The Underrated Key to Creativity: Margins
A Greater Gap Between Workload and Limit Improves Creativity
“No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.”
— Robert McKee, Story
In a time where we’re constantly pushed to our limits, margin is the rare space between our loads and limits. Author Richard Swenson writes on his website, margin is “related to our reserves and resilience. It is a buffer, a leeway, a gap; the place we go to heal, to relate, to reflect, to recharge our batteries, to focus on the things that matter most.”
To many people, margin sounds like a luxury.
To creatives and people who think for a living — writers, leaders, entrepreneurs, marketers, developers, designers, engineers — margin is essential.
Creative work is tough. In many cases, you completely dispose of an idea because it just isn’t good enough. Or, it makes sense, but doesn’t fit a business case. Or, you have other priorities and decide it’s not the right time for it. In any case, no matter how in love you are with your ideas, you must kill your darlings.
Here’s why margin is essential for sustainable, and excellent, creative work:
Buffer Time to Produce High Quantities
There’s an unbelievable amount of unused work that comes as a byproduct of the creative process. It’s inevitable. Author and essayist Tim Kreider explains it best, “Because the essence of creativity is fucking around; art is that which is done for the hell of it.”
You are experimenting, and you probably don’t know how it’s going to turn out.
Even if some of your ideas never see the light of day, going through the creative process is still valuable. As Eminem says in an interview with the New York Times, “I have a thinking job. I write a lot of things down, and sometimes I never use them. It’s just the exercise.”
Some creatives deliberately leverage quantity. Noel Gallagher says in an interview with Rolling Stone:
I still think tomorrow might be the day that I write the greatest song of all time. It’s like going fishing. The guitar is your fishing rod, and if I’m not fishing for that song, fucking Bono will get it, and if he’s not, Chris Martin will. And fuck those two guys, because they’ve got enough. We’re all fishing in the same river, and it’s cutthroat, baby.
Similarly, John Legend says in a Reddit AMA:
When I’m writing the album, I like to schedule writing sessions rather than just hope inspiration randomly comes to me. I like to schedule my creativity so that I’m more proactive about searching for inspiration. It makes me more productive and prolific. Every song won’t be great, but I create 50–80 songs every album, in the hopes that a significant portion will be great.
Even when Kanye says in this VICE clip that he would rather spend more time focusing on 14 tracks rather than spreading them across 40, there’s still a lot of effort that goes into early unused versions or drafts of each song.
Robert McKee writes in Story, “But if you know the craft, you know how to cure clichés: Sketch a list of five, ten, fifteen different “East Side lovers meet” scenes. Why? Because experienced writers never trust so-called inspiration.”
Creatives produce high amounts of work. There’s an unbelievable amount of work that the world never sees. Some people deliberately hide their brushstrokes.
Broadening the gap between your workload and your limit means you have time and energy to produce more than you expected. It also enables you to take a break and renew yourself for the day after.
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Hours Are Not Made Equally
David Lynch writes in Catching the Big Fish:
Bushnell Keeler, the father of my friend Toby, always had this expression: ‘If you want to get one hour of good painting in, you have to have four hours of uninterrupted time.’
We’re constantly interrupted by notifications today, so you must build a margin into your schedule to clear your head. This is known as a maker’s schedule. Lynch explains what happens during the discrepancy in total hours and productive hours:
And that’s basically true. You don’t just start painting. You have to sit for a while and get some kind of mental idea in order to go and make the right moves. And you need a whole bunch of materials at the ready… Putting difficult materials together — like baking something in sunlight, or using one material that fights another material — causes its own organic reaction. Then it’s a matter of sitting back and studying it and studying it and studying it; and suddenly, you find you’re leaping up out of your chair and going in and doing the next thing. That’s action and reaction.
But if you know that you’ve got to be somewhere in half an hour, there’s no way you can achieve that. So the art life means a freedom to have time for the good things to happen. There’s not always a lot of time for other things.
Some people can hit the ground running, but still need the margin to allow their brain time to absorb and express an idea. Others need to have fun for an hour or two before getting down to business. In any case, both situations need margin. Margin enables you to make your work undeniably good.
Your Brain and Body is Intertwined
Athletes know that their brains and bodies affect each other. That’s why the best ones focus on mental endurance as much as physical strength and stamina.
Similarly, thinking for a living means although your brain is your primary instrument, your body is also important. Without a margin, it’s difficult to maintain your brain or your body — which leads to a deterioration in quality of thought.
Margin allows you to take the time to give your brain and body the maintenance they deserve. I often go for walks to clear my head and get a second wind. Novelist Haruki Murakami runs. Some people prefer calisthenics. Still others prefer transcendental meditation.
Everyone has a different way renewing their creative energy. Pick yours. Do it often.
When “Inefficiency” Pays Off
Margins may not sound “efficient,” or “productive”. Yet if you’ve hit a creative plateau or have been feeling drained or overworked lately, you’ll know why. Add a bit of margin into your life and watch its impact on your creative work.
Herbert Lui is the Creative Director at Wonder Shuttle, a marketing agency that crafts stories through content. Their most recent product is the content canvas. It’s a framework that marketers and strategists use to create useful, contagious, content.
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