Variety is the spice of life. Creative activities are all about variety. But creative activities such as preparing a speech or writing an essay seem to demand more from us.
Why are creative activities more difficult than regular activities? Why does it take more effort to manage and plan them? I believe that the reason lies in the special time and mental requirements for creative work.
By definition, creativity means doing something new or different. Hence, it is difficult to estimate how much time it would take. Because of this, we tend to start creative tasks once when we have the confidence that we have sufficient free time to complete the task. Now, strictly speaking, time is always available. It is always possible to find time in the midst of other tasks. But such time segments are useless for creative work.
The problem is that for doing any creative work, one has to achieve a state called "flow". This is when our mind is fully aware of all the critical pieces of the creative work, and we can process that information to make new decisions. Until we attain the first stage of understanding what we have to do, the second stage of producing something is very inefficient. The first stage always requires some time and the more complex the creative work, the more time it consumes.
When we have a short time segment, we don't have enough time to achieve the first stage. When we get interrupted, we have to start all over from the beginning. When we feel that we are likely to be interrupted, we may decide not to start an activity.
People generally look at the second stage of a creative activity, where we actually produce something. For example, a Toastmasters speech may only take five minutes to say and perhaps a few more minutes to write the words. But to reach the state where we understand what we has to say and be able to present it properly, we require a lot of time.
So we should not define creative activities in terms of the time taken for producing the output, but for the entire process of thinking, understanding and producing.
That is why we may be able to achieve higher performance in creativity in unusual circumstances. For example, working very early hours or very late hours is better for creativity, because the chances of being interrupted are very low. Or we could choose a physical location where we can work in peace for long periods of time. Although a Starbucks may seem noisier than most places, it is a place where you are likely to be less interrupted by someone.
Another way of achieving higher creativity is the process of "desk-clearing". For example, to ensure that other tasks are not preying on our mind, we can dispose of possible distractions like replying to emails or doing the necessary household chores. Even though this may seem like procrastination, it actually helps create a solid chunk of time that can be spent on creative work.
It is sometimes possible to take a salami slice approach to creativity. Do a little every day by structuring the steps that you have to do. While this helps in procrastination, it becomes too mechanical and the quality of the output is a production-line type of quality. No total failures, but no big hits either. Using creative flow can produce better hits.
To summarize, every creative activity consists of clearing away distractions, understanding what you have to do and then finally doing it. If you budget for the entire time duration, you should be able to do a good job at the creative work.
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