I spent more time doing logistics and bureaucracy than doing creative work. And I hated it!
Tomorrow I will officially launch the first group of Challengers in the CREAZEE Daily Writing Habit Challenge. It took me so many years to find the courage and the focus to prepare for this project, and now I am not writing daily alone anymore. I have a group of fellow Writing Challengers that will write with me every day for one month.
And that’s what I want to do. I want to write. I want to explore my thoughts, develop them and share my ideas with the world. But as a group facilitator and challenge organizer, I have other duties coming first: to make things work, to allow collaboration to happen, to prepare the space for collective creativity. That goes in addition to promoting the Challenge, gently cultivating conversations with potential subscribers, and setting up online venues to host them. And I also need to configure all software tools, platforms, plug-ins, extensions, accounts, folders, files, sheets, and what not to allow them to work undisturbed.
That requires a tremendous amount of effort. So, while I wanted to organize the writing prompts, prepare writing paths, and give creative fuel to my group, I’ve spent most of that little time devoted to this project to do the single most boring and uncreative activity: logistics.
I felt frustrated, and I’ve never desired so much to get help or be able to “script” and automate all of the repetitive actions. I’ve spent an interminable time to add a new account, add a new folder, add a new row, add a new email, and add a new item to dozens of lists, multiplied by dozens.
Here’s another valuable lesson from this project before it even begins: automate and simplify your life. It’s a powerful strategy to reserve more time and resources for more creative activities.
If you want to be more creative while avoiding killing your ideas by doing boring (but essential) logistical work: simplify processes, rules, and procedures and automate all the possible. You will have more time to nurture your creativity.