Habits That Help You Leverage Creative Impulsivity
What would happen if someone unthinkingly acted on his immediate ideas, feelings, and whims? Well, if he were trying to make money but the only work he could think of doing is repetitive minimum wage work or a soul-sucking nine-to-five, he’ll end up poor and bored at a local fast food restaurant or horribly depressed doing work he hates. If he felt like punching someone in the face, he’d do it and possibly get put in prison. If he were trying to eat healthily but succumbs to the first option he saw (which is usually sugar-coated something in America), he’d eat it over and over and become enormous. If this guy is extremely lucky, he might accidentally fall into the right choices, but the odds of that are astronomically low. Impulsivity leaves his life up to chance.
What would happen if you left your creative work up to chance?
You probably aren’t the face-punching, sugar-binging hedonist I described above, but you’ve probably acted too swiftly on emotions or information before. Perhaps you pursued a romantic relationship before fully assessing a girl’s or guy’s character, or you bought sugary snacks at the grocery store despite already having healthy snacks at home. Impulsivity doesn’t have to be extreme to be counter-productive.
If you want to succeed as a writer or creator, it’s vital to avoid impulsivity. Why? If we only write or create what immediately comes to mind (or even the second or third thing), we may end up doing work that is a writer’s form of “flipping hamburgers.” If you want to create noteworthy content—content that makes an impact—managing your impulses is a requirement.
What causes impulsivity? If we know its root causes, we can eliminate it. Impulsivity is often caused by two things:
Availability bias: the tendency to treat the most recently recalled information as the most important.
Emotions about that information.
For example, suppose I impulsively begin drafting an article in a fit of gleeful inspiration. In that case, I’m treating the availability of my draft idea and my emotions about it as justifications for the importance of writing that draft. However, these are not proper justifications for publishing it.
Impulsive creative fits are valuable. When the writing mood strikes, it’s good to capture your ideas as soon as possible—they give you something to develop when you’re not inspired and lack ideas. Capturing an idea has very little downside and enormous potential upside. Though it only takes a few seconds or minutes, it’s possible that the idea could clarify something previously confusing or be turned into an amazing article, book, etc. However, I would leave your creative fit at that—capturing. If you publish or share the idea too soon, you may miss the fact that it’s not a good fit for your audience, or state something as a fact that really isn’t, which may cause you to lose followers and potential income.
Rather, if you want your ideas to make the impact you want, wait until you’re in a place where you can assess them with a clear head by asking questions such as, “Does this fit into the overall theme of my work?” and “Will this serve my audience OR is this just something I’m excited about?” and “Will publishing this give me the results I want?”
In essence, avoiding the consequences of impulsivity (while taking advantage of it) boils down to a few, simple habits:
Capture ideas when they’re hot.
Never publish ideas when they’re hot.
Assess your ideas later and choose what makes sense to do within your context.
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