Making stuff is hard 🏋️

or How to Kill My Darned Creative Block

Anna Pickard, Chief Wordsmith at Slack, states most elegantly —

Words are hard.

As a copy writer, my day starts with a blank page — it’s up to me to make sure it doesn’t remain so. Whether I’m writing a product feature release post or an article on company culture, that blank page needs to be filled, day to day, week on week.

But sometimes, when things get rough, the blankness remains — large, looming and so blindingly white. It’s a struggle to write something meaningful with a value proposition that’s actually going to create any impact.

There are days when I feel like I can write pages, and I do! I write and write and write, and I exhaust my words.

Then there are days when I run dry as an empty inkwell, with the insides unyielding and solidified.

I’m sure you have these days. If you create, then you do. If you use your hands to make art, if your voice makes music, if you’re the face behind your vlogs, if you use your skills to build something, anything, then that block is frustrating and just as inevitable.

So how do you defeat this? How do you keep creating? How do you look your art in the face and say, “Not today, bub.”

I’ve figured out a few things that work for me. They might not work for everyone, but maybe it’ll guide you in the right direction. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Breathe.

I find myself being overwhelmed 95% of the time, especially when I set off on a task that seems daunting. I tend to give up even before I start (I know I’m not the only one).

What helps me the most is meditating. I use Calm to slow down my mind, get some clarity and find my focus.

Here’s a simple breathing technique you can try:

• Breathe in through your nose and count 1 (in your mind) on the in-breath
• Breathe out slowly and count 2 at the end of the exhale.
• Focus on the in-flow and out-flow of your breath.
• Do this a few times (5 minutes should work!) and you’ll feel refreshed, calmer and a lot more positive about tackling the task at hand.

Creating creates stress and breathing reduces stress! Don’t take my word for it. The American Institute of Stress has an entire web-page dedicated to focused breathing.

Take a break.

If it’s not happening, don’t force it. Step away from your desk, easel, camera, phone, musical instrument or workshop.

Art is not something that you wrest from yourself in haste, but a gift you give unto existence, willingly and with grace. Even if you’re making a living out of it.

Forcing something might not produce anything beyond the mediocre so consider working on something else or diverting your mind.

Go for a walk. Give your mind some space to breathe and refresh itself. Enjoy the scenery outside the window or walk around the block, once, twice. I hear showers work, too, by the way 😋

Read fiction.

I’m guilty of thinking (sometimes) that if I’m not reading a non-fiction book, then I’m wasting my time. Not true.

Reading fiction opens up a vein of creativity by taking you to a completely different place. You never know what idea might strike while you’re eyes deep in a Murakami or a Jeffrey Archer tale.

Immersing yourself in someone else’s creative output leads to sparks in your own. Steve Jobs said, “Creativity is just connecting things,” so when you’re reading fiction, you’re feeding your brain more sources to foster that connection.

Take 10 minutes out and read a few pages of Enid Blyton’s Enchanted Forest or a Harry Potter novel.

After all, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” ― Albert Camus.

Listen to music.

There’s a reason people say that music heals. Try playing some light music in the background, or, better yet, plug in to your favourite Spotify playlist and tune everything else out.

Listening to music while you’re stuck can put you in the right mood to continue or give you just the boost you need to complete your project. The right music can help you get laser-focused and set the mood every time you start making…stuff.

My go-to playlist is this brilliant piano soundtrack that calms me down and helps me focus my attention on the task at hand. Don’t play anything that might put you to sleep or worse: amp you up that you start breakdancing on the floor.

Talk to a friend, a colleague or a confidant. And share your work.

Now this works like a charm. Any time I get stuck on a sentence, or a paragraph or even the basic outline of any story, I immediately text my best friend and ask him for help. We talk about what I’m trying to achieve, what my end-goal is and what I want people to take away from my post.

Even if I don’t get valuable input from him, talking about it clears out some of my confusion, and disintegrates my maker’s block by margins. Not just him. I talk to my boss, my product manager and my designer friend to get their views on my piece. Each of them has something different to say and that gives me a lot of options to work with and a lot more avenues to consider.

Approaching people whose opinions you value and sharing your problem can greatly pierce that nasty mind trap. So, go ahead, and ask for help :)

Break it down.

Come back to your desk with renewed focus, vigour and energy. Don’t tackle all of it at once. Try to divvy up your work in smaller, digestible chunks.

Complete one part at a time. Maybe paint a quarter of the canvas today, maybe sketch out just the outline of your plot, maybe record a few minutes of video.

You’ll get a lot done by doing a little at a time.

These are just 5 strategies that I turn to every time I face a block. But everyone’s different and everyone has their own way of overcoming the struggle of the blank canvas.

We held a Twitter chat some time back on creative blocks. Check out the recap here and see how people all over the world defeat their own blocks. Their answers might just surprise you and you can add more resources to your list of How to Kill My Darned Creative Block.

So, how do you do it? What strategies do you use to keep making stuff, even when you think you just can’t make anymore? What activity helps you plod on toward your final output? I wanna know! ⬇️

*This post is part of an ongoing series about Bite-sized Productivity

Ann is a Content Crafter at Crowdfire. She tried to breakdance once. It did not end well.