HealthyGamerGG - Why You Can’t Turn Your Creativity Into ANYTHING

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

Today Doctor K talks about how to turn those random moments of inspiration and creativity and turn those into real projects consistently. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But in terms of people who do creative work, it's like, devote yourself to like the purity of your action, man. That is what makes human creativity so amazing. Right. I don't know that like when Michelangelo made the sculpture of David, he was like, I want a piece of artwork that will be appreciated for thousands of years. I don't know that that was his goal. What I imagine his goal is, is like, I want to make just a magnificent piece of artwork. So devote yourself to the action. And it's fine to be an artist.

make the best art you can possibly make. I have tons of creativity, but no patience for creating. Recently, I feel like I had a lot of creativity exploding a bit. And sadly, I never learned any kind of medium to put this creativity into. Through my life, I tried several piano, guitar, drawing, painting, but none stick. Because in my case, I was losing patience. Either I was not good enough to do what I wanted to do, or I was getting to a point that I didn't want to pursue the endeavor of trying to get better,

getting to a stage where you can't get better unless you just do or practice, thus getting frustrated and impatient. I tried and tried and don't really know what to do. I feel like I need to become a designer, project manager, and give my creativity that way, but not really sure how to do that. Either it's tons of ideas of video or board game design, book, or vlog, or podcast. I tried several, but due to the lack of interest from others, the ability to advertise such creativity, or having any personal talent and any kind of artsy stuff, I feel like it prevents me

to bloom. I feel like this impatience came from video game addiction and that the constant gratification of having fun right now and working for any future thing is not really easy. I can on the spur of the moment be really creative for like one or two months, but then it goes dormant for a few weeks or months. So I guess I'm not sure what to do. So this, unfortunately, is an increasingly common thing that we're seeing. That we have people out there who are interested in doing creative work. They're interested in doing substantial work.

They have a lot of, like, really powerful ideas. You know, they genuinely want to have a, they have a create, like an explosion of creative energy. And they can even direct that energy for one or two months and make some very serious progress. But then inevitably what happens is that they lose. patients, they start to get very, very, you know, concerned about how things aren't really working. They start to feel like they're not really living up to their potential. And they feel like very, very frustrated with themselves, right? Because you know that it's in you.

Like, you've got it somewhere in there. But you just can't let it out. Because even this phrase, bloom, I think, is really important because it implies that the flower's right there, right? The bud is there. It's just not able to open. So how do you understand this? Like, what do you do if you're in this situation where you have these bursts of creativity,

but then you either lose patience or you get frustrated, you're not really willing to practice, you get kind of impatient. Like, how do you manage this? This is a great question. And so how do you bloom when you're too impatient to? Right? That's the question. How do you sort of understand this creative process?

How do you get yourself to actually create? So let's start by kind of understanding a couple of basics. Okay, so what's going on here? So the first is how to bloom creatively. So let's like take a look at what this person has. Like let's look at the pattern. So let's try to lay out all the pieces of the puzzle. The first is that they have creative energy that comes in bursts and then fizzles.

okay they also you know will act for a while so they tend to have a problem of follow through they experience impatience

frustration and they're not really able to how did they put it they get to the stage where you can't get better unless you practice okay so stop

at the just practice phase and then last thing is that they're curious about whether this has to do with constant gratification from video games. So if you're creatively stifled, like, how can we piece all these elements together? What's going on here? And how can we start to, like, move forward in kind of a positive way?

So the first thing that I want to do is, like, talk about proposed answers. So if you guys are looking at this, there may be some things that are jumping to your mind. So the first is, let's, like, look at the situation. So I have one month of creativity, and then it fizzles. So answer number one is discipline. I need more discipline, right? Because this just practice is not something I'm willing to do. So answer number one is, or like this first solution we're going to look for is,

how do I take one month of effort, develop discipline, so it becomes two months, practice, becomes three months. Practice, right? This is the answer number one. Develop discipline. Related to this is we can say things like just practice. Sorry, bro. The only way that you're going to learn to be creative

is just by doing this. Okay? Decent answer. Okay? And now let's try to understand a little bit about, so maybe they say it's like, you know, games have something to do with it. So let's think a little bit about games.

So what happens in a game? So we have an action. We get a reward, action, reward. And so basically we get rewards every step of the way. So the real way that we're going to overcome this is by understanding what is happening in our mind. So literally what is like happening in our mind. when we play video games, what are we actually training our brain to do? So I want you all to understand this.

The brain is kind of like an animal, and it does what it's trained to do. So for example, like, if I sit there and I learn the alphabet, I will train it time and time again. It won't be learning the alphabet isn't fun. For those of you let, especially if you try to like learn a new language, like it's not fun, right? Your brain really, really dislikes it. It really wants to revert back to, like, speaking the language that is easy for it. And that's because the brain is efficient. So the brain is designed to be efficient.

And as it's efficient, it detests adversity. But you can train it. If you teach it the alphabet, it'll learn how to read, and then it'll be fine. So when we play a video game, what are we training our brain to do? So I have, or let's even talk about content algorithms, right? So let's say I'm on Reddit or YouTube. And when I get bored of something, what do I do? I click something else, right?

When I play a video game, this game is like, let me play Dota for a little bit. Ah, Dota's getting boring. Let me switch to Eldon Ring. So in games, what we're sort of doing is we have an impulse, and we gratify the impulse. So what are we training our brain to do? So neurons that fire together, wire together. Remember that when it comes to how the brain works, neurons will fire once and then they'll get a little bit stronger and then it becomes easier to fire

again and again and again and again and that's how we form a habit. So at that point things are automatic. So what have we trained our brains to do by playing tons of video games that have constant gratification? We've trained them to do is respond to impulses. This is essentially what we've trained our brain to do. Is when you have an impulse, you don't have to restrain it, you don't have to control it, you can just gratify it. So our brain has been trained to gratify impulses. Now let's take a look at our person who has creative issues, right? So when the person has a burst of creative energy, what are they doing with their impulses? What do you all think?

What are they doing? Some people are saying nothing. I feel like writing a book. Absolutely. Acting on impulse. Let me start a vlog. Let me start a podcast. I've got this impulse and it's positive energy, right?

It's creativity. I'm moving in the right direction. I'm creating something. It's an explosion. It feels so good. Let me work on it for a month. They're acting on impulse, but in a good way. And then what happens is they get impatient.

They get frustrated on day 30. And then they stop. What are they doing? Are they acting on impulse? So their mind is telling them, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to play a video game. They have that impulse, acting on impulse.

So this is the key thing that you all need to understand. This is why people get stuck, okay? You all need to understand this very clearly. Explosion of creativity plus discipline equals success. This is the formula that everyone who is in this process, looks for. They say, how can I start here and sustain with discipline and then do this for one year? How do I sustain this? That's the question. It's the wrong question. That's why everyone's stuck. Because this is half the problem. This is the same thing. Starting on an impulse or quitting on an

impulse is still acting in relation to an impulse. So this is the problem because here's the thing. The brighter the candle, the faster it burns out. Right? The more excited. I've seen this a lot, like, in relationships, too. Where people who, like, fall head over heels over, like, they're like, oh my God, like, this is the best relationship in the universe. And then, like, three months later, it's like an absolute train wreck. Not always. Oftentimes.

Super, super excited about this kind of thing. Oh, my God, let's do this. Let's do this. And then, like, where is it three months from now? I'm going to order, I'm going to sign up for guitar lessons. I'm going to go get this guitar. I'm going to get these really cool picks. This pick was signed by my favorite artist.

Oh, my God. it's going to be great. It's going to play every day. We're enjoying it. Yeah. Ow, my hands hurt. My fingers. I need calluses. Callises are taking too long to form. It hurts too much to play. Let me put it down. So as long as you're acting on impulse, like this is the problem is everyone thinks that explosion of creativity is a good thing. And then impatience is the problem. So they want to get rid of this and they want to keep this.

doesn't work like that. They're both the problem. This is the problem. The whole reason is because the way you're starting the task is in the wrong way. So you're doomed to failure. That doesn't mean that you can't use your explosions of creativity. We'll get to that in a second. But this is sort of like, you know, like if you want light throughout the night,

you don't want to light a firecracker, right? You want a candle. So interestingly enough, are, if you want to learn how to be, better at this, you need to train your impulsivity. Okay, so this is like frontal lobe function. And remember, like people are smart, right? Like people like know things about themselves. So even as we look at this statement, I feel like impatience came from video game addiction and constant gratification. I would trust that instinct. Do you all see this statement here is a statement of understanding? This is a statement of their own experience. It's not theoretical.

This is what they've learned. I can, on the spur of the moment be really creative for one or two months and then it goes dormant for a couple of weeks, these are both part of the problem. It's all the same problem. The problem is that we think half of it is the solution. Whereas that's part of the problem too. So what do we do about this? Train your impulsivity. Okay? Because if you start in an impulsive way, you're giving into your impulsivity. It's going to be hard to stop giving into the impulsivity. Okay. So what should you do about this? There are lots of different meditations for training your impulsivity. Essentially, any meditation technique will work for this.

So this is where I kind of want to say just meditate. But it's not enough to say just meditate. What I want you to really do when you meditate is recognize that the reason you are doing this is to level up your impulsivity. You're trying to train the animal that is your mind. So this is where I think practices like Thratica are really good. So you're going to stare, you know, you're going to do fixed point gazing.

So you can do like candle gazing or something like that. And then your mind is going to wander all over the place. And then you're going to kind of focus on this thing. You're going to train your attention to be on one thing. The other thing that you can do is as you do a focusing practice, what I want you to do is wait for the wandering mind. Your mind is going to wander. If you say, okay, we're going to concentrate on the smell of this incense.

Smell the incense. Another really good one here is watch the smoke. So watch the smoke that rises from incense. Like it's going to be a beautiful plume. Just watch it. And then your mind is going to wander and you're going to be waiting for it. As it wanders, you're going to bring it back. So here's the smoke coming up from the incense.

And your mind is going to go here. It's going to go here. And then you're going to bring it back. And every time you do this, this is one push-up for your mind. It's one push-up. for your impulsivity. Impulsive action, return. Impulsive action, return. Okay? So this is like the first thing. You can train your mind. Second thing, slow down your start. Because remember, giving into the explosion of energy is still giving into the impulse. So slow down your start.

You feel like doing this task for a thousand hours a day? Don't do it for a thousand hours a day. Set aside a particular time of your day. So make a schedule. And don't give into the impulse. Oh, I'm going to read about vlogs. I'm going to research this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to download some software.

I'm going to order a microphone. I'm going to do this. Like, don't do all of that. Set aside at the time, one to two hours, max per day. Recognize that you have a limited amount of fuel. And basically what you need to do is you need to, how can I say this, space? out your creative energy to last into habit formation. This is the problem. So when you engage, when you have a burst of creative energy and you're like today I'm doing this, I'm going to

start at 8 a.m. I'm going to end at 5 p.m. tomorrow I'm going to stay up kind of late playing video games and then I'm going to start tomorrow at noon and I'm going to go to midnight, right? I'm going to just like follow my impulses. I'm going to research microphones. I'm going to look at what these streamers are doing. I'm going to look at software. Today I'm going to look at software from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

You don't build any habits. Because as long as you're like building into that, like giving into the creative energy, it's like, and then, yeah, on day four, I don't feel like doing it. I've done a lot of work, right? Because I did a lot of work. I did like 20 hours of work on this project, which is enough. So let me take a break. And then like the weekend rolls around and then you're doing this again.

So this is where what you want to do is marshal that energy. Right? It's kind of like if I'm going to go from like point A to point B with a candle and I need to light a fire at point B, I need to like make sure that candle stays lit. I don't want a firework. Like I need to have that creative energy last until I can start recruiting other parts of my brain like habit formation, building a schedule. What that also means is that your action, so when you do this, your actions are going to get decoupled from reward. This is huge. So how does this person know when to stop at midnight?

It's kind of like the impulse is gone or they've achieved some kind of reward or they got lots of rewards. That's what's sustaining their energy. So the reason I can do it for one month is because just like RPGs, or MMOs, level 1 to 10, you can get in like five hours. But level 50 to 60 takes five months. Same is true for real life. Right. RPGs have captured that mechanic really, really well. Right. So what you need to do is decouple your actions from the reward. And the way that you do that is by spreading out your creative energy and making a schedule. So this is what I'm going to do for today. And now suddenly what you're doing is training your brain to be somewhat different, which is that the actions are not going to be reward,

and they're not going to be impulse-based. It's going to be in the opposite direction from what video games train you to do. And once you start using these things like schedules, once you start using meditations, you'll start to move in the right way. But oftentimes I find that the biggest, the trickiest thing is that when people

have these bursts of creative energy, what they look for is discipline, right? You have the bursts of energy. And they don't see this as the problem. They see it as like, you know, the good thing. and then what they're missing is discipline. So all they're focused on is how do I make discipline, how do I make a discipline?

Which is totally fine. I mean, it's good to build discipline. But you have to understand that this whole phenomenon is actually the problem. That giving it into the impulses of your mind, which is how it's trained by video games, which is absolutely correct, is the problem. And what you want to do is don't give into those impulses. Space things out, harness that creative energy to build a habit.

As you start to like rain in that creative energy, what you will naturally do is decouple actions from reward. Instead, what you'll start to do is instead of getting some kind of dopaminergic, oh my God, this is so cool. This software is awesome. Instead, what we're going to get is like, yeah, like I did what I was supposed to today. Good job. Right? This is what I want at the end of the day. I want three checkboxes that you make the day before that get checked the day after. This is what you need to do. It's not just like, I don't know what I'm going to do. no checkboxes. I'm going to just wander over here and then I'm going to wander over here and then let me configure this and let me order that. There's no organization to it. It's all impulsive flow.

And as long as you are giving into that impulsive flow, it's going to be very difficult to accomplish anything creatively. Questions. I'm an artist at my full-time job in this session is so helpful. Fantastic. That's what we're here for. So someone's saying, so basically meditation and a to-do list? No. It's a very good question. So this is the problem. When we look at the actual solution, it seems simple, right? So basically a meditation and a do-do list. The difference, so let me put it this way. Let's say you have two people, one person who works out regularly, or let's say one person

who eats healthy and one person who doesn't eat healthy. And so you look at them and you kind of look at their behaviors and you say like, so basically just order salad every day, right? Sure, that's what it looks like on the actual. outside. What's the difference between the person who eats healthy and the person who doesn't eat healthy? Their actions are different, sure, but the internal mindset is actually very different. This is very important to understand. So for the person who eats healthy, people assume, like, if I eat unhealthy, people think, okay, I'm undisciplined, and it requires a lot of willpower

to overcome my internal impulses so that I can order a salad instead of a burrito. And so people look at the action. They're like, okay, I just need to eat salad every day, right? Whereas if you talk to the person who eats healthy, how much willpower do they use on a daily basis? Very little. Very little. So when you're asking, is it basically a to-do list and meditate?

That's what it looks like on the outside. But if you actually want to succeed, it's not about what you do on the outside. It's about the internal work. It's about the barrier of entry to doing the right thing. That's what we need to change. And that starts with understanding. When I talk to people who go to the gym five days a week and I ask them, how hard is it for you to go to the gym?

They say it's very easy. So that very easy versus very hard is an internal change. It's a mindset shift. It's some amount of a habit. That's what you need to change. It's not the actions. Anyone can tell you to like, you know, I could have just look at this for a second. This is not what I did today.

I didn't say. How to Bloom creatively. Make a to-do list. Meditate. That's it. The rest of this doesn't matter. I didn't give you a 30-second answer, right? Because what needs to change for people,

you see this with like alcohol addiction as well, where it's like, I woke up one day and I just realized that enough is enough. How do you become sober? Just stop drinking. That doesn't actually help, right? Sure, it's correct. But like the struggles that we have

are not in the action themselves. We all know what to do. The struggles we have is the mindset in the internal work. So that needs to change. And how does that need to change? It starts by diagnosing the problem properly, which is that giving into your creative impulses

is dooming you to fail. That at the end of the day, giving into your creative impulses and giving into your impatient impulses is still giving into your impulses. If you're misdiagnosing the problem, you're going to stay stuck. So marshal that creative energy.

That's the first thing you should do is restraint. Restraint from joy. Restraint from burning yourself out through a month of intensive creative activity. Marshal that creative energy. Drip it throughout 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. Then you'll start to recruit habits. Then it'll start to be easier for you. That's what needs to change, is the internal stuff.

We have 1,000 tutorials on YouTube telling you, you read 1,000 books about how to write a best-selling novel. We can take as many classes as you want to. You can take Brandon Sanderson's writing class on YouTube, which is fantastic. You can listen to podcasts. There's like the answers are out there. How do I write a bestselling novel? You just sit down and you write.

That's the problem is the mind seeks a solution. It doesn't want to do the internal work. So it's about internal resistance, understanding why you do what you do, understanding your impulses. Because once you understand like what's under the hood, then you can start to make adjustments. And as you tweak a little bit here and tweak a little bit here and tweak a little bit there, then the results that you get will be quite different.

So it's so much more than a to-do list in meditation, although that is correct. That is the essence of it, right? It's what's on the inside. What makes it hard to follow a to-do list? What makes it hard to meditate? That's what you need to understand. That's the individual resistance. A wonderful question, though.

Someone's asking you, how do you make it into a habit by slowing it down from the get-go? That's how you make it a habit. right so slow it down so if you want to like start doing pushups every day like don't start with 10 start with one right before you go to bed last thing you do i'm going to squeeze in one push up before i go to sleep that's how you build a habit okay all right um so oh my god this is such a good question doctor can you be truly creative if you turn it into a habit that is when you are the most creative. So here's the other thing to understand about creativity. When did creativity stop being in our control? When did we start treating creativity as different from anything else

that we do? Oh yeah, in other dimensions of my life, I can have a routine and I can have a habit. But when it comes to creativity, I'm just going to send it out the window. Incorrect. So the people who are successful artists are the ones who make a habit of creating. It's a skill to access that creative part of yourself. Right? So this is where, like, if you look at, what's his name, Mihaili Shikset Mahili, right? The guy who developed flow, he's like talking about developing a process to access that creativity. The states of meditation are very similar as well. Well, it's like, you can't, let me put it to you this way. Like, so you can't create a state of sleep, right? You can't just be like, I'm asleep. No. Can habit help with sleep? Absolutely.

Even though you can't create it. In fact, it facilitates it. So when you develop a good creative habit, when you develop a good process, it primes your brain to be in the right mode. And then once you're in the right mode, like the creativity actually flows more easily. The problem is that the reason you think creativity only flows at random times is because the way that you've allowed it to flow is only at random times. right there's a difference between like relying on rain for water and building a well like if you just wait for it to rain then of course you're going to think the only time i can get water is when it rains what i'm telling you to do is build a well and then suddenly that

truth which is just as true the only time the rain comes is like when it rains right that's the only time to get water but if you build a well it completely transforms your ability to do things so habit and creativity can go hand in hand. Absolutely. The problem, and it's not even an incorrect conclusion, because you just haven't built a well yet, right? So you just assume, based on your prior experience, that the only time I've been creative is when it rains. That's the only way to get water, because that's my experience. So question it, explore it, look at that resistance, try building a habit, and see what happens to your creativity. Excellent questions. So someone's

asking, I like art and want to make a career out of it. Is it wrong to make that a goal and outcome focus? Yes and no. So this is where, generally speaking, we want action focuses instead of outcome foci. But remember that all of these things are not, they're not like objectively good or objectively bad. What they are, I want y'all to understand what the options are and choose the appropriate tool. So of course, like in some ways you want to be outcome oriented, right? Like if I get a job, for example, I need to be like outcome oriented with respect to salary so that I can pay my dues. like I can pay for myself, I can go on vacation, I can support my family, whatever.

There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that we've become overly outcome-focused. And the main thing is that we've become unintentionally outcome-focused. We've started to be controlled by outcomes. And this is where if you want to be an artist, what I would recommend to you is that you don't try to become a best-selling author, right? Or artist. What you try to do is make the best book.

And that's a subtle but very important difference. Right? So write the best goddamn book you can. Don't worry about becoming a bestselling author. Paradoxically, it's the people who worry about becoming bestselling authors that have the hardest time becoming bestselling authors. And it's the people who don't try to become bestselling authors and focus on writing the best goddamn book that they can that wind up as bestselling authors.

Now, you may have to make some adjustments and stuff based on like markets and stuff like that. So I'm not, I'm not saying you're ignoring all that stuff. But generally speaking, with artistic pursuits, like the best games are going to come not out of like formulaic understanding of things, but someone who's like, I want to play a game where I can do this. So like, even Eldon Ring is like, I hope a great example where From Software was like, we want to make a Dark Souls game, but we want it to be open world. And that's our goal. It's not we want to make the best selling game on Steam. That's not their goal. Maybe it is. I don't know. I mean, I'm okay. It's can't speak for them. But in terms of people who do creative work, it's like,

devote yourself to like the purity of your action, man. That is what makes human creativity so amazing. Right. I don't know that like when Michelangelo made the sculpture of David, he was like, I want a piece of artwork that will be appreciated for thousands of years. I don't know that that was his goal. What I imagine his goal is, is like, I want to make just in a magnificent piece of artwork. So devote yourself to the action. And it's fine to be an artist. Just make the best art you can possibly make.

And then do the business stuff, right? Like, it's important to do that stuff. But don't let that be your focus. I mean, you can. It's just not what I would personally advocate for.