I have been in a bit of a networking marathon recently. A working retreat with a group of women, a 20th anniversary celebration for industry friends, a private dinner in New York with Freeda, Engage (which I wrote about last week), WIPA events, and a calendar filled with phone and video calls, coffee dates, happy hours, and other meetings. Tis’ the season, I suppose.
I have zero tolerance for “small talk,” so I like to keep some intentional questions in my back pocket to encourage deeper conversation if the conversation stalls. The question I’ve asked most frequently, however, hasn’t come from a list, but from my own musings. How do we keep creativity fresh?
I’m genuinely curious about this, and would love to hear your answers.
Time is fixed; it cannot be renewed. When it’s gone, it’s gone. We try to trick ourselves into believing otherwise by using phrases like “saves time” or “time-efficient,” but those are fallacies. We might be able to accomplish a task more quickly, but the time we have is fixed. It doesn’t matter how hard we try; the minute hand marches on at the same rate, day and night, month after month, year after year, for our entire lives. Time is fixed.
Energy, on the other hand, is renewable! We have a limited stores, but they are not fixed. Unlike time, we can renew those stores through sleep, exercise, water, a cup of coffee, etc. And when we stretch the limits of those stores within reason (exercise, endurance-building, even through an occasional season of fasting), our energy capacity actually increases.
In my experience, creativity is not fixed in the same way that time is fixed… but it also isn’t renewable in the same way that energy is renewable.
So how do we think about creativity?
I have asked a number of people about this over the past few months. Answers vary from “I travel” (which, to me, is more about finding a new source of inspiration than a renewed store of creativity) to “I am disciplined to retain breathing space in my schedule” (his example: morning exercise to clear his head, and daily unplugged walks to ground his intentions).
Today I’m asking you this question. How do you think about creativity? And how do you renew your creativity when it feels dry?
Comment below!