Transcripts
1. Introduction: A lot of creatives struggle with consistency in their
creative output. Some days it seems
like everything is flowing and you
feel unstoppable. Other days it seems like
the flow has evaporated and you'll never have another
creative thought again. Well, if that's how you've
been feeling these days, I want you to know
that I know how you feel and you are not alone. My name is Mark samples. I'm a writer, musician, and
professional musicologist. And I created this course for one purpose that's
to share with you a step-by-step method to build your own personalized, creative, deep work routine
so that you can get more creative work
done day after day, so that you can
summon and harness your creative
energies over time. When I was going
through music school, I thought creativity with something that just
sort of struck whenever it felt like and we
had no say in the matter. Then when I became
a professional, I realized that professionals don't wait for
creativity to strike. They sit down in the chair
and they put themselves in a position to receive
creativity on a daily basis. And that if you put together a routine and put in
the work day after day, that creativity will
come to you and you'll be ready to receive
it in this course, I'm going to teach you the
three phases that you should implement in your own
creative deep work routine. First, prepare. Second, do the work. Third, reflect. I'll also share with you a
number of other principles, tips and tricks to help you put your creative deep work
routine into practice. I'll tell you what the
creators daily struggle is and how to fight the enemy of
resistance that tries to choke your creativity. I'll explain to you
what Deep Work is and how creative deep work is different from other
types of deep work. I'll also show you
how you can design a sequence of actions
that's unique to you, that will help you trigger
more states of creative flow. And finally, I'll share with you some pitfalls to avoid
when implementing your creative deep work routine and how to trust the process. Knowing that the routine
that you have set up will get you to your goals. Whether you want to write songs, create designs, write
a novel, paint, finish your non-fiction
book proposal, write a screenplay, create YouTube videos
or anything else. Your art will
benefit from having a consistent daily routine. All you need to take this course is a piece of paper and a pen, or your favorite digital
note-taking software. So join me and
let's get started.
2. Class Project: Your Creative Deep Work Routine: Hey, thanks for joining me on this journey to build
your own personalized, creative, deep work routine. Let's talk about
your class project. The class project is probably
what you might expect. You will develop your
very own personalized, creative deep work routine. This could be a Google document. It could be a bit of
text in your notes app. It could even be a
handwritten list in your journal or drawn an illustrated in your
very own custom, way, low-tech and no fuss is
the name of the game here. What will the routine
look like? Exactly? It will be a simple set of instructions of
actions that you can follow every day to summon and harness your
creative energies. Look up from your work a month or a year
later and you'll be amazed at how much you can accomplish if you
work day by day. I will be looking for a couple of specific things and the routines
that you create, have you clearly
identified your main art, the one that you want to spend the most time investing in. That could be painting, it could be writing, it could be producing
music or any other art. Have you created concrete, actionable steps that
you can take every day? Is your routine realistic? Have you followed the
108010 rule which says that 80% of your time in a given work session should be focused on actually
doing the work. And only 20% total on preparing on the front end
and reflecting afterward. If this all sounds just a
bit daunting, take heart. All you need to do is produce a first draft of your
creative deep work routine. In fact, I give you
permission to create an utterly terrible first drafts of your creative
deep work routine. Once you've completed
that first draft, post it to the project page, then you can learn from
others who have done the same and refine over time. The most important thing
is just to get started. So here's what you
need to do right now. Get out a piece of
paper or open up a document and take
notes on the course. I'm gonna be walking
you step-by-step through this entire creation. So you'll want to
follow along with the activities as they arrive. Don't let the simplicity of
this class project fool you. Creating a clear daily
routine is one of the most powerful ways
that you can summon and harness your creative
energies over time. Let's get started
right now and make this an incredible year for
your creative production.
3. Every Creator's Daily Struggle: In this lesson, I
want to get very specific about the problem we're trying to solve
in this course. As creators, we face a problem. And it's a big problem. And it's a problem that
we are going to have to solve. And here's the problem. Every day, you have to
fight through the barriers that stand between you and
your professional job, which is sitting
down every day and making headway on your
most important projects. The barriers are everywhere. Distraction, social
media, netflix, doom scrolling, and your
own procrastination. There's always something else. You could be doing. Some fire, you could
be putting out, some tweak you
could be making to your system all of this, instead of doing your main art, I call this situation the
creators daily struggle. Every day we have
to fight against an enemy that's trying to
make us lose this struggle, to let us go one more day
without working on our art. It's what Steven Pressfield
has called the resistance. Here's what Pressfield
has to say about it. Pressfield explains
the resistance is the enemy within its
your lower nature. The part that wants
to stay in bed, to eat the whole
pint of ice cream, to get drunk, to watch
TV instead of writing. He also said this, the resistance is the negative
force that wants to keep you stuck where you are
doing, what you're doing. Because it's safer. And the bigger the goal
you're trying to achieve, the stronger is the resistance. Take a moment to think back
through the past year, how many of those goals
have been left undone? Gaping at you, open
loops, unfinished. You know, the feelings
of crushing, shame, inadequacy that come along
with facing these truths. But what if we could
win the daily struggle? What if we could become
equipped with the tools and the strategies to be able
to win it every day. Imagine what you could
accomplish in a week, in a month, six
months, or a year. Imagine what it will feel like
when you can finally raise a glass and celebrate your completion of
that major project. Completing the first
draft of your book, finishing your demo album, publishing your first
50 YouTube videos, completing that
visual arts project. When you can look up
from your computer, Sit down that brush, export your project, and finally feel that
rush of emotion. And say to yourself, I did it. You can have this feeling. And the first step is to
develop a creative deep work routine that you can
lean into every day. So that's the problem we're trying to solve in this course. How to win the creators
daily struggle. But I have one final
secret for you. The creators daily struggle
is actually not a curse. It's your birthright. As an artist engaging
with the creators. Daily struggle is what
makes you an artist, what distinguishes
you from others. It's what gives your work, your hard work, meaning. But what exactly is a
creative deep work routine? And how do you make
one for yourself? That's what we will be
covering in the next lesson. But first, here's your
exercise for this lesson. Take a moment to be
honest with yourself and respond to the
following prompt. What are your
biggest frustrations with your current
creative routine? Be specific. Listing them out
here will give you incredible clarity and make
your frustrations T-Mobile, I'll see you in the next lesson.
4. The Creative Deep Work Routine: So what exactly is a
creative deep work routine? Well, the concept
of deep work comes from a book of the same
name by Cal Newport. And in this book, cal Newport defines deep work as follows. Professional activities
performed in a state of distraction free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities
to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and
are hard to replicate. So deep work is first, distraction free and second,
cognitively demanding. A third characteristic
that's not represented in this definition is that deep work should take place in extended time periods, anywhere from an hour long
to 90 min or 120 min. The opposite of deep
work is shallow work. Shallow work is not
cognitively demanding. It does not take a
particular expertise and therefore is
easily replicable. Creative Deep Work has the same characteristics
as deep work, but focuses more
on the creative. So instead of cognitively
demanding tasks, we think more about creatively demanding tasks when we're talking about
creative deep work. Now Newport argues
that deep work is both rare and valuable. It's rare because most
people don't wanna do it. It's uncomfortable. And it's valuable
because the product of this work creates
value for the world. And the same is true for
a creative deep work. How many other creative
artists out there? We'll just keep doing the same
thing they've always done. Keep taking a haphazard
approach to creating their art. Keep taking the path
of least resistance. Think back to the creators daily struggle that we talked about in the
previous lesson. Most people will not put up with the discomfort of fighting
that battle every day. But you can bet that the
creators that you admire, the ones that you want to model your own careers after the ones who seem to consistently
produce amazing work, you can bet that
they are not taking the path of least resistance. They are taking the path
of creative deep work. And you can too. So here are the components of a creative deep work routine. One, a clear compass to a clear set of actions
and instructions. And 33 phases. Prepare, do the work, and reflect the
following lessons. We'll address each of these
components in more detail, just a couple more things
before we move on. A creative deep work routine is meant to be repeated every day. That's why we call it a routine. The routine should be
able to be executed in the span of a
single work session. Again, the work session
should be an hour at minimum, but you should try
to work up to 90 min or 120 min eventually. Now, don't get too far
ahead of ourselves. If this is the first
time you've attempted to have deep work in any
extended period of time. Don't expect yourself
to be able to get up to 90 min right away. Expect to do 15 or maybe 30 min. And then you can add
week after week, maybe 10 min a
week until you can work up to a more
extended time period. Before we move on
to the next lesson where we will be talking
about checking your compass. Let's talk about some
of the benefits of instituting a creative
deep work routine. The first is momentum. By working on a project every day instead
of intermittently, you can start moving
forward by leaps and bounds instead of by inches. The second benefit of a creative deep work
routine is confidence. You can stay in the flow
from day-to-day and feel your confidence
building over time plus, the routine will add drama to projects that are
nearing completion. The third benefit of having a creative deep work
routine is clarity. You can know exactly how far
you've come on projects, where you are and where you
need to go for the future. So here's your exercise
for this lesson. Take a few minutes to consider and answer the
following question. What would it mean to
you to have a clear, actionable routine to
do your creative work? What is the first
project you would apply this new routine
to completing? I'll see you in the next lesson.
5. Check Your Compass: Now that we know what problem
we're trying to solve, which is to win the
creators daily struggle. And what the answer is, which is a creative
deep work routine. It's time to figure
out where we're going. A creative deep work
routine is no good if it doesn't advance you in the direction
that you want to go. So it's a good idea to
take some time here at the beginning to figure
out where you want to go. And then periodically as you
go through this practice to check in and make
sure you're headed still in the right direction. Now, it's really important
that you're creative. Deep work routine is
dedicated to what I call your main art. Your main art in this case, simply refers to that
art that you want to apply your creative
deep work routine to. So this could be painting,
it could be writing, could be producing music, or whatever art that
you are practicing. If you practice multiple arts, how do you decide which
one is your main art? For instance, what if you're a writer and a
musician like I am, the key is to decide what is the main art for this season. So for instance, right now, I'm focused on writing a book
for this season of my life, writing will be my main art. I still do some work
for my music projects, but they're not in
the primary position. So for instance, maybe
I'll work on writing in the morning sessions and
give more time to those, and then work on music
projects in the afternoons, maybe only three days a week. My main art though, is the one that at
the end of the year, when I look back, what do I most want
to have accomplished then when I reach a milestone
on my book project, maybe the season shifts and I focus more on music
for a season. So you can have different
arts for different seasons. The most important thing
is that you identify and define what your main
art is for this season. So here's what I want you to do. Get out a clean sheet of paper
or start a new document. I'm starting a document here
in my Notion account and put my creative deep
work routine at the top. Take a moment to determine the main art and the current
season of your life. And underneath the title, commit to your main art
by putting it there. So I'll put my main art
and that is writing. Now this may seem
a little silly, but you will need this
reminder when resistance hits on day two or
day four or day 27. And you need to remind
yourself what you're focusing on in this
season of your life. Now on a separate
sheet of paper, I'll start a new page here. You want to list all of the current projects
in your life. So this is really a brainstorm where you can list all of the projects that
you have going on. I'll do that now and
I'll speed it up so that you don't have to
watch me type it all out. Okay, so now I've done that. So look at your list
and the next step is to identify the three projects
that six months from now, you will have, you will most have wished
that you have done. So think, think forward six months from now
and ask yourself, which are the projects that you would be most
excited about having either a completed or having
achieved major progress on. So I'll do that here for
my writing projects. Definitely the proposal
is one of those. So I will give this a color and we'll give
that an orange background. And then certainly getting
the sway manuscript. This is the name of my book and also the scholarly article on Duke Ellington
publicity manuals. That's one that I really
need to get done. So those are the three that I would most want to have made
progress on in six months. And now, here is, if you're doing this
on paper, by the way, just circle it, just
give it a circle. Now, the next step is to star the one project
that you absolutely must get done during that time. And for me, that
is this top one, the Sway book proposal. And this book proposal
actually needs considerable writing time
and that's why this would go into my creative
deep work routine. So now on this, I have underlined it, but if this were on
a piece of paper, I would give it a big
star to indicate that this is the project that I
really need to be focusing on. A tip at this stage is when you look at the projects that you have in front of you. If there's one that you
really feel resistance toward or even fear if
you're scared of a project, that could be a good
indication that that is exactly the one that you should
be working on right now. And that's exactly the one
that would most benefit from a creative deep work routine that you put in place every day. Now what I'm going to
do is I'm going to take that project that
I've identified and I'm going to put it on
my creative deep work routine document right under where I've listed my main art. So my main project is this book proposal
that I'm working on. So what we've done
with these steps is we have checked our compass. Now, imagine that
you're creative. Deep work routine is a ship
that you're sailing in. Well, your main art
would be like the ocean, the ocean that you've
chosen to sail in. But this project that you've identified is more like
the compass heading, that direction
that you're going. So here's your exercise
for the end of this video. Take a moment if you
haven't already to complete the exercises that I've
described in this lesson, start-up a new document. Put my creative deep
work routine at the top. Identify your main art and
identify a main project. I'll see you in the next lesson.
6. Step 1: Prepare: In this lesson, we're going
to talk about the first phase of your routine and
that is to prepare. So I don't know if
you've noticed, but you've already
started building your creative deep work routine on this document
that you have started, you've identified your main
art and you have identified a main project that
you're going to point your routine at as
a compass heading. Now it's time to build
out each phase of your routine to set up how
it's going to look at. The first phase is to prepare. So in this lesson, we're going
to build that first phase. Now, this first phase is
meant to act as a buffer between your creative
deep work time and the rest of the world. It's meant to create a ritual pathway that
will set your mind and your emotions up for being ready to engage in
creative deep work. If you do this time and again, your body will just
learn that this is the time and this is the way that I do
creative deep work. And you can really switch into creative mode much more quickly
if you do this over time, the prepare step will
also bring clarity and focus to each one of your
individual deep work sessions. In the prepare phase, you want to achieve
three things. First, you want to set
a specific concrete, achievable goal for that
specific work session. Secondly, you want
to gather all of your materials that you
will need in that session. And third, you want to design a specific sequence
of repeatable steps that will trigger
your brain to enter a flow state as you design
this prepare phase, keep a couple of things in mind. First of all, the
prepare phase shouldn't last more than about
five or 10 min. This is not meant to be an extensive phase where you can procrastinate
doing your work. So it should take
about five to 10 min. Secondly, think about
maybe moving to a new location when you enter your creative deep work routine. Sometimes shifting locations
can help your brain understand that you're getting
into a new creative mode. Okay, so the first
piece of this is to set a concrete achievable goal. This goal has to be
achievable within the work session that you
have in front of you. Now, if you have a larger task, maybe your concrete goal is just to take a particular piece of, a smaller piece of that
goal and have that be concrete objective for
that work session. You can also say work towards completing a section
of your project. Your goal should push you
out of your comfort zone, but it really should
be achievable. By the end of the work session. Ask yourself, at
the end of the day, What will I wish that I had accomplished in this
deep work session? Sometimes that can give you clarity about really what
you should be doing. Here are some specific
examples of goals that you might set for yourself in one of your work sessions. For writers, it might
be writing 1,000 words or finishing a section of your book proposal
for musicians. It might be writing a song
or a draft of a song. It might be completing
a beat that you can then send to
your collaborator. It might be creating
an instrument, instrumental
arrangement for a track that you're producing
for painters, It might be doing sketches of a larger
project that you're working on or adding detail to a current project that's
in the painting phase. For YouTubers, maybe
a good goal would be to finish a script
for that video that you want to produce or edit the footage that you
have already created. Or it could be to sit down and film the a role for
your next video, remember, these
are just examples. Your goals will likely
be different from these, or there'll be different
from day to day. But here's one thing to keep
in mind to avoid as a goal. Don't do research during your
creative deep work time. Or as Steven Pressfield put it, never do research during
prime working time. Of course, you still have to
get research done sometimes, but do that at other times. The creative deep work
routine is sacred. Working time, doing
research can too easily turn into
procrastination. When you're creating,
you should be converging ideas to
create something new, not diverging ideas by
introducing other information. Okay, after you have set a goal for this
specific work session, you want to gather your
materials for that session. This is pretty straightforward
and just remember, you want to gather
your materials based on the goal that you
have set for yourself. Don't spend too much
time trying to figure out everything that you'll
need for the work session. Just do your best to gather
the materials that you can. The point here is to not
waste time during that, those golden moments when
you're doing your work session. Wasting time trying to find materials that you could
have gotten beforehand. For artists, this could mean gathering your brushes
or your pencils. For musicians, it's getting
all your instruments plugged in and your amps
turned on for riders. It's pulling up the document
that you're writing in and maybe getting the research that you have
already accomplished, ready and right in front of you so that
you can refer to it. Now that you have
set your goal for the work session and you've
gathered your materials, you want to create an on-ramp into the actual act
of doing the work. Now, this is a sequence
of repeatable steps that will actually help you get into the mindset of doing work. These steps should
not be cognitively demanding and they should
not be open-ended. In fact, they
shouldn't really take much effort to decide
what to do within them. Let me give you some examples. Here's some things
that you might include in your
creative Deep Work. On-ramp. Drink a full glass of water, do a breathing exercise, clean up your desk for 60
s, go to the bathroom. If you haven't done so recently, check your next appointment
time so that you can have a worry-free
deep work session. Take a quick walk or listened to a trigger song that
gets you really motivated and in the
mindset of being creative, the final step of
this on-ramp should be to set a timer for
the exact amount of time that you want to do your creative Deep Work
Session and then get going. So let's step back
and look at what you've accomplished
in this prepare step. At the end of the prepare phase of your creative
deep work routine, you will have set a specific
goal for that work session. You will have gathered
all the materials that you're going to need
during that work session. And you will have gone
through a series of sequenced actions
that help you get into the mindset of creating. So here is your exercise
for this lesson. Create and write down a sequence
of steps that encompass your very own version of this prepare phase of
your creative Deep Work. Select three or four of
those on ramping actions. You can use either
the ones that I suggested or create your
own and write those down and put those into your creative deep work routine document that you are
in the process of creating.
7. Step 2: Do the Work: In this lesson, we're
going to be talking about the second phase of your daily creative
deep work routine. And that's the part where
you actually do the work. This is where you're
going to actually do the hard work that you
have set your mind to. In some ways, this phase is
the simplest to explain, but it's the hardest to do. Now, here's something
really important. The one thing to take away
from this lesson, indeed, the one thing to take away
from this whole course is that everything comes down to
actually doing the work. You need to focus
relentlessly on doing your main art
undistracted every day. Everything else is secondary
to doing the work. Tweak the different
phases however you want. But make sure you do the work, change the approach
however you want. But make sure to do the work. Doing the work is what you
will feel most resistant to and maybe want to work on perfecting some of
these other sections, but don't fall for that trap. You have to focus relentlessly
on doing the work. And it's at this
point that I will introduce the 108010 principle. This principle says that 80% of any work session should be dedicated to actually
doing the work. If you have a session
of 100 min long, then 80 of those
minutes should be spent actually doing your
work, doing the painting, producing the music,
writing the words, only 10 min on either side. So 20 min total should be
dedicated to preparing. And then the final phase, which we'll talk about later, which is reflecting on the
work that you've done. So the 108010 principle is
meant to keep you honest and keep you dedicated
to actually spending most of your time
doing the work. So how do you approach
actually doing that work in the creative
Deep Work Session? Well, everyone's art is going
to be slightly different. But here are some tips
to keep in mind that apply to all creative
deep work sessions. First, keep your goal in sight. And I mean this
literally, actually, when you write down your goal on a piece of paper
or on a document, make sure that it's visible to you throughout
your work session. That way, when you get a
little lost and maybe you go down into the weeds
on some small side, side alley of your project, having that goal in front
of you can re-center you and get you back on
track for your work session. Secondly, you need to have a zero tolerance
for distraction. And I want you to be
extreme about this. No, you cannot
check your e-mail? Not even once? No. You cannot respond to the phone? Not even once. No. You cannot answer just a
really quick question. No, you cannot just go search. Oh, just a really quick
research question. Now, you need to be
relentless and extreme about your adherence to a zero tolerance policy
for distraction. Now, at the same time, you also need to have a way to capture those thoughts that are off topic or that are insights that aren't relevant
to that work session. You may find that as you're really sitting down
to do your work, that all these other thoughts
start flooding your mind. While you need to have a way, a piece of paper, a separate document on scratchpad where you can
write those thoughts down, release them, know that
you won't forget them, and then get right back
to doing your work. If you've ever done any
sort of mindfulness, mindfulness practice where you notice the thoughts that are occurring to you and then
you sort of let them go. This is the same
sort of approach, but in this case, you are taking those thoughts, capturing them in some way, and allowing your brain
to refocus on your work. Next, it's okay to take breaks in a long deep work
session if needed. But during those breaks, don't check your email. Don't look at the Internet. Don't do things that
will get you out of the mindset of your
creative deep work. So maybe you take a quick walk, but you stay focused
on the question. Maybe you do some
deep breathing, but what you don't want to do in these short breaks is to load your brain up with a new topic that's going to distract you
from your deep work. And finally, it is okay to listen to music during
your deep work session, but you have to be a little
bit careful with this. I recommend using songs that
you're very familiar with. And typically songs that don't have lyrics in them that
are instrumental only. This can sometimes help with your productivity and help you feel like you're
getting in the flow. But again, the most important
thing is to just start. If you want some ideas of
what you might put into your deep work sessions for
this doing the work portion, you might consider
doing a series of exercises that will help you
build skill in your art. If you're a musician, you
can write a song every day. It doesn't have to
be a good song, but just write a song. If you are an illustrator, maybe you create a complete
illustration every day. It doesn't have to be
a good illustration, but you get that done every day. If you're a writer, maybe
you write a short essay, a complete thought every day. And again, it doesn't
have to be good, but it gets done. And the magic of this
is that if you do this over the course of 102060 days, you will not be the same artist as you
were when you started. You will have incredibly
beneficial new skills simply by going through
process of plot, practicing those
skills every day so you can do a
skills-based approach. The other really
common way is to have a project based approach where every day you work a
little bit farther, little by little on one single important project
that you want to complete. So these are two ways to
approach your deep work time, either a skills-based approach or a project based approach. Now the last thing I'll
say is that you should expect to be fatigued
by this work. It is difficult work, but I want to encourage you push to the end of the
deep work session. Even if you feel like
your energy is flagging. If you've committed to a 90
minute deep work session, or even a 15-minute
at the first or a 30-minute at the work session, work all the way to the end. Keep your promise to
yourself that you will do this deep work and you
will get better and better. Okay, here's your
exercise for this lesson. I want you to design
your very own do the work phase of your
creative deep work routine. I want you to decide
on what rules you will or will not allow during
this work session, memorialize these rules in your creative deep
work routine document. I'll see you in the next lesson.
8. Step 3: Reflect: In this lesson, we're
going to talk about phase three of the creative
deep work routine, and that is to reflect. So we've prepared,
we've done the work. Now. We need to reflect
on a daily basis on the work that
we have completed. So when you're
considering the timing of your Deep Work Session and when you need to be to your
next appointment, always remember to
leave a little bit of time at the end to reflect. Five or maybe 10 min
is all you need here. But those small amounts
of time will make a huge difference over
the long term as you are getting better in your creative output for the Reflect portion
of your routine, here are four questions that I want you to
ask yourself and spend some time answering
after every deep work routine. Question one, how
far did you get on your objective on
that goal that you set at the beginning
of the session. It's okay to be honest here, maybe you only got 10% of the way through the
goal that you set. That's okay. Maybe
you need to set, maybe you can use
that information to set better goals
in the future. Question to what went
well during the session, this is really important
that you acknowledge and celebrate the good
portions of this routine, the benefits that
you've gotten from it, and you need to
celebrate those wins. Question three, is this, what can I do better next time? The goal is to get incrementally better and better
at your main art. And that's what this routine
can really do for you. Now, remember, only
constructive thoughts here. There is no room for self shaming in a healthy
creative practice. Question four is an important
one, and it's this. What is the biggest
problem that I need to solve Next on my project? I want you to be specific here. Because if you set
out a clear problem, maybe it's that I need to
figure out the problem in the second act of my,
of my screenplay. How the, how the protagonist is actually going to
solve that problem. Or I need to figure out what
example I'm going to use to make my point in the first
section of chapter two, or I need to figure out the composition of this
visual arts project. If you are clear and
set out the nature of the problem for yourself,
your unconscious mind. We'll actually be working on that problem in the
intervening time between when you end that session and when you
begin the next session, don't underestimate
the ability of your unconscious mind to help
you solve these problems. However, your unconscious mind will not be working
on these problems unless you clearly identify
them for yourself. So clarify your biggest
problem at the end of each deep work session
that you want to be considering for the future. So for this review step, you want to be
reviewing every day. But I also recommend
that you have a weekly and monthly or
maybe a quarterly review of your deep work sessions. This is very simple. In every week, maybe
on the weekend, look back at all of your
creative daily logs that you've completed over
the course of the week. And this will help you get a sense of where you're spinning your wheels and where things
are really going well, that you can advance
on a monthly or maybe a quarterly timescale. What you want to be
looking at more is, am I still going in
the right direction? Is my compass still pointing in a direction that's taking
me where I want to go. Do I need to switch
my season now to consider a new art or
is that coming up soon? So by adding these weekly and then monthly
or quarterly reviews, you can ensure that
you're going in the right direction and that this creative deep work
routine is working for you. Now, it's really important
here that you put all of these reflections
in a creative log, some place where you
can look back at them and consider the
work that you've done. It's really important
to externalize these thoughts because
it helps you interact with yourself and understand your mindset and your
abilities better. So here's your exercise
for this lesson. Create a log either on your
computer in a database of some sort or in a journal where you can log your
creative sessions. Your logs should include
the goal that you stated for that day at the
beginning of the session, as well as your answers
to these four questions that I've shared for you
in the reflect section, okay, Only a couple
more lessons to go. In the next lesson,
we're going to talk about trusting the process. I'll see you in the next lesson.
9. Trust the Process: So I want you to
recall the problem we were trying to solve
in this course. We're trying to overcome the
resistance that tries to keep us from moving forward
on our creative projects. And to do that, we're building a consistent daily routine that will help us get
our creative work done. In this lesson, I
want to encourage you to trust the process and share with you some pitfalls when enacting a creative
deep work routine. If you have followed the
steps up to this point to develop your creative
deep work routine, you should trust
that it will get you where you need
to go over time. Because believe me,
you will have doubts. You will have fears. As you go day by day. You'll, you'll think, maybe I need to tweak
this a little bit. Maybe I need to switch
to another system, but what you need to do
is trust the process. Working day by day is the fastest way to
get to your goal. And in fact, the more you employ your creative
deep work routine, the more trust you will
build in this process. As you see project
after project get completed using your
creative deep work routine. Now, let me share
with you a couple of pitfalls that creatives
run into when trying to develop and start a
creative deep work routine. The first one is perfectionism. Your creative deep work routine does not
need to be perfect. And in fact, it never will be. It just needs to be actionable. As I said in an earlier lesson, I give you permission to create a terrible first drafts of your creative deep work routine. It doesn't really matter. All that matters is that you start and then once you start, you will see what the next step is and
the next revision is. But you will never see those
revisions if you don't go through the work of
actually doing the routine, getting the experience,
and understanding how you need to
adjust your routine. The pitfall of
perfectionism can be overcome by simply starting. The second pitfall is what
I call procrastination. By tweaking. This is where you
tinker and tinker with your system instead of
actually doing the work. So to overcome this one, you want to remember
the 108010 rule, which is in any
deep work session, 80% of what you're
doing should be dedicated to actually
doing the work. Only the very beginning
and end should be spent on preparing
and reflecting. And the final pitfall is this, that you simply forget to do it. So to overcome this one, you want to keep your routine in a visible place on
your computer desktop, maybe printed out
in your workspace. This way, you can
always be reminded to engage in your creative
deep work routine. Remember, it takes two to four, maybe six or more weeks to
make this into a habit. So don't expect to remember this right away without
some extra help. I'll be honest with you. You should expect your
routine to be hard. That's because you're
doing hard things. You will have magical days where the ideas seem to be coming faster than
you can catch them. But these days are not the norm. You will have many more
days where it's just simply hard work and dedication that keep
you moving forward. The important thing is
to trust the process. Check your compass, prepare, do the work, reflects, and get better every day. Every day, you want to add a little bit to
your body of work. Here is your exercise
for this lesson. I want you to write
down the pitfall that you think is
most likely to keep you from succeeding in being dedicated to your creative
deep work routine. Then I want you to write down
the specific steps that you will take to avoid this
pitfall and to succeed. Okay, just one more lesson. I'll see you in the conclusion.
10. Conclusion: Create Every Day: Congratulations, you did it. You got all the way
through this course. I want to thank you for
taking this course with me. Listen, every
creator has to face the daily struggle of pushing through barriers
to create their art. But having a creative deep work routine will help you get
exponentially more work done. Feel more artistically
satisfied and more fulfilled. So I want to
encourage you to use a creative deep work routine
to support your main art. A creative deep work
routine has three phases. Prepare, do the
work, and reflect. The prepare phase
quickly gives you an opportunity to set a goal for that
specific work session, to gather all of your
materials and then go through a specific sequence of actions that will help
trigger a flow state. The work phase is
where you actually do the work undistracted for an extended
period of time on something that is
creatively demanding. The reflect phase
is where you ask yourself how you did
in the work session, how you can get better and what the biggest problem is
that you need to focus on. Next, finally, we talked
about some pitfalls to avoid and that you need to trust the process that
you have set up here. But if there's one key takeaway of this entire
course, it's this. Do whatever you need to
do to carve out the time to accomplish your creative
deep work for your main art. Everything else is secondary. Don't forget to
post your draft of your creative deep
work routine to the project area so others
can learn from you. Go look at others routines
and see what you can take from there as to
refine your own routine. If you enjoyed this class, I would really appreciate it if you followed me on Skillshare, left a review and
connect with me by looking at my artist's page
or checking out my website. I'd love to hear what you think of the course in the comments. And I will do my best to respond to as many
of them as I can. Congratulations and
happy creating.
11. Bonus: Rick Rubin's Insights on the Creative Process: Hey everyone, mark here again. I wanted to create
this bonus video for you to share with you some insights on the Creative
Process from Rick Rubin. Now, you may know who Rick
Rubin is if you don't. He is a legendary music
producer that is known for somehow being able to get the best Work out of the
musicians that he works with. Over the course of his career. He's worked with
artists like Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Johnny Cash, Paul McCartney, Brandy Carlisle. So many great artists
have worked with him and have produced some
of their greatest work. Well, he created a book, he wrote a book called The
creative act away of being. And I thought there
were so many great insights in this book. I wanted to share
some of them with you in this short bonus video. So I have for Insights for you, will go through them
really quickly. Hopefully you can get some
ideas out of these to keep your creative deep work
routine going day after day. Watch this video
every once in awhile. When you need a bit
of a refresher, then you can go back
and watch some of the previous lessons
in the course as well. Okay, Let's get straight to it. Here's insight number
one from Rick Rubin. Perfection is interesting. I love this Insights
so much because it's such a great
reminder for those of us who really unknowingly or unwittingly seek out perfection and therefore really
gets stuck very easily. And I thought this was such a great way to
dephasing perfectionism. Because Is there any
greater insult to Art then for it to
be uninteresting? And so the idea here is that perfection is actually
not what we're going forward. Because if you could get
your artwork perfect, it might simply
be uninteresting. This is what Rick Rubin says. He says, If you have
an imperfect version of a work you really love, you may find that when it
finally seems perfect, you don't love it the same way. This is a sign that the imperfect version
was actually the one. The work is not
about perfection. And this is worth reiterating. The work is not
about perfection. It's about expression,
or it's about emotion, or it's about interesting
the viewer or the listener. And so to take advantage
of this insight, what you wanna do is save a
lot of versions of your work. If you're working in a Music
Production software program, a digital audio workstation, for instance, save
lots of versions. If you're working in
procreate on an illustration, save lots of versions. If you're working on a draft of something that you're
writing, save many versions. It's okay to have multiple files and multiple
versions of your work. That way you can go
back and sort of excavate some of these
earlier versions. The work is not
about perfection. Perfection is an
interesting insight. Number two, understand
the Creative Process. Rick Rubin has his
own concept or conceptual view of
the Creative Process. This can be really
helpful to understand because you can
know where you are in the process and
therefore help yourself be appropriate and approach a project in an appropriate way depending
on the phase that you're in. So these are the
phases that Rick Rubin has identified or observed
over the course of his career. The first is the seed phase. So throughout the book,
Rubin talks about creative ideas as seeds. I love this idea because
seeds grow seeds. Seeds are organic and
they can grow over time. He says, we can call potential ideas seeds were any says
this and I'm quoting here, we're searching for potential
starting points that with love and care can grow
into something beautiful. At this stage, we're not comparing them to
find the best seed. We're simply gathering them. So in the seat phase, you're gathering lots of
different, different seeds. So maybe if you have a new idea, you jot that down or
you sketch it out, either as an illustration or in a music program
or something like that. You want to collect
these seeds because the next phase is what he calls the experimentation phase. The experimentation phase. Once you have gathered seeds, the experimentation phase
tries different versions. So you take an idea, but then that idea might express itself in lots
of different ways. So this is where you
get to try lots of different ways to
express a seed. Here's something that a lot
of artists get stuck in is that they think
that the seed and the expression of a
seed or the same thing, or that there's only one way
to express a creative idea. But instead, go through and experimentation phase where you try on lots of different
guises on a creative idea. Maybe you try it both as a music As a music track and as an illustration that
would be interesting. Try different styles on your illustrations or
your musical expressions, or try it as a blog
post and a Chapter. Try it as a tweet
in different ways. So the experimentation phase is followed by the
crafting phase. So once this, this is Rick
Rubin again and I'm quoting, once the seeds code has been cracked and its true form
deciphered, the process shifts. We're no longer in the
unbounded mode of discovery. A clear sense of
direction has arisen. Often unbeknownst to us, we find ourselves
in the craft phase. Now comes the labor of building. So that's what Rick
Rubin has to say. This is a really exciting phase. It's the phase where we
sort of transition as artists from observing
and experimenting, to really applying our craft, our skill to a creative idea. That's what happens
in the craft phase. And a suggestion here, Reuben says, above all, be sensitive to momentum. In this phase, you want to
keep your momentum going. Sometimes you need to leave, leave loop open during the crafting phase so that
you can move through. You can always go back
and catch some of those open loops later. The fourth phase is
the Completion phase. This is where you actually
need to transition into completing a project. And so you can think of the Completion phase
as a refinement phase. So you've developed the seed, you've experimented with
different expressions. You've applied your craft to it, and now it's time to
set a deadline and actually drive this
to completion. So I'll leave you with this
for this second insight, I'll leave you with a following
quote from Rick Rubin. He says, when you and
the work are in sync, There's a time to put
it out and move on. Okay, there's a time to
put it out and move on. Okay, So that's, that's
Insight number two, which is understand
the creative process. The third insight
is get unstuck. And so Rick Rubin has lots of great suggestions for
how to get unstuck. I've pulled a couple
of them out here for you and I want to
share them with you. Sometimes you just get
stuck and you need to change something or alter
something or have a technique. You don't want to
wait until you are stuck to develop
these techniques. And so you can develop
these techniques early. And here are some suggestions. The first suggestion he makes
us to take small steps. If you're working on
a creative project and you're just very stuck, set a very low bar assignment for yourself and activity that you can get done every day. So take one action towards your creative project every day. For a musician, this could
be as simple as writing a single line to a new song or even a single word
to a new song, something that is that small. If you're doing an illustration, you can add a single stroke and you think that
that's maybe nothing but sometimes just adding
a single stroke to an illustration can actually really just get
you started and then get you unstuck
with some momentum. The second suggestion
for getting unstuck that Rubin's shares is to
change the environment. So this means just changing the space that
you're working in. If you work at a desk, maybe you go outside and
sit on a park bench. If you're working on music, you can take your laptop with you. If you're working
on an illustration, you can take your iPad with you. If you're working on Writing, take your laptop or take a notepad and just change the environment
sometimes that can really, that can really get you unstuck. Next is change the stakes. So Rubin's says, besides changing the external
environment, which is changing
the environment, the previous suggestion,
you can also change the internal environment and
that's changing the stakes. You can just do
this for yourself. You can say, you
can tell yourself, this is the last illustration
I will ever create. You can say this is
the last time I'll, I will ever play this song
and see what happens. You can change the stakes. Another thing you can do here is invite an audience performed for someone and see
if that changes the way that you
relate to the artwork. This can be a great
way to get unstuck. The last suggestion I will give to you is to write
for someone else. So if you're a painter, imagine your favorite artist has asked you to make a painting
to hang on their wall. If you are a musician, imagine someone has asked you to write a song for
them to perform. So, right for someone else. This is a great way to sort of you're actually changing the environment and the
stakes a little bit, but in a specific direction. So let's say you are a writer. Imagine your favorite
writer has asked you to do a guest post on their blog or a guest e-mail to
their audience. Writing for someone else
can sometimes really help. The last creative insight I
have for you from Rick Rubin is to build creative habits Building these
creative approaches as habits will help you get
more done over time. That's of course,
the whole idea of the Creative Deep Work Routine, making this a routine. So let me give you
some suggestions that Ruben points out in his book
to build creative habits. The first thing is that he says, organize your life
for creative space. So space in our schedules
doesn't just occur, right? We have to actually be
proactive and we have to set up time to create. That means blocking off time. Sometimes that you can do that in the morning
and a recurring time, but other times you have
to be more creative. Let me tell you what Rubin's
says and I'm quoting here, discipline and freedom
seem like opposites. Discipline is not
a lack of freedom. It is a harmonious
relationship with time. I love that idea. So
this is Rubin again. Managing your schedule
and daily habits well, is a necessary
component to free up the practical and creative
capacity to make great Art. And rubin even goes so far
as to say that organizing your life is even more important than being
efficient in your work. Because if you don't do the one, you won't have the other. So organizing your life
is very important. The next Creative Habit that Ruben suggests
is to find creative, excuse me, find sustainable
creative rituals. And of course, that's what this whole course
has been about. So we have done a
lot of thinking about creating sustainable,
creative rituals. Reuben says This, find the
sustainable rituals that best support your work.
And he goes on. He says These might begin even before your creative
time starts, what we would call
the prepare phase. He says, Maybe you have
the following habits. He says, you can have a habit of looking at sunlight
before screen light, meditating out of doors
if possible, exercising, showering and cold water before
beginning Creative Time. So there are all kinds
of things you can do to find sustainable
creative rituals. And you can fold these
into that prepare phase that I introduced to you
earlier in this court. So the last observation on
creative habits for you is don't waste creative energy
on practical choices. Reuben says this and
I'm quoting here. The more you reduce your
daily life maintenance tasks, the greater the bandwidth available for
creative decisions. One great example of
this is your wardrobe. Rubin mentions a number of creative people who wore
the same thing every day. Think of Steve Jobs with his
black turtleneck and jeans. He, Ruben also mentioned Albert Einstein wore
the same thing Daily, which was a gray suit. And a composer, a
French composer from the early 20th century
named Eric Satie. War, identical outfits. He had seven identical, identical outfits, one for
every day of the week, and then he wore those every
day for a certain period of his life to help himself create. Reuben says, and
I'm quoting here, limit your practical choices to free your creative imagination. In my case, I created this black shirt and I
a custom printed it for myself as a signal
to myself that when I wear this black
shirt, I Create. And the rule is I can't
go to sleep again. If I'm wearing this shirt,
I can't go to sleep again until I've created
something significant, something substantive, and no social media posts
don't work, they don't count. Okay, So that is, those are the four Insights. Let's just go over them
again to wrap this up. So the first insight is that
perfection is uninteresting. The work is not
about perfection, so don't get stuck trying to make things perfect,
make them interesting. Number two is understand
the Creative process. There are four phases. There's the seed phase, the experimentation
phase, the craft phase, and the Completion phase. Understand where
you are in those, in that process in order to help yourself approach a work
in an appropriate way. Number three, there are several
ways you can get unstuck. Many of them are simply
by changing things, change the environment,
changed the stakes, right for someone else. And the last one is to
develop creative habits, which of course is what this
whole course has been about. One simple way to do this is to have an artists uniform and where a single shirt every day or where the same type
of shirt every day, you want to make
sure they're clean. That way you can signal to yourself that when
you are wearing this, you don't have to
decide what to wear. You know, you're
going to wear, wear that shirt or wear that outfit and you're
going to create, I hope this has been
vaguely helpful. Maybe one or two things
in here will help get you restarted with your
creative deep work routine. Integrate these into
your learning and keep searching for other great ideas that will help you
be more creative. Mark Samples here
again. Thanks so much. Please don't forget
to leave comments and questions in the project area. Or if you found this
Course helpful, please leave a review
that helps others find this course and benefit
from it as well. Thanks