Create on Demand?
From Todd Henry’s Accidental Creative newsletter:
In our “create-on-demand” world we are often called upon to make something out of nothing. We grow accustomed to this, we ARE professionals after all, but over time this can build to the point of “creative inversion.” This is the phenomenon of giving out more than we’re taking in. Creativity is the result of abundance - abundant experience, abundant energy, abundant focus - spilling over into the problems we’re trying to solve. But when we are constantly drawing water from a rapidly diminishing well, we are borrowing against our future creative health.
The worst part of it is that we often can’t recognize creative inversion until it’s too late - we’re past the point of treatment and need drastic intervention. It’s easy to spot creative inversion if we learn the symptoms and are aware and disciplined enough to treat them.
Here are 5 signs of creative inversion:
1. You can’t get started. You want to, but can’t.
2. You’re depressed by other peoples’ work.
3. You have a difficult time remembering where your time went today, yesterday, etc.
4. You’re inadvertently repeating yourself.
5. The thought of “new stimulus” scares you - you wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Filed by Joe at March 28th, 2007 under Uncategorized, Creativity
wow joe,great post…hard act to follow.
i’m not sure where i should start here: i’ve already spent more than 20 minutes trying to draft this…i’m just not so sure how to respond.
did you ever think “repeating yourself” might be a good thing for the list? that’d be interesting i think.
Comment by James Kingsley — March 28, 2007 @ 11:40 am