How To Lose Yourself in Creative Work and Unlock the Hidden Depths of Focus

Over the past few weeks I’ve barely written a word. This is not because I’ve been vainly attempting to achieve perfection but because every time I sit down to write I feel disconnected from the words that are popping up on the computer screen in front me. And without that connection it’s impossible to get lost in my work, and without that focus anything that I do churn out feels less polished, more like a rough draft, even after multiple editing sessions.

But late last night I was re-reading parts of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and these particular passages really stuck out at me and inspired me to hop on my computer today and expand on his ideas as well as pump out some wonderings of my own.

Every hour of the day give vigorous attention, as a Roman and as a man, to the performance of the task in hand with precise analysis, with unaffected dignity, with human sympathy, with dispassionate justice – and to vacating your mind from all its other thoughts.

…perform each action as it if it were the last of your life: freed, that is, from all lack of aim, from all passion-led deviation from the ordinance of reason, from pretence, from love of self, from dissatisfaction with what fate has dealt you.

Be uncertain. I don’t know where this article is going. There is no outline, or plan of any sorts. I pondered how to begin it in my mind before hitting any of the keys, but beyond that I’m typing blind. I feel this uncertainty is a valuable tool to latch on to. Nothing kills creativity faster than being overly certain of the final result.

Craft your path as you walk it, and just keep battering away until you reach a place you feel to be worthwhile. Conforming too closely to a particular idea or expectation is likely to yield results that are different and thus seen as “wrong,” a feeling which is a judgment of your preconceptions not being met rather than the inherent properties of what you’re creating.

Set no pressures. Over the past few weeks I’ve been testing out some ideas on another blog (which I’ve created under a pseudonym) and what I noticed was, although I’ve been struggling to write for this blog, on this other one I could pump out thousands of words an hour and the entire process was truly effortless. Right now I have 8 scheduled posts, plenty of drafts, and an endless list of ideas.

At first I felt this may just be the excitement of having a new project. But as I thought about it more, what I was actually feeling was a lack of pressure. I’d set myself no word counts to reach nor was I having to think about people unsubscribing because of its new-ness. I’d set myself no idea of the “perfect post” and therefore anything I wrote, whether it was 200 or 1000 words felt right.

To be honest, this is somewhat difficult to translate to a blog where there are external pressures. Not clamouring for a word count is perhaps the easiest thing I can do, but metrics like subscriber counts are real, and publishing an article could genuinely lead to someone feeling that my writing is unworthy of their attention, which is fair enough, but all the same: there’s that undercurrent of trying to please everyone which externalizes yourself while doing creative work.

Perhaps good ol’ practice is the only solution? Continually being mindful of the need for pressure-less work? But I don’t want to leave you with just the advice to “practice” – you learned that in kindergarten. One thing I’ve been experimenting with (and is partly the reason I’ve been playing around with another blog) is separating my income from my identity.

I know it’s popular to follow your “passions” these days, and I get that, but I like writing about topics such as this one, and since it’s linked so closely with who I am, adding in the motive of money makes it feel dirty, like it’s not everything I want it to be. And that’s why I’m building this other blog, which isn’t an inherent passion of mine, but is still exciting (that’s an important distinction to make) to produce income, that allows me to do creative work without that pressure.

Adding money to the creativity equation often complicates things. Make sure you understand that before you unwillingly tarnish what you love.

Become a clock block. (Yeah, I couldn’t resist the immature innuendo.) I was planning to just leave a note at the bottom of this article, but I felt I may as well work this mini-announcement within the content itself. After publishing articles I was so proud of like Effortless Writing, How to Hack Life and Working on the Web and Having a Life I feel a bit fuzzed out that concepts haven’t “grabbed” me as much as those did, and in turn my writing suffers.

For that reason I started feeling apathetic towards this entire project. I wanted to write things that mattered and sticking with a 1-2 post per week schedule was incongruent with that desire, because there’s not always something spiralling in my head that is ready to be shared, or that even matters (hear that? That is the sound of shock and awe).

I propose you become a clock block or, in less, uh, “colorful” phrasing, do all you can to make sure your creative work is not externally deadlined. Setting short, almost impossible deadlines for yourself is great for staying focused, so I’m not saying do away with those (although I will continue to experiment with working without them, because it does feel more freeing), but deadlines based on the expectations of others and external schedules in general are surprisingly effective at sucking creativity out of the human soul.

But my I’m blabbing a bit, so my point got a tad lost. Essentially I’m saying that my writing schedule may become somewhat unpredictable from now as sticking with a post schedule has become constricting and when you want to write stuff that matters it’s not exactly a conducive habit.

Since making this decision by first deciding to simply not publish a post last week (using New Years Eve as a valid excuse to ease the pressure of the shift) it feels like a weight lifted off my shoulders and was another catalyst for this very article you’re reading now.

Be less focused on how quickly you need to complete a work and attempt to work in a way that doesn’t result in the need to cling too closely to a predetermined set of times for your creativity to suddenly be “done”.

Shape your circumstances. It’s sort of ironic that I’m writing this point because one of the articles I attempted to write recently but could not find my groove with was about how to shape your circumstances to shape your results. The ideas were solid though, which is why I’ll include a summary of what I had planned to cover in that article.

Get in the mindset of thinking about what you want out of life, and then work at shaping your circumstances to accomodate for the achievement of those aspirations. That’s fairly vague though, so this puppy needs some examples.

If I were to, say, desire to lose myself in my creative work (how convenient!) then instead of trying to use will power or the mere power of desire to achieve that state, I would shape my circumstances so that zone of focus would be almost impossible not to slip in to. And to shape your circumstances you really just need to reverse engineer the desired situation.

This involves clarifying a simple but important question: what is it like to be lost in your creative work?

There are many answers, some of the ones coming off the top of my head include:

• Free from distraction.
• Feeling of simplicity and effortlessness.
• Driven by powerful motivations.

Ah, that’s better. We can work with these ideas. Now, instead of trying to use the power of the mind to lose yourself in creative work all you have to do is:

• Use applications such as LeechBlock to block yourself from distractions or Freedom to disable your internet connection altogether. And if you’re doing creative work in the “real world” (such as painting) then just create an entirely separate room dedicated to your art. You can read more about avoiding distractions in Working on the Web and Having a Life.
• Craft your environment to be as peaceful and clutter free as possible. There are hundreds of books and blogs about uncluttering and simplicity, so I won’t dive deep into this idea, but “eliminate the unnecessary” is a good starting point to get you going.
• Think about the purpose of whatever you’re doing. When money is the motive there’s a lack of motivation, and without that motivation the process falls flat and you won’t be able to get lost in your work. Ask yourself “Does this matter?” and avoid any work that comes back “No.”

Don’t rely on will power. It’s not a good friend to lean on and while practicing self-discipline is a valuable trait to empower yourself with, in most cases it’s better to shape your circumstances in so that will power simply isn’t needed.

Instead of thinking of the steps to take you from where you are (lack of focus) to where you want to be (focus) think about how your environment affects you ability to achieve your aims, and then mould them in a way so failure becomes an impossibility.

Clear your mind. I just had a revelation of sorts, that I wish to walk you through. It was two weeks ago that I started experiencing a fogginess of the mind which restricted me from focusing. This was following, or perhaps even during a mild sickness (nothing major, just a bit of the flu or something).

But now I sit here, drenched in sweat, exhausted from a quick run and walk out under the beautiful Sydney sun, and an amazing feeling has overcome me: clarity. And thus, I burst from where I lay panting on the couch, ran downstairs and started writing this point you’re reading.

This idea is nothing new of course. If you’ve read anything about running, or a runner yourself, it’s likely you’ve come across this clarity as a common benefit runners take hold of. Even so, it’s something that’s easy to forget, especially if a bout of sickness or bad weather (which further induced fogginess of my mind after I was sick myself) forces you out of the habit.

In reality though, running isn’t the only action that you have to choose from. What we’re interested in is heightening the clarity of your mind, and quickening its functioning. That’s certainly possible through countless measures (so explore some in your own time), but for brevity, and because of my own lack of experience (leave a comment with your methods to find clarity), I’ll offer one, simple solution:

Drink a fresh cup of loose leaf green tea. I’ll be the first to say it: I despise tea. The idea of it, the look of it, the smell of it – I love all of these aspects, but the second I get a taste of it I almost feel like gagging. I’ve tried multiple teas, multiple times to acquire the taste for it (and will continually try to do so) but it’s always the same: it just doesn’t taste very nice.

All the same, I drink it because it’s the absolute best drink you can have by your side to bring clarity to your thinking. And the loose leaf isn’t necessary, but every time I try tea-bag tea, it tastes more artificial (or maybe that’s just my brain being pretentious).

Photo: Thomas Shahan

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