010. The freedom of limits
“Reduce. Do as little as possible to do what you have to get done”
There are many challenges I find in trying to be more productive, but I think the biggest of all obstacles for me in my creative process is finishing things. I so often leave work half done, abandoned and left to the lost archives of notebooks, phone notes and hard drives. When I think of why that is, there are a few reasons that come to mind. The work is no good, I am afraid of what people will think so it's safer to leave things undone. But the main reason is choice, I simply get confounded by too many options.
Decision fatigue is a real thing. Think of all those micro-decisions that you have to make throughout your day; Every time you need to choose something there is a little bit of energy spent and although it seems like tiny amounts it all compounds and leaves you drained.
To try and navigate this, I have been trying to limit the amount of choices I have to make. I would say it is akin to a painter limiting his palette, what she has set out for herself is what she uses. I read an article about this recently and some of the benefits are; a greater balance for your painting, less over mixing, better colour harmony and it forces you to think more about form and composition. I thought this is totally interchangeable with music.
Even the version of this blog you are reading now is actually the fourth draft, the earlier outlines were much much longer. I indulged in several paragraphs all saying the same thing.
So at the risk of repeating myself and not staying true to my newfound reductionist standpoint, I will try to eliminate the decision fatigue in my creative process and remember the more options I have, the more of a bottleneck my thoughts become. The more clogged up with ideas I get, the more likely I’ll abandon my work because I can't remember what the crux of the idea was in the first place. So streamline, that's my new motto. Hack away the unessential.
