Creative Confidence: What Joseph Gordon-Levitt taught me about “flow”
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Creativity is everywhere.
Every single thing you’ve ever used that was produced by human hands was designed.
What does this mean for creativity? It means that for every notepad we scribble on, laptop we click on, and voice-to-text device we utilize to make our words into text, there’s a story of creativity that can span generations.
Humans are creative beings. In fact, if you are able to sit in silence for even five minutes, your mind will start making disparate connections and synthesizing seemingly unrelated pieces of information into something new.
Donatella Versace I think sums up my point best:
“Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas.”
Basic creativity is an evolutionary mechanism to help us tackle problems. Our increasingly-complex world and all its innovations have uplifted hundreds of millions beyond the life of base subsistence. While anybody can argue that even more people live in abject poverty around the world, my point is that we as a race are able now to use that creativity to create things for our fancy.
The art and science that’s made life more bearable is a product of that creativity. But it still is born of the same necessity — to express ideas that will leave a lasting impact on someone else.
With all this said, let me introduce the concept of the “like button.”
Making Creativity Cheap
Video-sharing platform Vimeo is apparently the first to introduce the concept of a “like button”, with Facebook and others following suit.
These days, the range of emotions we can express with a click of the screen range from ecstatic happiness to sadness and consternation. And we’re being changed because of it.
The anxiety caused by social media is no secret. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America even identifies “social media anxiety” as a thing:
“ Researchers have found that using social media obsessively causes more than just anxiety. In fact, testing has found that using too much internet can cause depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), impulsive disorder, problems with mental functioning, paranoia, and loneliness.”
Mixed in with all this is how this anxiety plays into what we share, what we create, and what takes our attention.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (yes that one) has some insightful things to say about how creativity and social media interact. I’ll link his Ted Talk here, but here is the main gist of it all:
Creativity requires us to drop out of the world for a moment and into a hole that is only inhabited by the ideas we have. When we find ourselves engrossed in these ideas, we reach a state of “flow”.
This “flow state” is well documented by science. In a Huff Post article, Scott Barry-Kaufman, scientific director of the aptly-named Imagination Institute says offers a novel illustration of this coveted mind space for creatives:
“Flow — the mental state of being completely present and fully immersed in a task — is a strong contributor to creativity. When in flow, the creator and the universe become one, outside distractions recede from consciousness and one’s mind is fully open and attuned to the act of creating.”
Now back to Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He describes his creative space as one where he stands completely alone in his intentions, most often embodying a role for a major film like Transformers:
“When I’m acting, I get so focused that I’m only paying attention to one thing, like when I’m on set and we’re about to set, and the first lady calls out ‘Rolling’…. and the director calls out “action!”…something happens to me that I can’t even help it. My attention narrows, and everything else in the world…all goes away.”
What is so clever about Gordon-Levitt’s examples is how paying attention and getting attention are different, and how the latter can stifle the former.
The Pursuit of Praise
Every time I’ve sat down to write for personal reasons, I am plagued by my own internal, demonic editor telling me what is good, what is bad, and — in the end — what all the pieces floating around my head are supposed to be telling me.
This is the creative process. It isn’t easy, but when it happens the internal struggle we all deal with is part of what makes being creative, well, creative.
Temple University professor and cognitive psychologist Robert Weisberg outlines the importance of the internal editor in all us when it filters out the crap in his book Beyond the Myth of Genius:
“All who study creativity agree that for something to be creative, it is not enough for it to be novel: it must have value, or be appropriate to the cognitive demands of the situation.”
Read that last line again. The internal editor tells us what is appropriate for what we are doing.
But what does social media do to this internal editor? It gives them an unwelcome partner in the process — an uncontrollable and sometimes unforgiving public that determines the value of your creative output for you.
I bring this up because there are so many people I know who want to create, but somehow seem to overlook the key to flexing any skill and creating anything of value — getting started.
People like myself will start blogs, and they might suck. But, we’ll feel great when it gets some likes. When the likes don’t come, it’s overwhelmingly easy to believe the creative output in question has no value.
With all this in mind, here’s some things that I believe all creatives need to know to make it easier on themselves to deliver the gifts they have to the world:
- Creativity is internal, and that’s that: Creativity is part of what it means to be human, and the energy we use to be creative is something that is automatic when we put ourselves into the right environment.
- Wanting Attention and Paying Attention: A desire to create to gain attention — ahem, the “like button” — kills our ability to “pay attention” (via Gordon-Levitt).
- Just Do It: I really hate to use cliches and slogans, but there’s really no simpler way I can think of that makes sense. When you block everything out and focus on the task at hand, you’ll create better and more often.
Creativity and the Modern Age
Like Versace said, it’s the conflict of ideas — and allowing those ideas to duke it out in your head — that is the stuff of creativity.
When we start letting the desire for attention seep into our creative process, we introduce a referee making bad calls. This incessant drive to please keeps people from starting, ending, and developing new ideas.
So, the task at hand is one that I tackle with every day. How can a creative stay in the zone when they need to be with an ever-increasingly connected world? How can one let ideas roll and enter into the “flow state” we hear about everywhere?
Disconnect
I’m a freelance writer by trade, and a busy one.
I’m developing a personal practice where I leave my phone in a place I won’t notice if a notification tries to catch my attention. With the ability to step away for extended periods of time, I write more efficiently and effectively.
Accept Flaws
The world is really not as unforgiving as people think when it comes to creative output. Some things will work, and some will not.
You can look at this as an existential crisis, proof that there are some activities that truly are worthless. And you’re right, things can be worthless, but only to other people.
Creating something out of nothing always gives me a feeling of accomplishment, something similar I imagine to runner’s high.
The simple act of doing something we’ve invested a part of our interior selves into yields amazing benefits, including increased self-worth, feelings of efficacy, confidence, and lowered levels of stress and anxiety.
“Feed the Pit”
There’s tons of euphemisms for consuming what inspires you — “fill the well,” “feed the beast,” whatever.
We create by taking impressions of our world and putting them together. It’s really no simpler than that.
Feed your creative drives with things that inspire you. Treat listening to music, reading books, having conversations, and analyzing solutions as raw material for your own creative solutions.
Make It Your Own
I can talk all day about how you should do this, or should do that, but I can’t stress enough that what I’m suggesting is simply a guide for you to develop your own creative process.
Each and every acclaimed creative we know has their own way of stimulating their mind to generate novel output — whether that’s a song, a story, or a scribbled Jackson Pollock.
My process is one that is constantly being fine-tuned. In a world increasingly dominated by social media and “bad referees,” a consistent drive to develop my own creative practice requires maintenance from time to time.
And, if you find yourself facing a creative block, it may have something to do with who you’re trying to impress. Do it for you, and nobody else — and
If this piece has inspired you in any way, leave a comment below and tell us what you do, what you’ll begin doing, or where you’ve found some help in developing a creative process that works for you.
References (i.e. “Food for Thought”):
- “How craving attention makes you less creative | Joseph Gordon-Levitt”
- Wikipedia — “History of the Like Button”
- Professor Robert Weisberg, Temple University
- Lifelabs: The Positive Benefits of Creativity
