Journal 1 - The Creative Habit: Rituals and “Productive Procrastination”

Recently I have started reading the book “The Creative Habit” by Twyla Tharp, and so far the book has been enlightening not only for my theater endeavors but also for my creative works in general. First, the most important teaching that I have taken out of the reading is the importance of having rituals to build a creative habit. The author uses several examples, but the one that resonated with me the most was her morning ritual of waking up at 5:30 AM, grabbing a taxi, and going to the gym. This resonated with me because waking up consistently in the morning is a habit that I have been trying to achieve ever since I came to university, but always struggled with it. However, after understanding the importance of rituals to solidify discipline into habit, I have decided to make a conscious effort to implement a morning ritual in my daily life. In the author’s case, telling the taxi driver the direction to the gym became an automatic effort that forced her to reach her destination no matter what, while in my case, the ultimate struggle was getting out of bed. Therefore, my new morning ritual consists of waking up, and immediately doing 20 push-ups. The idea is that if I continue to do this every morning it will eventually become second nature, to the point where it will be impossible for me to start the day lazily. With a consistent morning routine, I believe that my overall productivity will massively increase, and so will my creative works inside and outside of Making Theater.

Another important concept that I took from the reading was the idea of facing your fears, in my case, the fear of not being able to come up with creative ideas. Something that I noticed is that when I am in class and I am forced to think of new ideas for projects, I sometimes catch myself second-guessing, but recently this is a struggle that I managed to successfully face. For example, after brainstorming with my two teammates for the first exercise of the class, I ended up being responsible for coming up with our first concept idea, but then I immediately discarded that into a completely new concept that we agreed would work better. Choosing to come up with something new as opposed to just sticking with what was comfortable was quite intimidating for me at first, but I was relaxed knowing that even if I struggled for a bit, I would eventually come up with something good.

Outside of class, I also find it important to employ rituals to face creative blocks. In the book, the author mentions the example of a man who cannot proceed with his work until he cleans a dirty spot on his desk. I have a similar concept, something that I call “productive procrastination”. The idea is, if you are stuck on something that requires creativity — such as writing a play — just engage in an unrelated activity that is beneficial to you. For example, if I am writing an essay but I am too mentally tired to continue, I just get up and go drink water. The act of stretching your legs, entering a new environment, and staying hydrated is like bathing your brain. It makes me feel fresh and present in the moment, eliminating any distractive thoughts that I could have. Moreover, I also enjoy getting up and walking, or listening to music that inspires me to work, although working with music is not recommended on every occasion. Nonetheless, there are a lot of ways in which you could use habits to improve your creativity, and once you start bringing them to the conscious, nothing will be able to stop you from turning your ideas into reality.