The Creative Purpose of Down Time
The pandemic was tough (epic understatement!). It tore through the entire world with unrelenting havoc, forcing every single person to deal with it, adapt to it, or change some semblance of their own lives. Some changes were small and have barely gone noticed, either by ourselves or others. While certain other changes were so titanic they still stand out like a wedding dress at a funeral as we attempt to get on with our lives. As a creative director and someone who thrives off of being creative in most of my daily life, it feels like the latter most days. For many of us, the sudden shift in the ways, worries, and wares of our daily lives have left us in the midst of an unrecognizable routine. Aspects of our previous lives that we simply tolerated, avoided, or ignored are now scars or wounds that have gone unattended and are beginning to sour or sting. It can be felt everywhere. At home, in our commute, in our relationships, and at our jobs where burnout and resignations have risen to never before seen levels.
Certainly, that paints a somewhat gloomy picture of the world we are all fighting to survive in. But the good news is, we are still here! 2023 has arrived and we are now able to look forward to a new year. As much as our private and social worlds have changed, so too has the business world. Nearly every job, across all levels, industries, and class have experienced a tectonic shift in the way they work. The daily life that we all once prepared ourselves to live and breathe has been completely flipped on its head. Accountants, sales people, and designers alike are now faced with a new reality. Work life balance no longer means “not taking your work home with you.” It’s already there. The unspoken protection of walking through the doors of your office are gone. The line in the proverbial sand has been washed away and we are all left to determine, for ourselves, where that line now stands. The room for down time, the space to decompress, the opportunity to relax has been deprioritized.
Speaking from the perspective of someone who is a creative consulting professional, this unseen but mostly understood barrier or boundary of the past was my protector. My daily life had an unintentional (and in hindsight, probably under-appreciated) built-in time that allowed for me to pursue my passions, my hobbies, and my curiosities. My evenings and weekends were sacred. The pandemic forced all of us to create a culture where we are always on, always available, always nearby. Our down time evaporated in front of us. We allowed for it to happen because we had no choice. The world shut down and we were forced into our homes. Some of us were fortunate and able to keep our jobs as long as we welcomed those very jobs into the, once off limits, confines of our own personal sanctuaries. Our homes, apartments, and studios became our offices as well. We were, and still are, always at work. Without the down time we all desperately need to revitalize the creative spirit that lives inside of us, we are in a constant struggle to stay true to our creative soul. There is a finite time in our daily lives to be curious, to learn new things, to explore wonderful thoughts and ideas, and to find new passions that give us our energy. This constant in our lives was, and always will be, the purpose or point of down time.
Down time, or also simply put as time not working your job, is more critical to creativity than many of us give it credit for. Without it we are blind to new ideas and instead are more likely to get caught in a myopic rut. Tunnel vision can form from the unrelenting demands and focus required by always working which rarely allows for bright ideas to be illuminated by new thinking. In the absence of down time, the vacancy needed to explore new passions and curiosities is nonexistent. Those passions stretch our thinking and provide for us a way to see the same challenge in a different light. Curiosities give us a different angle to view a problem from a previously hidden vantage point. Both provide unique perspectives — learned from time spent wandering, listening, and the experiencing of new things — all of which fuels innovation and creativity. By allowing down time to be reduced into something indistinguishable from a blink, we have significantly eroded away what once gave us the energy to push ourselves. The drive to step into the unknown, the courage to try something new, and the endurance to see the new realized — all require time and energy. We all find that energy from something but without the time needed, we are depleting our internal reservoirs. We are running out of the energy we need to be creative.
I wrote in a previous article, The Often Misunderstood Label: Creatives, that creatives are not who you might think. Many see creative people as being only artists, musicians, designers, and the like but I argue that isn’t completely correct. We are all creatives, or have the potential to be creative, which is why the vanishing of down time is such an earth shattering development. Just as importantly, it is why resignations and burnouts are not limited to only the traditionally thought-of creative community. This impacts us all. Progress, which is at the core of our modern society, is derived from innovation. Innovation is the result of creative thinking. New ideas are not spawned from doing the same thing over and over again. Innovation does not just randomly manifest itself. Careful time and effort is required no matter the industry, profession, or endeavor. Now more than ever, we have to fight for the time we need to recoup. We must demand precious moments to decompress. Seek space to stretch ourselves in other ways outside of what is needed for our daily grind. We have to prioritize the opportunities to be curious and explore. We need down time to recover and gain the energy essential to avoid burnout, exhaustion, and stagnation.
For some, the difficulty of maintaining down time in their own lives lies in the challenge that comes from saying “No.” To decline a meeting is to signal to their leadership, their peers, their clients that they are not up to the task. Others, it’s a professional FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) moment that drives them to answer the call at 9PM on a Friday night. Countless other reasons and fears are at the core of the overworked, over tired, over stretched, and honestly burnt out. The boundaries are gone and so we are left fighting for our sanity and our actual lives on all fronts. These are challenges that I know all too well and am in a constant struggle myself to resist the willingness to relent my down time.
For me personally, writing this article and thinking introspectively about my own creativity has made me more acutely aware of the importance of balance. Each day, I am striving to find small periods of time where I can read about my curiosities, challenge myself to learn new things, pursue goals or ambitions that give me important energy back, and simply time to just breathe. An example of this is when a meeting ends early (rare but it happens once every blue moon), I don’t rush to answer emails or squeeze in another call. I take time to read or explore a curiosity I have in articles and places just like Medium. Recently, I have also taken back my Wednesday evening by signing up for a drawing class. I’ve paid for it out of my own pocket, which gives the added importance and priority of not wanting to have wasted money on something I do not attend. Both are examples of how I am trying to maintain my creative spirit in ways that give me energy to combat the ever present worry of burnout.
Realistically, I know that I am not going to change how the world now operates. I’m just as much a victim (and culprit) of the vanishing boundaries of our lives. However, I am a staunch advocate of the give and take mentality. If you need to be on a call at 9pm on a Friday night, then the balance of the equation needs to be that on Monday morning you don’t start your day until 11AM. Infinite examples exist of this balance that we can all use to protect our down time. Employees need to expect it, leaders need to champion it, and bosses need to require it. For my projects that I am responsible for, this is how I lead. Without action and the protection of our down time from everyone at all levels of the corporate and private worlds, we face a crisis of creativity. Worse, we allow the sacrifice of creativity on the altar of progress, under the guise of productivity, and out of the rallying cry of constant connection. Our ways of thinking, our personal point of views, our needs, our passions, our hobbies, our own joy or energy for life, and our creativity are born out of our time away from work. That is the importance, the necessity, the purpose, and the point of down time.
