#3 | Relax!
As I’ve gotten interested in learning about creativity, it’s surprised me to see how often the creative act is compared to suffering. Legendary artists and musicians have described their craft as a “curse” — this 2009 TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, shares the author’s thoughts on the joy and struggle of writing. The most famous book on creativity (to my knowledge), Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, pits the artist against an “implacable, intractable, indefatigable” enemy termed “The Resistance”. The language is pretty dramatic, but the feeling clearly has resonated with millions of readers.
I thought about that struggle this week, when for the first time I had difficulty finding an idea I was satisfied with. In most types of work, there is an underlying security that we take for granted without realizing: if we suck, at least we can work harder to make up for it. On the other hand, creativity can be more like golf—the harder we try to get it perfect, the harder it becomes. Academic studies confirm this, showing that creativity flows best from a calm and relaxed psychological state. Try achieving a calm state under deadline pressure! Luckily, there are concrete actions we can take to make it much easier. Inspired by what I read, I wanted to share the exercise that finally helped me break through.
Needs vs. Wants
Reframing needs as “really wants” is the best way to reduce stress and anxiety that I know. Our body is designed to go into extreme stress when faced with the loss of something we need. This works pretty well for physical needs like securing food and shelter, but not as well for psychological needs such as the “need” to get that big promotion in Q1. After I began to meditate, journal, and read The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden, I was shocked to realize how many things I needed. I was worried about releasing any of these needs because I didn’t want to give up my ambition. But releasing needs isn’t about letting go of ambition, it’s about letting go of expectations. Here’s my test for whether I need something or just really want it: if I compete as hard as I can for my whole life but never get it, can I accept that?
In my experience: “really wanting” is a powerful, confident state. Needing is not. When I really want a job, I put in the work and show up prepared. When I need it, I get sweaty and forget how to speak English.
How does this relate to the weekly project? I came up with a worst-case backup plan. If I didn’t think of anything better, I promised myself that I’d go with X terrible idea from last week. It sucked, but now I didn’t need a better idea, I just really wanted one. Soon after, the juices started flowing.
Project #3a: My Meditation Guide (Part 1)
I first tried meditation in Spring 2020 during a particularly stressful school project. The term “meditation” sounds mystical and scares people away, but I think of it like “attention training”. We all know how modern technology trains our focus to flit around erratically like moths by a lantern. Doesn’t it make sense to steady our attention for 10 minutes before we draw upon it for every single challenging task in our day?
A while back, I downloaded a guided meditation app with meditation tracks sorted into categories (Emotions & Stress, Productivity, Sleep, etc). As I sat each time, I noticed how every day brought its own unique stresses—navigating through the app’s categories helped steer me towards what I needed. I may not have gone in knowing exactly what to search, but when presented with choices, one would usually “feel” right. This week’s project was inspired by that observation. It’s a meditation app for Android with a structured flowchart of choices/categories leading to 20+ different meditation tracks on YouTube. My theory is that by steering the user with a series of questions, they can choose a more targeted intervention to help themselves.
Since this was a harder project from a technical perspective than the previous two, I have divided it into two weeks of work. This week, I’ll leave you with the mockup I sketched before beginning to code (red boxes represent icons).
Next week, I’ll show off a demo of the finished application.