Habits that changes life

Habits that changes our life.

Tame Your Environment :If you’re not in the habit of keeping a creative schedule, you’ll encounter mental resistance when you try to do your work. Go easy on yourself by setting up an office or studio with mental triggers. Remove anything from this environment that distracts, for example, television or a games console. You could even go as far as disconnecting Internet access in advance. Willpower is a finite resource, and you don’t want to expend it wrestling with distractions. Remove anything from your environment that has nothing to do with your big ideas.Leave visual clues about your work and ideas. Write notes to yourself each night about what to work on the next day.

Ease Yourself into It: To cultivate lasting creative habits, prepare your work in advance.This practice ensures starting work each day takes a minimum amount of effort. If you’re writing a research paper ,thesis, for example, open the paper in your computer, connect your headphones and queue your writing music in advance. This way, upon waking each morning, you’ll know what to do immediately without thinking about it. You can also ease yourself in by spending 10 or 15 minutes reviewing the previous day’s work, reading, doodling or admiring the work of others who inspire you.Like stretches help an athlete warm up, this will help you become more intimate with your ideas faster.

Create Space: Working on your big ideas can be messy, but you need a clear space to create this mess in the first place. When you finish working for the day, reset your workspace and sort through what you’ve worked on. Just as a master craftsman puts away his tools after work, you must tidy your desk or studio, file your notes and reorganise everything. Then, lay out the following day’s work and ideas and the tools you need before you go to bed.

Become More Efficient: The creative process is sometimes sloppy and disorganised. Both good ideas and bad ideas appear at unusual times like at 03:23. They arrive in unexpected places too, like in the shower. So, you must be efficient about your routine. To do this, anticipate what you need and then arrange everything so it’s to hand. Organise your tools and your supplies so that everything is in one place that you can easily access. Then, check that you have everything you need such as pens, pencils, paints, paper, books, your notes, a firm resolve etc. before you start working. You don’t want to waste time looking for your notes, research or buying supplies online when you could be working on a big idea.

Become More Effective :As creativity recommends artists set a goal of painting their masterpiece by working six days a week, but what if this practice is too ambitious? Open up your calendar, set a deadline for your creative project and, working backwards, block out time on your calendar each day to create.Then hold yourself accountable to this routine. At the end of the week or month, review your routine. Ask yourself how many new ideas you came up with and whether you’re hitting your target word count or putting in enough hours in front of the canvas or page. If you find your creative project isn’t on track, consider what’s holding you back and how you can remove these blocks. Get outside help from somebody who will hold you accountable if you must. Only renegotiate your deadlines as a last resort.

Nudge Yourself Along: If you can’t write for an hour today, sit down and write for 15 minutes. If you don’t have enough energy to paint or write after work, try for just five minutes in the morning. If you’re feeling anxious about emailing interview requests for your documentary, just draft the email and gather the addresses you need. If you’re a writer, turn up in front of the blank page at the same time every day and force yourself to write even if you’ve got nothing to say. I like to start with a short journal entry about my intentions for the day or re-read the previous day’s work. You will make steady but determined progress towards your goal if you nudge your big ideas along in some small way each day.

Feed Your Subconscious :Before I go to bed, I read a section of what I worked on that day. I hold this thought in my mind for a few seconds before going to sleep. I do this because keeping an idea in my mind passes it over to my subconscious, which will continue to work on the idea while I sleep. When I wake the next morning, I try to remember what I dreamt. I write this down quickly before it disappears from my mind. Afterwards, I make a conscious effort to get to do at least an hour’s work before I eat and get ready for the day, as I want to catch the ideas of my subconscious while they linger and before the demands of the day take over. If you’re going to use this approach, hold an image of what you want to accomplish firmly in your mind before you drift to sleep. It should be something specific, like a particular section of your book or a verse in a song you’re writing. 

Reward Yourself: The Hindu spiritual text, the Bhagavad Gita tells us, “You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction.” So, it’s no surprise that creative masters feel motivated to continue even if they’re working alone or progress is slow. One of the best ways to foster this inner motivation is to mark small victories, like keeping a new creative routine or reaching a little milestone such as a targeted word-count or a finished painting. You can mark these milestones by taking a trip to a museum, a walk in the park, a lie in on the weekends or by enjoying a night out with friends. The goal here isn’t to work on an idea solely for a reward; it’s to build a mental link between your new creative routine and positive experiences.

Commit to Your Ideas :You can’t count on creativity to appear at will; it takes months or even years to develop the mental resources you need to come up with or recognise quality ideas consistently, but here’s the thing: Turning up every day sends a signal to your subconscious that you’re dedicated to the virgin canvas, the blank page or your medium of choice. Like a long-distance runner training for the Olympics, by turning up each day, you prepare your mind and body for your creative, hard work. Then, when an idea arrives in a dream or when inspiration strikes, you’ll have the resources to recognise it and act on it.

Creative Takeaways: Sleep deeply before you approach the blank page or the canvas. Remember, you must find it easy to begin your creative practise, and it should feel effective, efficient and rewarding (at least some of the time) if it’s going to become a habit.