The Hyper Creativity Experiment
What if you got in the zone and refused to leave?
I started an experiment in hyper-creativity/hyper-productivity. It’s inspired by one of my favorite artists - Akira The Don. I heard about his approach years ago and at times have done similar things, but never in a fully sustainable way.
HERE IS A WHOLE TWITTER THREAD BY AKIRA ON THIS TOPIC->
I’ve recently been busy with work and life in a way that’s put me in a bit of a creative funk. That’s not good for my soul. I realize I need to do weird, creative things pretty much all the time.
What would happen if I just followed the wild creative impulses and followed through on all these ideas in my head? That’s the question and that’s the experiment.
That is where a bunch of new stuff is going to come from. It’s going to be new, strange, creative things.
I don’t expect anything from this next phase to be what most would consider “coherent”. As in, it’s not all going to be the same type of content, the same genre of creation, in a standard format, or really anything else. It’s not because I’m anti-specialization or anything, as much as the fact that I’m interested in just making a lot of things and hitting the publish button over and over and over again on whatever comes out the other side.
For example, I’m starting a podcast. I don’t know what it’s about exactly.
The usual approach would be to start a podcast about a specific topic, say “Programming With Ruby on Rails” or something like that. And then every episode would be at least tangentially related to that core topic. And the episodes would come out every week. And eventually a format would set in and people would be used to the show going a certain way and so on. That is the usual approach.
My podcast is almost 100% the opposite. There is no theme. No schedule. No format. Nothing that would tie the thing together at all except maybe me, but who knows?
The plan is to record stuff and hit publish.
Same with this newsletter, my YouTube channel, and whatever else strikes my fancy. There is no plan beyond staying in my creative zone. For me that means writing/recording/coding something and then hitting publish as often as possible. Daily would be the ideal in terms of both creating and publishing. In reality, I’m not sure I have the time and energy available to devote fully to that kind of creative schedule right now (especially on the publishing side of it, as some things take longer than a day to finish).
Not everything I create will end up on this newsletter right away (or maybe at all?). It just depends on if it makes sense or not. I don’t want this to turn into something where I’m blasting out low-value announcements all the time to you just to hype my latest bit of content available elsewhere. So, when it makes sense I might batch up things or just do a “link to all the things” kind of email once in a while.
The real purpose of this is to see what happens if I just “get in the zone and refuse to leave”. I’ve done that a few times in my life for what I would call brief periods of time. This is an experiment in getting there and staying there.
I’m approaching hyper creativity in a simple enough way - I am devoting myself to making something interesting every day. It could be software, music, writing, video, or something else. Ideally, it’s something I can publish to the internet for the rest of the planet to experience.
There are a few additions to previous attempts that should make this sustainable. I don’t have to hit publish every day (but I should be publishing at a high cadence). I don’t have to finish a project in one day or sometimes at all (but I should finish what I can as quickly as possible). I don’t have to stick to the same topic, genre, format, or medium (but I need to follow inspiration where it leads). I don’t care about the metrics or monetization (but I do care about enjoying the process along the way).
In short, I’m doing everything I can to eliminate friction and live in the moment of the current creative impulse. I have no idea what is going to happen or what all I’m going to create or do on the other side of this.
There are a lot of areas I plan to cut out wasted time/energy/effort, as well as areas where I’m going to point that surplus energy into creative new adventures. If I can do both simultaneously, there is no telling what might happen.
You will get a front row glimpse into the outcome of this Hyper Creativity Experiment as it happens.
So yeah, it should be a good time. :-)
-Brian
P.S. Here is one my first creative adventures…