3 Reasons Why a Fixed Routine Is a Double-Edged Sword for Creatives

Creativity and monotony are not friends but we can fix this relationship to our advantage.

Creativity loves conflict. It loves change. It loves living on the edge.

However, you don’t have to live on the edge to live a creative life.

Creativity is unpredictable. You can’t decide when you’ll get that idea which feels like a light bulb moment. You can just set yourself up for that and wait.

Whereas routine hates change. Routines denote stability. Just my opinion, but routine is boring.

However, when you have a fixed routine, you eliminate trivial decisions and can focus on making important decisions.

Routine helps automate your choices about stuff you need to do every day without any thought.

You don’t need your brain:

To assist you in brushing your teeth.

Taking a shower.

Having breakfast.

Getting ready for work.

Driving your car to work.

However, a creative life demands a small shift in your daily routine. It demands you be conscious about your auto-mode decision-making.

1/ Fixed Routine Makes Life Mechanical

Creativity and monotony are not friends, in fact, far from it.

The measure of creativity is dependent on the lifestyle you choose to live.

Don’t say that you’re not creative if you’re not even living a creative lifestyle.

But let’s tackle monotony first.

Monotony is experienced because you’re just tapping into the same parts of your brain every single day.

Two things happen when you do that — one, this part of your brain becomes very strong, and you subconsciously keep going back to it when you need a quick creative solution. Not great for your decision-making. Worse? You’re not even aware this is happening because it’s a subconscious choice.

Second, the other parts of your brain become less active and feel cornered, so when you need them — they don’t respond the way you’d like them to (again, it’s subconscious activity).

It’s like going to the gym and doing legs every single day and when you need your arm strength, they fail you. And then you call yourself weak and beat yourself up. That’s crazy!

Creative Living is not hanging by the edge of a cliff like Tom Cruise in MI-2. It’s living the same life but with an interesting twist.

When you take a shower — spice it up; one day, take a cold shower, one day, lukewarm, and on another day, take a hot shower. Different parts of your brain will respond differently on these days. You’ll feel different. Your life experience will be different. Your thoughts will be different, and your creativity will surprise you.

Take a different route to your office once in a while.

Eat healthy (but different from your regular “routine” breakfast).

Make small changes in your routine. Get out of the auto-mode living.

“A creative life cannot be a mechanical life; in fact, it’s the freedom from mechanical life.”

2/ Play With Your Routine Or The Routine Won’t Let You Play

You can’t change how you do something every single day and spiral into madness.

But think of a creative life as putting a drop of flavor in bland water (a flavor of your choice).

Creative life doesn’t happen to you; you have to set yourself up for it and make it happen.

And there’s a way to become more creative with routine — but, you just have to manipulate routine to work in favor of your creative lifestyle.

Schedule a fixed time to perform your creative task every single day — this way you’re training your brain to be creative at the same time every single day.

I write every morning, and it’s very difficult for me to write at night (I can write, but I miss the flow I have when I write in the morning).

Some days, I look up to sleeping in the night early so that I can wake up early to write. It sounds maddening, but it works like a charm.

A creative life is not a nomadic life — it’s freedom from the imprisonment of routine. Nothing in excess has ever done any good to any human.

Balancing a fixed routine along with some creative spice can change your life, and the by-product is your creativity.

3/ Your Brain Has a Thinking Routine

The nerves in your brain have a thinking routine, and they flex almost in the same way every single day unless you’re living with a creative spice.

How do we constantly evolve our creativity? This is a question that troubles a lot of beginner creatives, and the honest answer is — it takes time.

A creative life is a life where you learn to live with frustrations and questions every single day without getting bothered.

Sounds scary? Sounds not so attractive or sexy to pursue, does it?

How comfortable are you with having unanswered questions in your mind all the time? I say, learn to be comfortable with this state of mind. It’s also called curiosity.

By keeping unanswered questions in your mind, you light up your right brain (the creative side of your brain) — that’s the workout you need to give this side of the brain.

Now, there’s a difference between the solutions you get from your left brain (logical side) and your right brain (creative side).

The difference is that you can trace back the logical solution and create a flow chart of how you came up with the solution. That doesn’t happen when you come up with a creative solution.

It’s a light bulb moment — it comes to you, and you cannot explain how you came up with it.

What’s the point of all these crazy experiments?

The entire practice of breaking your routines, and keeping unanswered questions in your mind, is to get you in a flowstate.

A state where ideas and thoughts are flowing without any restrictions, and that’s when you cease to be conscious of what you’re doing.

“From a neurological standpoint, if you want to be more creative, you need to restrict the functioning of your conscious mind when you’re engaged in a creative activity.”

In short, stop thinking and DO.

LAST

Flowstate is the path that you want to walk on if you want to become more creative.

To achieve the flowstate — a smooth pathway for all your ideas that come from any of these three places — your imagination, your experiences, and how other peoples’ creativity has affected you — to flow in a stream of unconsciousness.

Try and get into this state as often as possible. Because conscious minds are contaminated with societal conditioning. A creative lifestyle is rebellious to the lifestyle that society expects us to live.

It’s a lifestyle of freedom that regular people are scared of and don’t want to try. But the ones who live it know that it’s the life we all deserve.

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