If You’re In a Creative Job, This is How Long You Should Work
When you’re in a “creative” position, there is always one constant — inspiration. How do you find it, where do you find it, when do you find it best?
No doubt, people have various methods to find said inspiration — be it by listening to music, an “inspirational” video, a book, an article, meditation or some random, “that’s out there, dude” thing, that they’ll never admit to anyone; you know, like needing to have the font size on your word to be the same, all the time, every single time (nope, that’s not me, it’s somebody else, I swear)!
It’s about doing what you feel will get you inspired to be as creative as you possibly can be — every time.
Here’s the thing, though: How often has that tactic, plan, routine not worked? Just when you want to get in the creative zone, you just find it impossible. The mind is blank, the fingers aren’t working, all the thoughts coming to your head are absolute rubbish.
Having been in a “creative” (and I’m only putting it in quotes, because, creative, like most things, is relative) position pretty much my entire career, I found this position all too familiar — indeed, that “non-creative, nothing’s happening” phase would come more often than the “wow, look at those nice things flowing out” one.
It put me in a bit of a conundrum, considering my position — people expected creativity from me, time after time, and considering the quality I had put out, whenever those “nice things” flowed, the expectation was that same quality would come out every single time.
That is a lot of pressure — to always maintain that high standard. And to be fair, even if nobody else expected it, I would not be satisfied or happy, if I didn’t deliver top quality — every single time.
So, what do you do, if you’re under that sort of pressure, self-inflicted or otherwise?
You make sure you put yourself in a position where you can deliver that top quality, all the time.
And how do you do that?
This is where it gets tricky.
So, I did a little bit of research, and learnt that four hours a day is the absolute tops, when it comes to creative energy. Yup, four hours…and that too, ideally, chunked into two two-hour bursts.
If you “work” more than that, then your creativity will drop considerably, so will your quality, so will your satisfaction with your job, so will your boss’ expectations — and before you know it, everyone’s unhappy.
While we, unfortunately, live in a world where it is more important to “show” you’re working hard than actually being productive, if companies actually understood the importance of working smart over long and hard, they would see the benefits and the difference.
No creative job can be pushed or rushed; the moment that happens, the quality of the final product comes into jeopardy. Yes, there are deadlines to meet and ambitions to fulfil, but if you want to get to the place you always envisaged getting to, you will do that a whole lot better by taking the “let’s work smart over working long hours” option.
Will it happen, though? Well, it’s not like this “four hours is the maximum for creative work” information has only just been known. The visual of working long hours and working hard will always seem like the better idea to the higher-ups than working efficiently, and until that culture and thought process changes, nothing will change. It will remain just the way it is. Yay!
