Creative Flow on Schedule: How to Build a Creative Deep Work Routine | Mark Samples | Skillshare
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Creative Flow on Schedule: How to Build a Creative Deep Work Routine

teacher avatar Mark Samples, Writer, Musician, Musicologist

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      2:43

    • 2.

      Class Project: Your Creative Deep Work Routine

      2:44

    • 3.

      Every Creator's Daily Struggle

      3:57

    • 4.

      The Creative Deep Work Routine

      4:43

    • 5.

      Check Your Compass

      6:22

    • 6.

      Step 1: Prepare

      7:32

    • 7.

      Step 2: Do the Work

      7:17

    • 8.

      Step 3: Reflect

      4:56

    • 9.

      Trust the Process

      4:12

    • 10.

      Conclusion: Create Every Day

      2:07

    • 11.

      Bonus: Rick Rubin's Insights on the Creative Process

      16:14

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About This Class

Creative productivity doesn't have to be random and frustrating. Increase your creative output by designing a Creative Deep Work routine.

Whether you want to write songs, create designs, paint, write a novel, finish your book proposal, write a screenplay, make YouTube videos, or anything else, your art will benefit from consistent effort, applied over time through a routine.

Wondering how this course can help you? Take my free Creative Habits Health Check (13 quick questions) and get personalized results sent to you right away. Discover what areas you can address to develop your own Creative Deep Work routine and make this your best year of creative production yet. 

About this Course

Many creatives, including writers, musicians, filmmakers, and artists, struggle with inconsistency in their creative flow. Some days it seems like everything is flowing and you're unstoppable. Other days, it seems like the flow has evaporated and the well will be dry forever. And the most depressing problem is that you don't know which days will be which.

Building and following a creative routine can help you summon and harness your creative energies—on schedule.

Learn how to build a unique routine for your life and work with this step-by-step approach. The plan is simple: learn the principles, shape your schedule, and then get to work. By the end of this course, you will have the tools to start following your own routine and reach new heights in your creative production.

Who Is this Course For?

This class will be valuable for beginners, hobbyists, and professionals alike.

  • Beginners: avoid the pitfalls that many new artists face, and experience how a creative routine can be like a cheat code for cultivating an artistic practice.
  • Hobbyists: Deepen your connection to your art and feel the satisfaction of being present with your art, every day.
  • Professionals: fight the always-creeping headwinds of administrative work and finally make your main art your main priority.

Join me as we set the foundational practice for the next week, month, year, and career of your creative output.

What You'll Learn

  • A step-by-step method for creating a personalized Creative Deep Work routine
  • What the Creator's Daily Struggle is, and how the enemy of Resistance aims to choke your creativity
  • What barriers stand between you and your creative practice
  • What "deep work" is, why it is rare and valuable, and how to do more of it
  • The three phases of a routine that encourage creative flow
  • What elements go into a successful creative routine
  • How to shift your mindset to create like a professional
  • The three key benefits of a Creative Deep Work routine
  • How to "check your compass" so that you move closer to your artistic goals
  • How to design a sequence of actions that will prepare your physical space, mind, and emotions for creativity
  • How to use a timer to free your creative mindset
  • Why a zero tolerance for distraction during your session is worth being extreme about
  • Five keys to making your creative deep work...deep
  • Three questions to ask at the end of every deep work session that will help you stay on course and reach your artistic goals faster
  • Three pitfalls that creatives fall into when trying to start a creative deep work routine, and how to avoid them
  • How to use the clarity of your routine to trust the process, and not be tossed about by the winds of inconsistency

What You'll Need

All you will need is a piece of paper and pen, an open mind, and love for your art. You can also build your routine in Notes, Notion, Obsidian, or your favorite digital software program. You can even create a visual routine document in your medium of choice to inspire you every day.

Let's Get Started!

Join me as we set the foundational practice for the next week, month, year, and career of your creative output!

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Mark Samples

Writer, Musician, Musicologist

Teacher

Hi, I'm Mark. I'm a writer, a musician, and a professional musicologist.

A lot of creatives--writers, musicians, filmmakers, artists--struggle to consistently tap into their creative flow. I create courses that help them get clarity and make a plan, so that they can summon and harness their creative energies.

I'm on a mission to help artists (writers, musicians, filmmakers, illustrators, graphic designers) gain access to time-tested creative principles and processes to help them make great art, consistently. I do this through my teaching here on Skillshare, through my teaching at a U.S. university, and on my website at www.mark-samples.com.

If you'd like to find out more, please follow my Skillshare profile, and if you have any suggestions you'd like to see for fut... See full profile

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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. 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