🎡 How to Build a Creativity Flywheel

Ya know what one of my favorite aspects of creative pursuits is?

It begets more creativity. The more you engage those colorful parts of your brain, the more you stretch those particular muscles, the more likely you are to keep creating.

Making things is a deeply human pursuit, whether it's producing as part or your livelihood or because...you just wanna. In the three-dimensional matrix of human-centered productivity, joyful creation plays a central role.

So let's talk about what it takes to build a creativity flywheel, where every contribution makes it easier to commit the next one.

Lower the Barriers to Entry

To get a flywheel spinning, you have to be clear-eyed on what you're willing to let go of.

I've been on a bit of a creation tear lately. It feels good.

Today marks the 50th day in a row of recording, editing, and posting a 3DP video on various social platforms. Only one of those videos has actually broken through, but I'm proving a few things to myself by just keeping this journey to 800 daily videos going, and it's helping me consider what 3DP can and should be in the coming years.

I fundamentally would not be able to keep that streak going if it was too time consuming to keep posting. I'm traveling like crazy right now (I'm literally drafting this on a plane), and it needs to be easy for me to keep making stuff or I else I just...won't.

Keeping the barriers to entry low dramatically increases the likelihood of success.

I'm not especially precious about what I say each day. I want it to resonate with my working theory of three-dimensional productivity, but I've deliberately built that theory to be broadly inclusive. I mean, what doesn't fall into the bucket of "humanity?"

I'm also willing to concede that I'm an amateur videographer and editor. This is important because, well, I am an amateur. Were I to hold myself to the standard of creators on social platforms that have been honing their professional crafts for years and years, I'd stop before I even started out of a crushing sense of inadequacy.

Aim for Imperfect Regularity

To keep a flywheel spinning, aim for trends instead of brittle obsession over streaks.

I've been making music for most of my life. My guitar came with me on vacations as a kid, and it traveled with me on my deployments to Iraq. It went with me to college, then to my apartment where I waded through the trials of working as a ninth grade teacher. I brought it to law school and found myself having an unrelenting blast in a cover band. It has helped me sort through a good number of changes in life as of late.

I don't play every day, but on the whole, I play regularly. Regularity is subjective. It's context dependent.

With the 3DP video project, I've decided to prioritize a more stringent definition of regularity: every day for 800 days in a row. But just because that feels right in that context doesn't mean that every project I work on has to hold to a similar structure.

I'm quite sure that I'll be making music in the years to come. I can't tell you exactly how often, or whether it'll be anything shared externally or if it's kept to a private pursuit. But I will make something, continuing the trend of imperfect regularity.

Celebrate Creative Spillover

The winds of one flywheel can gust into the pedals of unrelated projects. When that happens, lean in.

The two projects I mentioned above are mutually reinforcing, even if I didn't explicitly mean for them to be. Why not put some of my productivity thoughts to music? Why not create background tracks for some of the videos?

But the creative spillover also positively informs the work I'm paid to do. I find my mind more open and nimble as I consider projects at Warrior-Scholar Project. Opening up space in one dimension naturally creates space in another.

Jack Conte is a fascinating example. I first got to know him through his spectacular music, and then was surprised to learn he also founded and runs Patreon. In a recent episode of Decoder, host Nilay Patel asked the question that had been running through my head: does Jack's music production influence his role as the head of a thriving business playing a key role in the creator economy? The answer is, in short: very yes.

Creative spillover at its finest.

Give Grace

A flywheel has to have some give in the joints if it is to endure in this chaotic world of ours.

A few weeks ago, I was having a rough one. Before going to sleep, I felt the need to keep the daily video streak going but didn't have it in me to do anything especially creative. I had taken some footage earlier that day from a unique vantage point on the last car of the L, and I took a few minutes to add a caption to the footage and post it. It was the least effort I could allocate to still keep up the commitment, and it felt good afterward knowing that I had continued to make it happen.

Grace and compassion doesn't come easy for many of us — when we have to give it to ourselves. It's something I'm continuing to work on, and the more I create and build in public, the more opportunities I have to disappoint myself and to practice giving that grace.

Just Start

Exactly none of this matters if you aren't willing to just start. Don't overthink it. Don't be too precise with the outcomes. Don't give into the excuses that threaten to chew holes in the foundation of your dream house before you've even purchased the wood.

If you're interested in creating, well then, create!

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I will continue creating, and I hope you will too, in whatever fashion feels best to you. Public or private, big or small, mainstream or quirky...whatever feels best to you.

And I hope that you'll consider how to build flywheels of your own, turning isolated projects into something that endures.

Spinningly Yours,

-Rye