at our own pace across multiple disciplines. I’ve had a Skillshare membership these last few years and found the general lack-of-structure on the platform almost impossible to follow through on. That said, while I’ve been good with keeping up with some of the courses above, and not so great with some others, I have been fairly consistent with showing up and engaging with these different communities, if even in a very light way.
{Oct 31, 2021} - Starting this newsletter. Thinking about creativity has led me down this weird and exciting path of starting this newsletter. I’ve always been a reader, and have always considered myself a “writer” but had little to show for the craft outside of this work. I write a lot in my full-time role and consider written communication to be one of my greatest strengths in the workplace. Outside of that, I haven’t really had a chance to produce work I care deeply about, until now.
When I put the first issue together in late October, it surprised me how much work went into the production of it. The act of reading, writing notes, connecting those ideas to others, was a huge cognitive jolt but I loved it! And I continue to love it!
The act of having to organize and build around a chosen hypothesis every week has reactivated a muscle that has long yearned to be exercised. I love tools but I’m hell bent on not letting the tools themselves be the end all be all. What’s more important is the system (or systems) around how to consume and, by extension, create — which is something I’m really looking forward to continue my exploration on.
Final thoughts
I get asked a lot how I write notes. I tell everyone that I don’t write transient notes on Notion. For quick capture, I’ve been turning primarily to the Notes app on my phone, and sometimes, find that even sorting within a simple interface is too much cognitive load to bear.
To solve for that, I have one open Note called “random” and whenever something bubbles up in my brain, I’ll open my Notes app (which is almost always already on “random”) and start typing. If I see a tweet I like, or a quote I’dl like to jot down, I send / share it directly to the “random” note. Everything is unassociated. Aaron Swartz once summarized this well in his piece HOWTO: Be more productive: Ease physical constraints. Removing the barriers in the form of friction / time that allows for quick capture is key here.
I love the idea of brain dumping, falling down rabbit holes, and having ways to jot down unassociated thoughts. The pressure of pre-categorization has always been a huge hinderance for me. On the other side of the same coin, as things slowly become more and more disorganized, reconciliation and organization has to happen. Time is a flat circle. I’m hoping that by sometime early next year, I’ll have a good grasp on a transient → evergreen note processing system that works for me and my brain.
When it comes to tools, Im still bouncing between Notes & Bear for quick capture. In my first issue, I spoke of wanting a dictaphone and found that recently in voiceliner (hoping to report back on this in a few weeks as well) and definitely want to start sorting through what matters most when it comes to thinking and capturing. It’s so easy to fall into the rabbit hole of a new tool when sometimes all I really crave is the warm embrace of a Midori MD notebook and a Muji 0.38mm gel ink ballpoint.
Down the rabbit hole →
Learning From Terminals to Design the Future of User Interfaces by Brandur (read) — as someone thinking a lot of the tools we use in our everyday lives combined with actually working on a new (3d holographic) interface in my day-to-day, loved reading this breakdown by Brandur. My frustration with a lot of technology today is what drives me to keep reading (and writing!) about it.
Choosing entrepreneurship over a corporate career (read) — as I’m thinking a lot about “connecting all the dots going backwards”, loving the timeline as presented here in blog posts.
Isaac Asimov Asks, “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (read) — required reading! In this 1959 essay by Issac Asimov, he breaks down the creative process (as he sees it) and writes briefly on the kind of environment that promotes creativity. Will be thinking about this a lot as I finish the final part of The Beatles Get Back documentary (also highly recommend if you are curious to dive deep into the nuances of creative collaboration, in-person, under great time constraint).
Are.na (play) — I don’t think I’ve talked about Are.na at any point in the last few issues, an oversight if anything. I first stumbled on this almost as year ago as I was putting together visual mood boards for the Looking Glass Portrait launch video + product visuals. I love falling into Are.na rabbit holes more than anything and would highly recommend it for those who love(d) Pinterest & Tumblr but wanting something a more visually minimal and tastefully curated. (Tip: you can save ANY type of content you find online, including text + tweets). It’s great for collecting, collaborating and research. Loved this manifesto written almost 3 years ago: How do you use the internet mindfully? — Are.na I also loved this creative independent interview with one of the co-founders, Charles Broskoski.
Until next week, stay curious.
– Nikki