Discipline & Creativity
Excerpt from Look Up! Weekly #4
This is an excerpt from Marc Weinstein’s weekly newsletter, Look Up!, which addresses modern philosophy, consciousness, economics, and entrepreneurship.
Marc Weinstein is host of the Look Up! Podcast. He is an active writer, angel investor, entrepreneur, start-up advisor, and certified yoga instructor. Marc is a regular speaker at corporate events, universities, and conferences. Click here to view past presentations and to book Marc.
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This week I am trying a new experiment.
I have put 1 hour on the clock and am writing whatever flows from my finger tips through the keys and onto the monitor.
I assure you that this is no easy task for me.
I’ve already had two false starts. One minute into the countdown, I paused to respond to a few messages that I received last night (reacting is always easier than creating). I restarted, but after only another minute began to explore the different e-mail marketing options that Squarespace offers users. My free trial of their email integration expired last week.
Mailchimp, Squarespace, or Substack — that is the question? And of course, they don’t make it easy for you to compare apples to apples. These sort of decisions take time and research. Another 30 minutes pass and I still have not started to write (nor have I made this decision).
In past letters, I’ve already decided on a subject by the time I sit down to write. But this week, I couldn’t land on one — I thought about writing on the cancellation of Burning Man, but then I saw all of the Instagram posts and cringed.
Well here we are, 2 minutes into the freestyle flow — let’s see what comes out of this. Mostly questions so far…
Do I need to write something every week?
How important is consistency?
I consume a lot of content in a given week, but always wait until Sunday evening or Monday morning to write. Is this the best process, or should I write something as soon as I feel inspired?
In other words, should I surrender to the flow of creativity?
Is discipline, consistency, and commitment compatible with flow, creativity, and imagination.
Michael Singer, author of the NY Times Bestsellers, The Untethered Soul & The Surrender Experiment argued that a simple approach to happiness is to surrender to the will of the universe simply by saying “YES” to everything that is presented to us.
But it took years of disciplined practice before Michael learned to surrender. He first went into self-seclusion for five years to practice Zen meditation.
Michael forced himself to sit down every day for hours on end to dive deep in order to excavate the parts of him that represented conditioning rather than truth.
I doubt that Michael really says yes to EVERYTHING; however, I do imagine that through discipline he cultivated discernment. Now when those important moments appear in which he must surrender himself to the will of the universe, he intuitively knows to say “YES.”
So I am inclined to believe that discipline is actually a precursor to creative flow.
When we force ourselves to practice, we become skilled. In Michael’s case, his disciplined meditation practice trained him to notice the distinction between conditioning and intuition.
So here I sit, embracing my new experiment, forcing myself to write, although uninspired by one particular subject.
And look at the result! Most of this flowed in less than 15 minutes. I even had time to explore the social concept of reciprocity, which I might share with you next week.
The rest of the hour (with a few more distractions), was spent organizing and editing this post. The creative flow was the result of discipline — the will to sit in a chair and just write.
It might not be a masterpiece, but as Hemingway wrote,
“Do not worry…you only have to write one true sentence.”
