Why it’s so hard to start a creative project?
I believe we’ve all have dreams of doing creative things and having people connect with us. It’s in our nature to try to express emotions and thoughts through mediums. Modern society is built on the creative projects of people, from music, to fashion, to technology creative projects have influenced the world. Today it’s easier than ever to create, with free self publishing services like medium, YouTube, and vimeo to platforms like adobe’s creative cloud becoming a monthly subscription or the unreal engine’s free licensing. The opportunities are at our fingertips, the barrier to enter is basically non existent. It’s now up to you to create.
The problem is that creating seems really hard. We do something once and then we stop, like going to the gym or making a video.
How do people keep on creating and producing? Looking at artist like Bad Bunny who released 3 full length albums in 2020, authors like Hannah Orenstein who has steadily released one book every year since 2018, or even the godfather of YouTube vlogs Casey Neistat who released daily videos for over a year there is a common thread: momentum.
The word momentum is a physics term describing an objects motion. Popularized by Newtons Laws of physics the momentum is one of the biggest concepts of the physical world. Translated to psychology momentum is viewed as the buildup of performance and human behavior. Translated to creativity momentum is the driver for inspiration.
I like to view concepts the way physics describes them because they are often broken down to the simplest of terms. I then translate those terms into abstract concepts and momentum is a great example! To understand creative momentum three physical concepts need to be addressed and understood: physical momentum, acceleration, and friction
Lets start with momentum. The equation broken down to it’s simplest terms is
where:
- p = momentum
- m = mass
- v = velocity
Think of a car moving along a highway, it has a mass and a velocity. When the brakes are pressed really hard the passengers are pushed forward because their momentum hasn’t decreased at the rate the car’s has. What does this have to do with creating? Even though the creative process is an abstract concept and not a physical object we can use the simple concepts of Newtons Laws to build a creative process. We can just change the variables to represent pieces of the creative process. We think of mass as the idea, be it a book, a video, a photo, a business, it has a weight that is worth moving from ideation to completion. And we change the velocity to creating velocity. This will lead us to an equation that looks like this:
This seems very simple right? If you have an idea and you create more you will have momentum. A good example of this can be seen when we look at 2020’s biggest hit tiktok, the biggest creators post are posting at least one video a day, some even post 3 or 4 times a day. Or in the world of music spotify’s most streamed artist of 2020 Bad Bunny who released three albums in one year. The idea of quantity isn’t new though, look at any art museum every artists creates multiple pieces that follow a similar theme or idea. Look at Jackson Pollock, Georgia O’keeffe, or Monet, they painted canvas after canvas. They had creative momentum.
What does it take to create momentum?
The fundamental concept of momentum is that it is conserved, meaning that if an object is moving it continues to move or if an object at rest remains at rest. This begs the question, if an object is at rest how does it start moving? In physics its pretty easy just apply a force in the direction you want to move the object. The force must be greater than the force of friction keeping the object at rest. The concept is illustrated in the graph below.
Friction is viewed in two ways, static (not moving) and kinetic (moving). The relationship between them relates to molecular level connections, but what we need to focus on is the fact that it takes a lot of energy/force to move from static to kinetic. Think of how moving a heavy box is hard at first but once it starts moving its easier to continue moving.
In the world of creativity being at rest is being stuck, having a creative block, or doubts to create. Friction has a huge play in the creative process. As a painter getting the idea to paint seems so hard and sometimes nearly impossible, as a writer getting the first few paragraphs of a story seem incredibly difficult. Most people leave it at that, keeping themselves in the static region only dreaming of doing.
Building momentum is an act of doing, just putting things on the paper, putting yourself out there and exerting the energy constantly until you get to the peak of that static region. Only then, when you pass the hump will you realize that things get easier.
How to build momentum when you have none.
One of the biggest mistakes people in the creative field make is to believe that motivation is action. I’ve met way too many people who say “I want to do X” or “I’m going to do Y” but never do anything. An idea or dream can be solid, a person can have intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, and the idea can remain at rest for the person’s entire life all because there is no action.
What is action? in physics the term action can be translated to force which is described as the energy or strength acting on an object. When a soccer player kicks the ball the force from their movement is transferred to the ball creating movement. Creators must also exert energy from their mind and body to their idea to bring it to life. This can be easier said than done, at least in the long term. Creating once in a while can be easy but building up the momentum to create consistently is hard and requires a lot of action.
Writers have to write, painters need to paint, video makers need to make, crafters need to craft, there is no way around putting the work into your creative dreams. I don’t have the secrets to getting you out of bed to make your creative dreams come true, but I can help you reflect on forces that keep your momentum at zero. If you don’t have any momentum in your creative process stop doing these things and refocus your time and energy into creating.
- News — How much time do you spend reading news? does any of this bring value to your life or are you just listening to someone you already agree with mention the same topic over and over again? Your political affiliation doesn’t matter, consuming news is energy you could use to make the world a better place
- Streaming — How many streaming services do you have? How many episodes of Schitts Creek have you seen? If The Office is one of your personality traits, you are consuming way too much
- Social media — How much screen time do you have with your phone? How much of it is bringing value to you? Social media can be a great platform for connecting but most of the content you see is garbage.
- Self doubt — How many times have you said I’m not good enough? Or that you’ll start when you know a little more? That is a lot of energy doubting yourself for no reason. Spend that energy doing things that bring value to your ideas.
- Not having enough time — We all have the same amount of time as Beyoncé! If you put as much energy into planning your time than you do complaining about not having time you’ll quickly realize that you can do a lot if you’re awake for 16 hours.
Myths of Creative Momentum
Do you need to create every day to build momentum? — No! Not everyone is going to be able to churn out a painting or an entire chapter of a book in a day. The idea of creating momentum is to keep the progress going, build the momentum in a way that fits your life.
If I create every day I will be successful? — No guarantee. There is an idea that has become commonly widespread in the creative world that quantity is greater than quality. People mistake this as one is better than the other. In the creative space quantity builds quality, they are not equal though. Artists spend years making hundreds of paints to perfect their form to make a small series of paintings that make it to a museum.
What are some good ways to build motivation if I don’t have any?
Everyone has different motivators, I can’t give you the magic key, but I can give you tactics to focus your time and energy to build up your motivation.
- Delete your apps — This is flaunted everywhere are a tip for productivity, it’s true. Go delete Instagram and Tiktok and see how much time you have to do things you want. If you want to do more on the platforms, shift your use of them from consuming to creating.
- Create to create — We all need to practice. Start by doing a tiny project relating to your creative idea. If you want to write a book spend a week writing a short story. If you want to become a tiktoker make a video a day. If you want to become a photographer, take photos every day. Build yourself up. You don’t have to show the world this part if you don’t want to, but you have to start small.
- Plan an hour a day — Spend one hour a day on your creative process. I find it easier to do it early in the morning as there are no distractions. One hour a day is 5% of your waking hours of a week, that is nothing!
- Inspire yourself — Your muse should be your own creation. Don’t let some external factor dictate your motivation, that will never end well. Instead take the pieces of things you’ve done and put them together.
Things get easier the more you do them, creating takes time, everything you do is worth doing. Don’t let yourself or anyone else tell you otherwise. Start building your momentum in whatever it is you want to do, I promise it’s worth it!
