While building my retail business, I was overwhelmed with many daily tasks that someone had to do but were really of low value. Even with a team of my best employees, I was buried under reports, responding to clients, and ordering products to name a few of the things that I burdened myself with.
This constant strain of unimportant but urgent work left me feeling overwhelmed and drained to the point where I couldn’t even think strategically about my business. Only after significantly streamlining our operations and reclaiming 80% of my time did I realize how stunted my creativity had become. Opening up my calendar to include large blocks of uninterrupted time allowed my thought process the space it needed to recognize the mistakes I was making.
Without prioritizing uninterrupted time and restorative self-care, eight hours of hard work becomes less effective than four or maybe even two hours of deep-focused work. I used to believe that if I was exhausted at the end of the day, and even if the day kind of sucked, I still did my best. However, while that was technically the most I could do in a day, it wasn’t even close to my best work. I told myself that eventually, I would learn what I needed to, and my tired, overworked future self would save me. But that’s not what happened.
What happened was that I decided that my business wasn’t worth continuing and started shutting it down. And it was only then, after I had space to breathe, that I could see these large glaring mistakes that I lived with for years. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until after I stepped back and gave myself space from the problems that I saw how far off track I had gone.
As a creative, your primary role is to solve complex problems. Repetitive tasks, which will soon be automated by technology, don’t leverage your unique human capabilities. What remains irreplaceable is your capacity to solve and articulate complex problems. This requires prioritizing mental clarity.
This means that you have to cut out late nights, drinking, and shitty food, but it also means you need to engage in active recovery, things like mindfulness, and saunas, stretching, baths, massages, and reading. And it’s not about the quantity of the work you produce the most important part is the quality. In his book The Art of Impossible, Steven Kotler highlights the importance of deep work and flow states for achieving peak performance.
I follow the recommendations Steven makes in his book to create flow states. I break down my workday into distraction-free thirty-minute to two-hour-long blocks with a thirty-minute hour to hour-and-a-half-long restorative breaks. Unfortunately, I can’t say that by creating these flow states followed by self-care, I was able to fivefold my work because it’s not even comparable. It’s a whole different ball game. I don’t even do that old stuff anymore; I completely cut out the stuff that isn’t the highest-value work I can do.
It’s like I wasn’t even playing the game. It’s like I went from making baseballs to playing baseball, and I can’t unsee it. It doesn’t matter how good you are at making baseballs. You are never going to hit a home run unless you are playing the game.
By prioritizing deep work and self-care, you unlock a sustainable and fulfilling level of creativity and productivity. It’s not just about working harder; it’s about working smarter and ensuring that you, as a creative person, have the mental and physical capacity to tackle complex challenges. This shift improves your work and enhances your overall well-being, allowing you to thrive both personally and professionally.
So don’t get stuck making baseballs when you should be spending your time trying to hit home runs.