📹 The 6 BAD HABITS of Creative People
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Why does my creativity feel blocked?
Creative blocks are emotional pains that people may unconsciously hold, indicating a desire to avoid certain emotions. These unprocessed emotions, often unavoidable and easily ignored, can be triggered by daily life experiences like holding breath or feeling tightness. Recognizing and addressing these unprocessed emotions is crucial for fostering a more joyful and creative life. It is not shameful to have unprocessed emotions that arise in daily life, as they can be easily ignored.
Does ADHD make it hard to be creative?
ADHD can hinder the ability to translate ideas into reality, leading to difficulties in planning, time management, and task completion. For instance, a child with ADHD might struggle to remember ideas or gather necessary materials for a science fair project. To foster creativity with ADHD, it is essential to recognize and celebrate their creativity as a strength, developing the skills and confidence needed to effectively express their creativity.
Why can’t I come up with creative ideas?
A conducive environment for the brain to process and generate ideas is crucial for personal growth and success. This involves allowing the mind to wander and process thoughts, releasing dopamine, which helps generate new ideas. Relaxing and unwinding can help the brain do the hard work for you. When working on ideas, having times without distractions, such as meditation, sitting outside, exercising, or taking a walk, allows your subconscious to make free connections and find solutions. Activities that can help with this process include meditation, getting vitamin D, getting active, exercising, or taking a facial or massage.
Bouncing and rebounding of ideas can also be beneficial. When the mind allows time to work through ideas, it uses experiences, knowledge, and research to form new ones. Collaboration with others with different life experiences, points of view, and knowledge can lead to even greater ideas. To create a brainstorming session, find someone to talk about your ideas and have an idea session bouncing around ideas together.
Listening to people discussing the topic or problem you are trying to develop an idea for can spark ideas of how you can be the solution or identify market gaps. Presenting your ideas to like-minded people can help tweak or suggest other directions to explore.
How to overcome lack of creativity?
To overcome barriers to creativity, individuals can use various tactics, such as challenging biases and preconceptions, fear of failure, and reliance on old ideas and practices. These barriers can hinder innovative ideas and problem-solving. To overcome these, individuals should think outside the box, move out of their comfort zone, and abandon familiar practices. Challenge biases and preconceptions, which are inclinations towards one way of thinking, can lead to a reluctance to consider others’ opinions.
By adopting these strategies, individuals can overcome these barriers and develop innovative solutions to problems. By focusing on the present and challenging biases, individuals can overcome the limitations of traditional thinking and foster a more innovative and innovative approach to problem-solving.
What causes loss of creativity?
Stress can hinder creativity, making it difficult to create. To combat this, find a calm space and focus on activities that bring joy. Creativity can be likened to growing flowers in a garden, with germination, growth, and flowering. Changing your mindset to a growth period can be liberating and soothing. Allowing time for ideas to bloom increases their potential. An abundance of ideas can lead to decision fatigue, so it’s beneficial for creatives to write or sketch all their ideas before choosing the one that produces the most excitement and joy. Remember that different ideas can be pursued in the future.
Why am I unable to come up with ideas?
The author discusses the challenges of generating ideas in a team, including lack of practice, uncertainty about creativity boundaries, lack of permission, stress, and cultural and leadership issues. They suggest learning skills and developing confidence to overcome these issues and provide techniques to rebuild idea-generating muscles. They also address structural and cultural issues that require more time, energy, and leadership commitment. The first post in the series, “How to have great ideas”, features ten proven strategies for developing awesome ideas.
Why do I completely lack creativity?
Creativity can be defined as the process of generating ideas from personal experiences, memories, and emotions. This can be achieved through a variety of activities, including website design, poster creation, article writing, photography, and video editing. Mastery of web design is a prerequisite for becoming a website expert. It requires a significant investment of time and technical expertise, and it allows individuals to express themselves effectively.
Why am I having a hard time being creative?
Mental health issues like anxiety, depression, trauma, and burnout can hinder creative work. To produce creative work, one must generate numerous ideas and explore new pathways with an open mind. Confidence, clarity, and subconscious refinement are essential. However, when the mind becomes stuck in negativity, such as during the pandemic, it becomes dark, empty, and distracted, making it difficult to think and create. This can lead to thoughts being rejected and left unusable. To overcome this, one must have a sense of self and mental stamina to be wrong without letting it bulldoze their self worth.
Why am I bad at coming up with ideas?
In order to enhance creativity, it is imperative to distinguish between the processes of creation and evaluation and to concentrate on one’s strengths. It is imperative to refrain from the Expert Syndrome, whereby experts proffer insights without subjecting their assertions to critical scrutiny. In lieu of this, it is advisable to capitalise on one’s strengths and generate a multitude of ideas before subjecting them to a rigorous evaluation.
Why do I feel like I’m not creative anymore?
Creative work can be challenging when mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, trauma, and burnout block the ability to produce creative work. To produce creative work, one needs to take their mind to a certain place, generate numerous ideas, and explore new pathways with an open mind. Confidence, clarity, and the ability to refine and refine on an almost subconscious level are necessary for this type of creativity.
However, when the mind is stuck in its own trap of emptiness and negativity, such as during the pandemic, it can be stifling and difficult to achieve. The mind becomes dark, empty, and distracted, making it difficult to think and create. This can lead to thoughts being swallowed up, rejected, and left crumpled and unusable.
To overcome this, one must have the sense of self and mental stamina to be wrong without letting it completely bulldoze their self worth. Despite the challenges, creativity can be a valuable skill for those who can overcome mental health challenges.
📹 Why Creative Writing Classes Are So Bad
Creative writing classes are often unhelpful, discouraging, and disillusioning. In this video, I unpack the reason why I think that is …
first we make our habits and then our habits make us… our habits determine our future… The thing about bad habits is that they never go away from themselves, it’s kind of an undo-it-yourself-project, it takes work and commitment. More often then not successful artists do consistently what others do occasionally. And the other way around successful artists do occasionally what others do consistently. Like comparing yourself to others and wasting time doing so… Art in the end is going left when everybody else is going right I guess… Such an important topic Mark, great to see it covered.
I used to fall into all of these categories at one point or another. But not really anymore, maybe with the exception of equating success with popularity. While I do still compare myself to other artists, not typically in a way to beat myself up over, but more as a way to learn because I know I can still improve and always will have room to improve. But ya, #4 is honestly extremely hard to ignore because sometimes if it’s your job, being popular is pretty essential at least enough so for it to keep you on your feet. It’s hard to call yourself successful if you are having difficulty in life because your artwork isn’t keeping you afloat. But I do agree that lack of popularity doesn’t mean your work doesn’t have value or isn’t good.
In one of your lessons where you teached some kids how to draw chibis, you said that you hope, everyone would get a teacher that takes his special time for the person. With your articles, your work, your books I just got, I feel you so much. You took your special time for us all and I want to thank you so much ! You are such a good person 🙂
It’s all about perspective tho. I always swing from discouragement to motivation.🤣 It always amazes me that there are so many different ways to accomplish something. Remember IN THIS WORLD OF 7 BILLION PEOPLE THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMEONE BETTER AT SOMETHING THAN YOU! This is a good thing. There is no ceiling, no mastering, be thanthankful that your art has so much depth and is one you can always learn from!
Somehow after I wrote down all the list you have of these bad habits on a cue card, I was suddenly reminded of a quote I read somewhere: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” Sometimes we do things that overtime becomes a habit that we don’t realise is more of a hindrance than a support to our personal development. And I know I have these habits that are hard to overcome at times once I get to a point where I want to do more, to be better than I was before, and yet for some reason the fears of failing and taking risks start to invade my mind and I become paralyzed. Sometimes I just get to a point where I don’t even want to try so that I don’t worry about those things, the disappointments and the criticism that may follow, either from others or even from myself. What I really like about one of the habits listed is #4 Equating success with popularity. I feel like that’s something people who are striving to maintain that level of achievement start to feel the pressure.. which is something I don’t know if I’ll even get to… Popularity, something I never strive to achieve and work hard for but I recall at one point, very rare moments in life where I did get popular for my work and then slowly but surely start to vanquish. I guess I should call it somewhat blessing in disguise as I experienced that early in my youth knowing that I did acquire a small number of admirers and I was praised for my talents and abilities and made me see to myself that this is a path I was born to take yet it was not going to be paved without twists and turns nor was the ground stable enough to leave me without cuts and bruises.
If I find someone better than me, it motivates me to do better. For example: I am a guitarist and I am the best guitar player in my class. Since I knew I was good at playing it, I didnt try to pay much attention to get better at it. My level of progress was neither going up nor going down. It was just a flat line in progress. But one day, I saw someone from a higher class playing guitar. He was Amazing at it (Waaaaaaay better than me)and I felt the challenge. I put more interest, more effort, more passion in learning guitar than ever. I will have to say. If you want to get better at something, first things first do it right and put your heart and soul into it.😉 BTW if you’re wondering why I’m here if I play guitar, I am also interested in drawing( I’m an anime fan). Drawing, music, reading etc are my hobbies
I have a terrible habit of trying to make something good when I’m angry or frustrated. My life is really stressful right now, and I tend to carry that into my drawing session. I get really picky and hold myself to ridiculous standards, and I won’t let go of the idea I had in my head when I started, or even just let it change. When I inevitably fail to make what I’m trying to, I get even more frustrated, angry, and demotivated, and I start thinking that I’ve made no progress, or even that I’m WORSE than I was when I started drawing, which is simply not true. When you’re stressed or angry but want to make art, try to just DO something without any real idea of what you’re doing. Something loose and relaxing to make, rather than something that needs to be precise or something for a project. Now is the time to relax and unwind with your art rather than working on your graphic novel or trying to record a song for your new album or whatever. Just doodle/sketch or play little tunes on your keyboard. Better yet, take a moment to calm down, get a drink of water, and just breathe before you even touch your art. It’ll go so much smoother that way.
Hi, I wanted to say. I love your articles. My favorite article. Is when you fell down the stairs, while drawing. You had me in stitches. For a good 20 mins. It was the funniest article. I have seen for a long time on YouTube. I am with you liking Studio Ghibli and Death Note Manga series. My favorite Ghibli films are Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and My Neighbor Totoro. Keep up the good work. I always enjoy your articles every week. A good topic for your next article. Might be, how to avoid procrastination and artist block. All the best, Thanks.
I really struggle with the last one. It caused me to quit drawing about 11 or 12 years ago. And it almost happened again just a few days ago. I want to get where I enjoy what I do no matter how flawed it may come out. Getting there hasn’t been easy. I’ve always had a pencil in my hand drawing since I first remember. And I’ve always been extremely hard on myself all my life.
Some bad habits I can think of: -Making an excuses as to why you don’t have time to do your craft. -Not working on the fundamentals/basics of your craft (practice) -Overworking/becoming obsessed with a project until you come to dislike it. -Ignoring everything such as social and personal needs (food and drink) etc as you’re in your own creative bubble.
I had it happen when I was writing a comic and I had a friend that basically compared it to his book and bashed my comic saying his is like an oak tree and mine is a sapling. I’m like how is this supposed to help me exactly? So I decided to ignore him because at that point it wasn’t valid criticism just something to put my dreams down, now I’ve got a story that I’m working on. Its basically the same one I just amped it up for my standards, not caring what anyone thinks of it, I feel if I like my own story, other people will also like it while not willing to please anyone with it. Also this friend is not my friend anymore because he ended up stealing some of my concept art and having a friend of his redraw my concepts and using it as his own. Almost like he’s jealous of my own work, it kind of makes me sad honestly because I don’t really have high expectations for my work, I just do what I like or makes me happy.
How about things artists and people to tell creative people what we need to be successful? Like needing a degree to work either independent or in the industry. I’ve wanted to work as an artist. But after going through a few semesters in a multimedia course, I feel that I’d rather focus on illustrations and become a comic illustrator. As interesting as it is to do different mediums, I enjoy drawing more than article editing and all that. Plus they feel more taxing to my mental energy.
The problem with arr is, that ig is a live style. And you always ask yourself: “Am I suitable for this live style?” When you don’t feel like an artist, it may ruin your whole life, because you don’t know who you are. It is sad that when you do everything to be so good at art, it doesn’t mean you really get good at it. During the process you never know if it is enough. Living yout life, like it isn’t enough. Other professions may be easier. When you want to be a mechanic, you can learn and will DEFINITELLY become one when you learn and there is no competition, so it is fine as long as you can repair. But as an artist you never know if learning makes you a good artist or an artist at all. The fear of not being enough. Not only that your skill is not enough, but also your whole being isn’t enough, it destroys you. I study design and my profs are already warning me. If I don’t change anything about my self esteem, or my workflow or my lifechoices (like actually reading magazines and meeting up with other designers), I will not be a designer.
Yup, really common caveats for me to fall into as well. Here’s a few more off the top of my head: 1. Thinking your art needs to be “unique” every time. Drawing without references because you feel like you’re copying someone else’s work. Goes without saying that references are immensely helpful, and you shouldn’t be afraid to take influences from other artists and the world around you. Nobody draws perfectly from memory. 2. Trying to find your own “style”. This comes with time and experience, not by forcing yourself down one particular path. Experimentation and failure will get you there eventually. 3. Multitasking to a fault. If your medium is written text, and you hate watercolour but really want illustrations done in that style, reach out to other artists for help! Networking can help you get comfortable with mediums you never thought you could do in a passable way (to yourself), or at the very least help you get in touch with someone who can ease your workload. There’s no need for every creative person out there to do everything themselves, think how many writers are involved with a single episode of a TV series for example! 4. Shunning an audience. This means you practise a ton, but never show any of your work to anyone. Kind of tags along with fearing criticism, but is even more harmful to your progress, as you could end up learning stuff that you’ll spend years trying to learn out of when you eventually find out a better way (say, you draw really good, but your hand posture is terrible, and you end up hurting your wrist to an almost irreparable state).
Happy birthday Joy! I hope you gave her lots of love and treats for her 3rd birthday, Mark… Edit If criticism is CONSTRUCTIVE and POLITE you should at the very least keep it in the back of your mind when you’re working on your art, but if the person criticizing your art is being rude, or trying to tear you down, ignore it Example if someone says “… the character’s neck looks a little too long… maybe try shorting it a tad” Or “The eyes are a tough too big / two different sizes, maybe try using a ruler for your guild lines next time” keep it in the back of your mind but if you’re hearing “… neck’s too long, fix it or you’ll never get better!” Or, “Eyes too big / two different sizes, do better or you’ll never get anywhere!”
For me, the more I look at my drawings the more I end up hating them. I feel so proud of them when they’re done, I see the odd little flaws, and what I could’ve done better, but over all I’m really happy with them. I have to pop them away in my folder while I’m happy with them otherwise, if I look at them too long, I start to hate them and end up wanting to throw them away.
Thank you for sharing these! With this day and age, social media is probably the reason why I don’t really like my art. Social media has become nothing but a popularity contest…sometimes as artists, we could get jealous about other people’s artwork and the number of likes and followers they have…and it’s hard to keep up with the algorithm.
I think another important thing to note is setting achievable goals along with your bigger, ambitious goals. I told myself next year I want to have 3 enamel pin designs ready to go so I can have a real, physical product from my art. These days instead of catering my portfolio to studios, I prefer to draw on my own time, make articles, and travel with friends and family. It’s helped out quite a bit with my mentality when it comes to my own creativity!
7. Not caring enough, though others can see how wonderful you are. Not all do but to even those few they matter but you ignore them. Thats the issue I have. 1 threw 6 you list doesnt effect me. This one does. I just dont care to share and dont care for myself to even draw because I can just think it. Nor afraid of sharing which most said or think that its either im lazy or that I dont care. 8. Getting nothing but praise no growth of criticism by others. So you are trapped in ego. That gets me. Im SICK AND TIRED of people telling me im wonderful… peoples been telling me that all my life because you had to a full blown autism child, which to be honest pissed me off as a kid too. So I got this fucking ego on my shoulder thats hard to throw off.
I feel like I just got called out. Also, idk if you take requests or anything, but if you have the time, could you make a article about drawing common snapping turtles? I know it’s oddly specific but I have been trying to draw them for a long time and I can never get it quite right. Some tips from a pro would be really helpful. Love your articles 💜
I love your music choices! Cultural instrumental music is the best when i’m creating charaters & stories. I need to just show my art. Improvement becomes a trap if your convinced people won’t support your current technical level. I’ve drawn mainly from imagination for decades. However i want my art to be worth what someone pays,& it’s hard to believe people would want to buy art of my random characters. At least thats what my mind’s struggling with.
It’s always reassuring when someone of your calibre tackles these subjects. When we see the amazing, seemingly flawless art of other, more established artists, we tend to forget that they were once beginners themselves and weren’t always as good as they are now. If I were to allow myself to be bothered or intimidated by the sky-high skill level of these much more experienced artists, I may as well just burn every brush, pencil and sketch book I have right now. I refuse to be discouraged. I refuse to let the joy be sucked out of creating art just because there are thousands better than I. I have faith that one day I too will reach that level. Right now, I’m having too much fun just practicing and fooling around with different media etc to let anything or anyone stop me. Every piece of art is begun with a sense akin to dread. I love that feeling. It’s exciting, having no idea whether I’m going to fail or succeed. For the time being, my skills and techniques are no match for my imagination and ideas but to be honest, if it came down to a choice between the two, I’d much rather have the latter. One you can learn, the other you can’t. The goal, of course, is to have both! So to all you fledgeling artists out there who erroneously think you suck: YOU DON’T. Don’t let your creativity be stifled.
I’m guilty of all of them. I’m really hard on myself because I’ve had a difficult childhood and I have several mental illnesses. It especially sucks because social media sites and Youtube has algorithms that can determine how many people actually look at your posts, regardless of how talented you actually are. By the way, is there a article on how to give constructive criticism? I noticed that a lot of other artists especially on DA ask for heavy criticism, but they expect you to be a jerk about it, which is the opposite of constructive. I think you should be mindful of other people’s sensitivity levels and skill levels.
Hey Mark, I came back to your website after staying away for a while, no specific reason your content is still great, love it! But after seeing other websites it appears to me your camera and / or lighting is not as good as it could be compared to other YouTubers. Maybe it’s time to invest in better hardware? 🙂
I think this is excellent advice for people in general, specially youths who are just starting out. This is a behavioral thing that affects you when you are growing up. I personally have gone through all of these stumbling blocks. I have learned to develop skin like an armadillo to help protect my inner artist. My first challenge as a young adult was to actually honor myself as an artist and to believe in myself. Good subject!
I’m always amazed how you’re able to discuss such deep topics is a structured and informative way while focusing on your drawing at the same time. I’d have no mental space doing anything else while I’m focusing on making something. 🙏 But to touch on some of the points you raised I’d say unfortunately imposter syndrome is a plague that affects a great many of us. I, for one have yet to figure out a cure for it 😕
I have this weird thing that i can only refer to as Jekyl/Hyde syndrom about the way I feel about my work. Meaning that sometimes I look at the same situation two different ways. I’m an artist of different mediums, and a musician, but mostly the musician. I can’t seem to take a compliment, and always point out to people my mistakes or saying what I could of done better, but at the same time, I know my work or playing is way better than some, and I always have the urge to show people what I can do, even though I sub consciously am thinking its not that good. Its a stupid curse that doesn’t seem to make sense to me .
I listened to some of Steve Rude’s contemplations on these issues on his website recently, and it really was a great help to an art newbie as myself, that he said the best artists actually are art students, and that he still considers himself an art student. He also said he sometimes had setbacks, challenges, and what worked yesterday may not necessarily work today. But when we struggle and overcome the adversities, we usually succeed in the end. It’s like being at the gym and accepting that everybody there are at their individual phases in getting in better shape. The same applies to art: we are all at different stages in the life long journey of improving our artistic skills.
Happy Birthday Joy! I happen to be guilty of a lot of these things. It’s difficult to stop, and it’s gotten to the point where I’m unmotivated to draw. I hope to fix that soon, but it’s hard to approach it again and feel good about my art. Lack of ideas to draw mixed with little motivation has plagued me for a month. I’m guessing THIS is art block.
I remember when I first started getting attention for my art on Amino. My drawing was bad, but you could tell there was a lot of time and effort put into it. I would rarely upload, because it was difficult to draw, but each of my uploads had effort and got 40-60 likes on it. I quickly got to 200 followers with my art. Then, I started taking shortcuts in my art trying to upload more often. I’d work on something for less than an hour, and my art suffered greatly. Now that I’ve been locked out of my Amino for a while, I realize how damaging that was to my art and improvement, and how the art I never planned to upload came out the best. So, even if it means less frequent uploads, at least I’ll be able to say my artwork is something I out effort into. Something I put time into. Something I put love into. So, moral of the story? All art that is worth being made, is worth spending hours, or maybe even days or months on, not minutes or seconds.
Thank you for your words of wisdom. I’ve been perusal your articles for a while and I really look up to you. Thank you for giving us viewers the advice you have because it really helps people like me grow mentally. I feel I have a much better view of the world because of you. I always feel I pass on your advice to others and they are always thankful for this advice. Please keep doing what you do.
Thank you for the article! I’ll admit that I’ve caught myself doing these things, though fortunately I’ve been able to set myself straight and not be so mean to myself. But sometimes it comes back, and then you really start to have doubts about yourself. Having someone as professional as you remind us to snap out of it is a reminder to never give up. It is a journey we all share 👏
When I draw I just do it I just work on my own style and go with it every once in a while I will make posters and then look at a coloring book for example and add things and take away thing I look at a comic sometimes and draw it and make a new thing for two different things I perfore just to free style it most the time
1 – I had involved myself in fight with someone on FA due to that 2 – always when barely won a favorite or +watch 3- always 4-Gained lotmof blocking because of it 5- the amount of fights I got into because of it, too much ti count 6 – stopped buying commissions But int he end, I am happy to at least know I am more creative than I know
All of these habits are my habits… it is so crippling for an artist. I even want to start a website (I already have an instagram and deviant) portraying my art and yet my bad habits are keeping me from doing it. I find it can be more difficult as an artist, but since I recognize the bad habits, it shows that I have space for improvement. Thanks for the article!!
I improved my feedback when I became an art director overseeing other designers. That’s when I reevaluated the goal of my critiques. I focused on building confidence as well as correcting design issues. I needed these people to become better at their jobs, which means they must feel they can do them. This bleeds into my writing feedback now. I focus on pointing out what works and offering concrete suggestions for fixing one or two things that don’t. But yeah, I see absolute crap writing critique all the time. That’s why I try to avoid them.
Unfortunately, to not give feedback is usually not an option for most students in creative writing classes. This is usually built in as part of their grade. In this instance, it has to be on the instructor to come up with better models for the students. Another unfortunate reality, at least in most MFA programs, is that you will almost always be stuck in a writing workshop with the literary egghead students who feel it is their appointed duty to tear your work down-in fact, they consider themselves failures as students if they are not righteously finding flaw with every passage in a written piece.
I enjoyed the workshop process in my writing classes, but I don’t think I ever really learned all that much from any of the classes. I was asked when I was close to graduating with a writing degree what I’d gotten out of it, and I realized it was a lot of practice, but almost nothing as to how to actually improve and literally nothing as to how to get anything published. Workshops were a fun way to sit around and talk about people’s stories, but I agree that they probably weren’t that helpful.
I’ve just decided to leave a writing class because the teacher had us come up with characters and is now insisting we write a novel about those characters. She did not tell us that’s why we were coming up with the characters, and when I and others have written the characters we want to write about, she insists we write on this character we randomly chose for what we thought was an exercise. In short, I want to write what I want to write. So I’m going to go do that on my own.
The same applies to many writing groups. I retired and was having fun writing creative fiction, thinking maybe someday I’d send some things out…fully expecting a lot of rejection of course, but hopeful. I joined a local Writing Group, and some of my stories were well received by most, with one story actually resulting in the question, “Where can I see the book of Fairy Tales where your story is published?” I was feeling great and said it was one of my first efforts and hadn’t been published anywhere. However, as the group proceeded, one woman constantly made personal attacks on how gratuitous my writing was, often peppering her critiques with “Ugh.” I write horror, which she saw as an excuse to criticize anything remotely disturbing. Another nitpicked to the point of absurdity, firing off barrages of non-stop questions designed to find errors designed to embarrass me (and everyone else in the group). The sad part is this guy was an overweight slob who used to be a teacher. I pitied his poor students. The worst was a wizened older man my age who prided himself as a “scientist” and was writing a dry-as-dust novel on climate change who said he didn’t understand or appreciate anything like fiction or poetry and constantly critiqued everything with a smug and condescending attitude. Another group member said the protagonist of a story I was writing on September 11th was “sociopathic.” I suspect that this was solely because this protagonist was a young, patriotic, conservative firefighter who didn’t go along with progressive ideology.