Channeling Your Creativity

For every freelancer, especially the ones who work in a creative field, it can become very tricky to be productive "on time". Often, when creativity hits, it doesn‘t really matter whether it is 3am in the night or 3pm in the afternoon. Especially people who struggle with getting into a creative mode in predictable patterns will often sacrifice a structured day for these moments when they are productive.

However, everybody who works in such a field for a few years will come to the conclusion that having a structured day is the only way to sustain your health but also generate enough output. Particularly with jobs that are embedded into rigid time schedules like media composers, not being able to predict your own productivity is a really big problem and can create anxiety that locks you up even more.

Another issue is that in these jobs the often seen model of working from home makes things even more problematic. Besides all the distraction that surrounds you, the problem of creating a proper distance between work and leisure will often create problems.

However, it is possible to train yourself to be productive in predictable patterns. In order to do so, you basically need to create a Pavlovian reflex for your brain where it connects certain situations with being productive. And the more disciplined you are with those, the more effective they will be.

Some of the following strategies have proven to work for me or colleagues in order to create an environment where your mind knows that it is "time to work".

1. Creating a space for being creative

If you work at home, dedicating a room for creative work is the best way. If that is not possible, dedicate a "work corner" in another room. It is essential to be as consequent as possible with this dedication. This also means that you don‘t play computer games or watch Netflix at your work place. Some composers, in spite of being able to set up a work environment in their homes rather decide to rent an extra studio space away from home so they get the sensation of "going to work" in the morning which gets them into work mode. On the other hand, there are also composers who don‘t have a problem with this issue at all and who could literally write music while having breakfast in the kitchen.

2. Use sensual stimulation

This is more or less an even more primitive Pavlovian Reflex but it does work. Particularly the sense of smell works very effective in order to set your brain into a certain mode. For some people it is enough to smell the "smell of their studio" to get into a work feeling while others drink a specific brand of tea when being productive. The more you connect such things specifically with work, the more effective they will be.

3. Routine

Try to create a consistent daily routine for your work. This doesn‘t only mean to try to stick to certain times when you work but the more essential thing is to keep a routine regarding meal breaks and sleeping. This is not only important to create predictable creative output but also to stay healthy over the years. Eating and sleeping at consistent times will give you enough energy to be productive.

4. Taking a Nap

This is very subjective but one of my personal favourites. Taking a nap can be incredibly creative. I usually try to take a short nap of about 20-30 minutes in the middle of my work day. The small time that you distance yourself from work as well as the fact that even when you nap your brain might continue looking for solutions for problems can be super effective to find new creative impulses. It is important however to not sleep for too long as you will at one paint fall into a deep sleep cycle and after waking up from that one you will most likely feel more tired than before. Also, some people struggle to quickly fall asleep so just laying around in frustratration over not falling asleep for half an hour might even be counter productive.

5. Excercise

The energy you gain from exercising and doing sports plus the other health benefits massively outweigh the time you need to invest for it. So even if you are in a tight deadline situation, taking half an hour off to go for a quick run or do some other sports will also give you some distance from work to look at problems from another angle when you get back to it as well as giving you a chance to think about certain problems without being distracted by your phone or other things that take your mind off. Also, the important thing here is to be consistent and do this on a regular basis as any health and stamina effects can only happen when you do this regularly.