Creativity is not just about being imaginative or original - it's about the ability to create. For me, creativity exists in two places: the social, inspired place and the isolated, disciplined place. I think a large part of being a creative person is cultivating the two and knowing when to be where.
I use the internet to broadly educate myself and discover new ideas. Once I’ve found a direction, I turn to the library to dive deeper and seek out more credible, well-sourced information. So I go out into the world and gather more inspiration, explore landscapes and architecture and art shows and live music, travel, meet new people. This fuels the fire, especially when I meet a group of people who are also compelled by the same ideas and have complementary knowledge to share. And at some point, that has to rest too. At some point, I have to let my psyche simmer. There are so many spectacular artists and craftspersons displaying their work on the web that it’s easy to lose track of time. The information is endless. This is why social media sites like Pinterest and Instagram are so exhausting.
Discipline is the counterweight to inspiration, a sharp dopamine drop from the hyper-stimulated state of discovery, uniqueness, and elation. At some point, I have to condense the original vision, tune out the rest and get to work. It’s pure fun being inspired and being in the vision-making phase; doing the work is satisfying too, but in a different way. Building the vision requires concentration and narrow-mindedness to bring it to completion. It is deeply rewarding to convert the fleeting electro-chemical spark of thought into tangible objects.
Once the plan has been worked out, I cross the threshold from inspiration to discipline. I can’t go back or else I risk losing motivation. I think it's beneficial to keep the checkpoints small and compounding, that way if the plan needs to pivot, it's just a small checkpoint that needs change. There's not a need to go back into the full inspiration phase. Because when I’m in the disciplined place I need to be able to be flexible if a challenge arises, but I really can’t be tempted by too many new big ideas. Inspiration can be mildly addictive. Letting it in could send me down another distracting trajectory. That’s why I think working solo and offline is a huge benefit to creativity.
Creativity is the dynamic tension between inspiration and discipline.