If you’re someone who does creative work, unless it’s bringing in a reasonable paycheck, you probably treat it like a hobby. Is it really a big deal if you didn’t write today? Your family needed clean laundry. So what if you didn’t paint this afternoon? Your sister called to vent about another crisis at her corporate job. Sure, you wish you could have gone outside and shot some photographs while the light was fantastic, but your kids were fighting and you needed to intervene.
We hear a lot about setting boundaries — in families, in friendships, and in the workplace. So what makes us think we can neglect them when it comes to our creative time? We often devalue any work that doesn’t earn an income, and what’s more, we assume talent is all that creative work demands. “The one thing creative souls around the world have in common is that they all have to practice to maintain their skills,” writes choreographer Twyla Tharp in her book The Creative Habit. “Art is a vast democracy of habit.”
If you set and hold healthy boundaries around your creativity, you’ll be growing the conditions for your best art to bloom. Here are three ways to establish perimeters that work for you.
Schedule your creativity and make it nonnegotiable
You wouldn’t cancel an important doctor’s appointment because you just weren’t feeling it and your best friend invited you to coffee, right? Make your creative time nonnegotiable, meaning not up for discussion. You schedule time, you turn down invites, you reserve the room (read: the kids don’t get the den to play in for the time you need to be in there to work), you hire the sitter. And then you hold the line. You do not cancel this date with the muse for any reason unless you are on your deathbed, the house is on fire, or your city has been attacked by extraterrestrial terrorists.
You may be surprised to find that the person who breaches your boundaries the most is… you. When you make your creative time nonnegotiable, you stop bargaining with the part of your brain that would much rather binge watch Peaky Blinders or get a quick dopamine hit from knocking a few items off the to-do list. In a recent Tim Ferris interview, writer Neil Gaiman says that when he’s writing, he’s allowed to do two things: write or stare out the window. No matter how difficult the writing is, eventually, he says, staring out the window gets to be boring. So he writes.
Your action item: Look at your schedule and find all the possible pockets of time for your creativity. If you have a partner, roommate, kids, or anyone who might push up against this boundary, let them know this is your creative time and that it’s nonnegotiable. Find someone to hold you accountable. A fellow creative or your bossy friend will ensure you keep your promises to yourself.
Reframe the word “no”
As a writing coach, I often work with people who are struggling to prioritize their creative work over doing dishes, running errands, or returning emails. If I had a nickel for every time I heard one of my clients say they’d frittered away writing time because they “feel guilty,” I’d own an island. The reasons for the guilt vary, but it always comes down to this: They’ve put others’ needs above their own. In these cases, we reframe the situation. What if saying “no” to someone (or something) isn’t a negative? What if this “no” is actually a “yes” — to your vibrant, flourishing, life-giving creative force?
To stand your best chance of forming a lifelong creative habit, Tharp suggests building a metaphorical bubble around yourself — and then staying in it. “Being in the bubble does not have to mean exiling yourself from people and the world,” she writes. “It is more a state of mind, a willingness to subtract anything that disconnects you from your work.”
The more you respect your bubble, the more others will, too. If you’re quick to give in every time someone knocks on your home office door, or say “yes” every time you’re invited to a spontaneous dinner, you’re telegraphing that you’re not, in fact, very serious about your creativity — so why should they be?
Your action item: Write down what your creative bubble might look like. Then list all the unhelpful habits keeping you from living in it. (Pro tip: See how much screen time you’re logging on your phone). In getting rid of those habits, don’t think of it as depriving yourself, but rather saying “yes” to possibility.
Get resourceful about overcoming obstacles
It’s all too easy to give up when the conditions for creativity aren’t ideal. But unless you’re constantly on an idyllic retreat in the woods, they never will be. Here are some creative ways to overcome the obstacles of life:
One writer I work with is a mom who does her writing at all the grocery stores and local gyms that offer free childcare while customers shop or work out. Genius, right?
Another client swaps creative time with her partner, watching the kids while he works on his music so that he’ll watch them when she works on her novel.
Many of my clients bring their laptops to their cars and work while waiting for school pickups and other obligations.
When I needed to get out of living in chaotic, loud, expensive NYC, but didn’t know where I’d go, I embarked on a nearly year-long housesitting adventure, writing my novels in beautiful locations all over the world — and only paying for the airfare to get to those places.
Your action item: Consider: What resources are available to you that you’re not utilizing? Who can become a co-conspirator? Are you wasting your commute? (Subways are great places to write!) Is there a little-used conference room at work you can sneak into to fine-tune your sketches after hours? It’s time to get imagining so that you can get creating.
*This post was originally published in Medium’s Forge publication.
