I'm about one month into the hyper creativity experiment. How has it gone so far?
First, it's been very productive. I'll drop a list of the items published in the last month at the end of this post. It's wild how much can get done by making stuff every day. That's been great.
Second, I tried some new things and was able to push forward projects I'd been meaning to accomplish for a while. The podcast launch, archiving CCG content, and putting Morning Worship 1 on Distrokid were all ideas I finally pulled the trigger on.
Third, having creative side projects is healthy for my mental state. There is always some kind of drama at work, at home, or whatever. Being able to lose myself in a creative project each day is helpful. It's a nice retreat after a long day, or sometimes a better way to start my day.
Fourth, I feel more ready to take chances. Every creative project is a risk for me. At the very least I'm putting a little bit of myself out there. It might not work. Doing that every day makes me a bit less afraid of failure. I fail all the time. It's not the end of the world.
Fifth, I'm learning to appreciate how random life is. The work I put in and the result are rarely correlated. So I'm leaning into the randomness. I'm becoming more random myself. The results are predictably... random.
Sixth, friction matters. The more I can reduce friction to do stuff, the more things I will create. It's not about maxing out quantity or quality. It's about making sure I show up. A lot of my effort goes into making sure I don't have to put in a lot of effort to get started.
Seventh, I'm investing in better tools. Tools by themselves don't make me more creative. And they don't always improve my work. However, a good tool can reduce friction, inspire a new idea, or speed up everything. I don't want the tools to hold me back. Tools should propel me forward.
Eighth, creating is more fun than consuming. I could go on a rant about how society is too consumer oriented and people need to get back to making more things, but I'll spare you that. For me, creating things is more fun than passively consuming them. I am more alive when I'm making things and doing things.
Ninth, the rules aren't that important. There are a lot of made up rules, best practices, and other nonsense about how to do everything. I don't believe they matter as much as we think. This is double true on a long enough time horizon. The more I create, the more I'm interested in going against the grain every point I can.
Tenth, it's all about energy. It all comes back to energy. The energy required to create. The energy that comes back to me from sharing with you. It's one big feedback loop of energy. This experiment gave me insight into how that works. I'm sure that will be useful later.
So, that's a few things that stuck out to me from this first month of hyper creativity. And now for the list of what got done:
Newsletter Issues:
Podcast Episodes:
YouTube Videos:
One last thought. This is working for me. So I'm going to keep going and my plan is to never leave. Not sure where that is going to take me, but I'm excited to see what happens next.
-Brian