Tapping into your creative reservoir and the importance of having a "creativity hour"

This week I have embraced a big (ok, VERY BIG) change in my life. I've decided to re work my calendar so that I utilise the first 2 hours of the morning to work on creative tasks. I have always been a morning person and am up and about at 5:00AM every single day (Some days it's even 4:45AM). But for the longest of times, I have been utilising this morning time for only exercising and breakfast. Now, before you jump to any conclusions, let me clarify that exercise always was and always will remain a very important element in my life. But starting this week, I have decided to experiment by moving that chunk of time out of the mornings, to a bit later in the day, closer to noon.

Why did I do that?

I think universally, wisdom always starts with some kind of an "aha" or a light bulb moment, if you will and in that moment suddenly everything is crystal clear. I had one such moment while listening to an interesting podcast episode on one of my favourite channels - The Art of Manliness. It was mostly about managing our 3 most important assets - our time, energy & priorities and allocating your time between the unproductive and important vs. actual creative work that one desires to do. The section that really caught my attention was about something very close to my heart - physical fitness (and the co-incidence that I was listening to this while on my early morning bike ride). The guest (Carey Nieuwhof) said that unless you're preparing for the olympics or any competitive sport, you don't need to workout in the mornings. It can always be scheduled to happen later in the day.

What a thought that was!!! It truly hit me like a tonne of bricks. I have always been struggling to have a consistent cadence to my creative tasks. Perhaps THIS was the reason. I was not spending the first hours of the morning letting my creative thoughts out in the open and doing the important stuff, that I've always desired. Instead I was exhausting myself and by the time It was 9:00 AM, I was 5 hours into my day, with not a single thread of work started and I was already going for my very first break and coffee fuel! So, by the time I sat down to "create something", I was tired and sighing and looking at my screen (there have been many days when I've simply stared at my screen or aimlessly browsed SM #confession). After listening to that podcast, that thought shared by Carey had been gnawing at my conscience all of last week. So starting today (It's Monday morning now) I decided to take this new philosophy for a trial run! This entire week, I am not going to step out at 6:00AM (I will still continue to be up and about a 5:00AM like always). 

Instead at 6, I came into my studio and fired up my laptop, and the first thing I did was redo my calendar for this week. That itself was quite a high~ And then first "creative" outlet I could think of was to express all those thoughts and emotions into a blogpost and here I am typing this. The thoughts are just flowing out effortlessly, like a peaceful stream flowing down the hills with just one aim - keep flowing. It is indeed a very beautiful experience. But the skeptic in my keeps reminding me that this is just DAY 1. Let the week progress and we'll see how this works. And you know what the best part is?? I no longer fear whether this experiment fails because it's just that - an experiment! If it doesn't play out the way I am imagining it in my head, I'll simply go back to my old routine with yet another set of new learnings. So, yes let the week progress and I'll certainly post some updates.

Coming to the primary thought behind this post - the importance of having a "creativity hour" - Is that even possible? I know that everyone (including myself) agree that creativity cannot really be confined to a particular hour of the day, because an Idea can germinate at any hour in our heads. That said, I feel it also makes sense to have a fixed time of the day, when one would manifest that idea into reality and create something out of it in a structured manner. And carving out a chunk of time from one's day seems like a great idea.

Morning's seem to be the best time for this since it is perhaps the quietest time of the day before all the hustle & bustle starts. Mornings are also when the mind is super fresh after a full night's sleep and it's brimming with fresh energy (my first hand experience from today 😁). One can get all the important stuff (stuff that needs a lot of concentration & thinking) during this hour, and move all the important but mundane/routine work to later in the day, when our concentration is no longer at its 'peak'.

For instance, I am just an hour in and I've already accomplished:

1. My calendar for the week is re-done.
2. Reviewed my social media posts and responded to viewer engagement.
3. Almost done with this article _ I'll finish, edit and perhaps publish it in the next 20 minutes.

What is your take on this? Do you have a 'creativity hour'? OR is your pattern a lot more unpredictable and unstructured (not that it's a bad thing because creativity does not happen in shackles). I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments box.

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