#ICYMI Welcome to a new series I’ve cooked up to help you blast through creative blocks and get unstuck when you feel like your creative work is turning into quicksand.
Across the next 10 weeks, I want to show you, through my own experience, how I’ve navigated the hardest and most sticky parts of my creative work. I’ll also finish each part of the series with a journal prompt so you can take things one step further (because I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t take every chance to bang on about journaling, lol).
Doing any kind of creative work requires monumental amounts of energy and focus. So much so that it’s easy to find your attention wandering away, even when you’re super inspired.
One of the creative blocks I often see (in myself, too) is a lack of clarity around what to focus on.
So today’s Creative Urge is dedicated to how to find and maintain focus while not letting it become the reason your creative energy tanks.
When we talk about focus in the creative process, what do we mean?
Is layman’s terms, focus is the centre of interest and activity. It’s what you pay attention to and what you concentrate on. So in the creative process, focus is the spotlight you shine on what’s most important to you.
Typically, focus in conceptualised in terms of the small scale things you’re paying attention to, e.g. the email, the person in front of us, etc. Often it’s about productivity – the more you can focus, the more stuff you can get done – which, for creative folk, can become a block in itself.
If we hold our focus to impossibly high standards, how can we ever get anything done?
So, to ease the pressure, I want to invite you to think about focus in a slightly different way.
What if focus wasn’t something to find or maintain…
I’d like you to take a giant (figurative) step backwards and think about where you place your focus when you create things.
Is it on the end result?
Or is it on the materials?
Maybe it’s on your audience?
No matter where your focus has been up until today, there’s one place it needs to be if you want a snowball’s chance in hell of finding joy in making things: THE PRACTICE.
Focus on your craft
I was listening to this interview between Oprah and Jamie Kern Lima where Oprah said, so eloquently:
“The real joy is in the offering”
The context for this was how she used to focus on the normal metrics to determine how successful her creative work was (box office numbers, revenue, press mentions, etc).
But she soon realised that those metrics, while helpful, aren’t where true fulfilment lives.
It’s in the practice of our craft where we have the most to gain: the collaborations, the learnings, the sharpening of our skills.
So rather than focus on WHAT you’re creating, shift your focus to HOW you’re creating it.
Focus then can come a tool to use to make progress, not some elusive dragon to chase for the sake of productivity.
Journal prompt
How do you practice your craft? What’s the step-by-step ritual you tap into to make progress towards your creative projects?
Creatively yours,
Dr Maz xo
PS: I’ve just relaunched my business offers to make it easier for you to take the leap and work with me. They’re not the only way we can collaborate, but they’re a good starting point, especially if you’re stuck in the mud. Take a look.