Reddit mentions of The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

Know your fears - this is something I took from twyla tharp's incredible book the creative habit. In the book, which you should absolutely read, she talks about fears, and then, in an act of incredible courage, writes all of her personal artistic fears right there on the page for the world to see. (Her fears are, "1. People will laugh at me. 2. Someone has done it before. 3. I have nothing to say. 4. I will upset someone I love. 5. Once executed, the idea will never be as good as it is in my mind.")

I'm so grateful for her articulating those, because it allowed me to see the incredible power of simply setting your fears down on paper and understanding them. I realized that my own fears, which are different from hers have been dramatically impacting my behavior. Just by putting them down, they lose a smidge of their power, because you begin to see the logical flaws in your subconscious reasoning. (Incidentally, in the spirit of Twyla's honesty, my fears are: that my writer friends and mentors will read something I wrote and decide that I am a weaker writer than they thought; that my manager and agent will read my work and take me less seriously; that the next script will not help me move forward in my career, that I'll stall and lose my job and get fired; that I will have to move my wife back into a shitty living situation when we can't make rent.)

Action item: find a blank page. Write: "I'm afraid of..." and then keep your pen moving. When you get stuck, re-write, "I'm afraid of..." and take a different tack. Think about writing whatever you're procrastinating on right now, and the weird feeling in your gut that appears that's stopping you from working. Dig into it. "I'm afraid of..."

If it helps, you can burn or shred this page later.

Then, maybe later on, distill what you've written down into a few bullet points. Maybe you'll do this once, or maybe you'll come back to this exercise over and over as you write and discover more about yourself and what's actually motivating you.

welcome and embrace your fears. this is something I've distilled from a lifetime of reading Buddhist psychology and philosophy. A great introduction to the concept, though, would be Fear by the Vietnamiese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. The point here is that when you think about writing, or sit down to write, and find yourself encountering writers block, instead of just pushing past it, you want to sit back a moment and say, "I know there is this fear in me. I've seen this before, I've written it down." Then, instead of fighting it, you just sit with it a while and don't try to change it. Eventually, you can even come to take care of it, and take care of the wounded part of you that is causing the fear.

action item: when you find yourself procrastinating or experiencing writer's block, stop a moment, and say: "I'm experiencing a fear right now. Hello fear, old friend, I see you in me." This is a better strategy than 'powering through' or watching youtube for 6 hours (my typical move).

bigger action item: beyond the scope of this post, but I've found the above is significantly easier if I've been meditating regularly for 15 minutes a day or longer. Google, search youtube, subscribe to headspace or calm. If you think this is hogwash, the best skeptics discussion of meditation is 10% happier by dan harris.

routine: this is the underlying premise of the creative habit, which gives it its title. The idea is, it's much easier to overcome initial resistance if you develop a routine you follow every day, and the routine ends with you beginning to work.

action item: cultivate the habit of writing every day. Cultivate additional little habits that trigger 'it's writing time', like lighting a candle, putting on your headphones, sitting in a specific room or at a specific table, whatever. Something along the lines of a free-throw shooter dribbling three times before every shot, sort of thing.

morning pages. This is from the book the artists way by julia cameron. The whole book is kind of an exploration of writer's block, in a sense; and it's full of very smart ideas and actionable suggestions on the subject. But the cream of her teaching is: write three handwritten pages of whatever every morning, or when you sit down to write. This little suggestion is truly life-altering -- I was extremely skeptical upon hearing this advice, and now I swear by it. It gives you a place to excise all the junk and demons floating around in your brain every day, kind of like being your own therapist. And it gets you in the habit of moving your pen, writing what comes out, and not self-censoring. It is a way to both strengthen your ability to start writing freely, and simultaneously weaken your fears, procrastination, and distracting surface emotions.

action item: cultivate the habit of writing 3 pages longhand every day. If you're really stuck, get the book and work her 12-week program, it will absolutely un-stuck you, guaranteed.

do the work: the last thing I want to put here is kind of self-evident, but it deserves saying anyway: when it's all said and done, you need to actually put your ass in the chair and start writing. It's like swimming: you can't get better at it by thinking about it strategically or theoretically; you need to put most of your effort into putting out pages. Especially when you're just starting out, the best thing you can do is do a huge volume of work. It's not going to be as good as you want to be at first; it's like that for everyone. You just need to fight through that and write more, and it absolutely will get better over time.

action item: put yourself on a deadline to finish one short every week or two weeks or something. Or one pilot or feature every three or four months. Commit to making mistakes as fast as possible, embrace that things will fall short of your aspirations at first, and just do as much volume as possible.

Hope this helps and I welcome any feedback.

Good questions. Let me take them one by one.

I'll first say that the portfolio is the only truly important thing. When I first came out to NYC to work, I interviewed at 17 different companies/startups/studios. Not a single one even looked at or asked about the school I went to. We just talked at length about my projects. That being said, I think design school is important. Design is complicated. There's a lot to learn. I know people who swear by just going it your own way and not going to school. Those people don't see what they don't do well. They struggle with the fine details. They think their work is fine, but they haven't figured out why it could be better.

Design school taught me a lot. It taught me how to think differently. How to get thick skin and take critique. How to work with grids. How to manage type. All of these skills don't come from hard and fast rules. They come from ethereal concepts that you have to learn. They're much easily learned through someone who can mentor you. You can figure it out on your own, but it will take longer. The cap on your ability to grow in the industry will fall short. I've even interviewed people who had some nice work, but when I discussed with them their process or their theory, they didn't know what they were talking about. They learned how to copy good work, but not how to generate their own creative output.

If you want practice here's what I would do.

1. Sketch. Even if you aren't good at it. I'm still not. Lot's of designers aren't. Sketching is about a quick method of generating ideas.
   
   
2. Read and write. Design is about communication, not visuals. Visuals are important, but if they don't say anything, no one cares. Great designers often tend to be great writers/readers. Don't just read about design. Read about architecture. Read about theater. Read Science Fiction. Just read.
   
   
3. Take pictures. Learn to frame a shot. learn how to compose something beautiful.
   
   
4. Fill your well. Your greatest resource in design will be culture. Learn about things. Experience a full life. If your creative inspiration comes from a design website, you're doing it partially wrong (those things have their value, but they are a simple tool, not a means to good solutions). Dig deep into different things and become broadly experienced.
   
   
5. Play with the software. If you're sketching, try the software too. Learn Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. This leads to my next thing.
   
   
6. Find good work and copy it. Literally. Don't copy to give to a client. Just copy in the privacy of your own studio space. You learn to play the guitar by first playing songs by bands you love. Do the same with design. Copy their work and try to learn their techniques.
   
   Regarding whether I practice, I do. Side projects are a big part of what we do. Client work is always constrained by their needs. Side projects are a good way to push your creativity. Working with constraints is good and important, but balance it with side projects. Design an app. Make a children's book. Do whatever it is that seems interesting to you.
   
   I still struggle with whether my work is good or not. You'll never get over expecting more than you can deliver. If you like the challenge of that and can live with yourself, you'll be a good designer. A good part of knowing what's good is learning to see. Study masters. Find out what makes good work tick. This is a hard question for sure. This is part of why I tell people to go do design school.
   
   Design books I recommend... this is hard. A few to get started...
   
   Steal Like an Artist is good for a newly creative
   
   The Creative Habit is amazing for people who think creativity is magic... it demystifies that notion and explains how Creativity is about practice and routine. Very smart book.
   
   DeBono's Thinking Course is heavy reading but very good in learning how to think creatively. It's a must, in my opinion.
   
   Grid Systems is bland but essential. Learn it. By one of the great masters.
   
   Art & Visual Perception is also mega heavy, but will teach you how to understand how good creative work is composed and why it works. Very interesting if you can take it.
   
   A Smile in the Mind is a great book that shows how wit and messaging in design makes for powerful and memorable work. It's a good primer on how designers work concept into their visuals. It's about discovery and the bliss that comes from that (that's why our honey bottles were so successful... discovery is everything).
   
   Also check out www.designersandbooks.com. It's a long running list of great books that are recommended by designers much more skilled than I am. These are the greats.
   
   Hope this all helps.