Approaching the limits
Most people are only able to engage in deep, focused creative work a few hours a day. How do you play with this limit to support your creativity?
Hey all,
I’m deep in a few creative projects right now, so this is a little shorter than usual. But it’s also a great time to become a Soundfly subscriber, support my work, and get access to like 60+ online courses! Use the code SPRINGISHERE for 20% off if you join now.
Most weeks, I try to make these letters as creative as possible. I want to inspire, challenge, and maybe even write something that’s moving to those who read them. I want to give my brain a work out and stretch myself as a writer, while hopefully writing something that’s emotionally powerful to the audience.
But this week, when I sat down to write, I couldn’t generate any power. My creative fuel cells looked like a tank of Astrophage that had been infected with Taumoeba. (I just finished Project Hail Mary, and it’s a really fun book. Going to see the movie later. If you haven’t read it, basically the Astrophage are fuel, and when they get eaten, they turn into gloopy, smelly sludge.)
I was reminded in the process that we can only do about four hours of intense, demanding creative work a day. After that, our brains are too tired to maintain the same rate of focus, and the quality of our work suffers.
Tons of artists and authors have talked about this limit, and structured their lives accordingly. Stephen King writes about it in On Writing, his must-read memoir focused on the creative process. Thomas Mann, Toni Morrison, Igor Stravinsky — those are just a few of the names that come up on a quick Google search for artists who built their days around short bursts of intense creative focus, often in the mornings, followed by less demanding tasks in the other hours. The author Cal Newport refers to this as “deep work,” and posits we can only average about 3-4 hours a day before cognitive fatigue sets in. The psychologist K. Anders Ericsson saw this pattern repeated in many of the domain experts he studied when developing his deliberate practice concept for becoming an expert.
I’ve found this to be true personally as well. There are times when I can pull a 10 hour day of creative work, especially if I switch my focus around, if I’ve gotten lots of sleep, if I take long breaks, if I’m working with others — but the average is closer to four.
At first, this limitation seemed too constraining and a little disappointing. As I wrote about last week, I often get a little obsessed with something and want to spend all my time on it. It can be a bummer to face up to your limits.
But what I’ve come to realize over time is that not every hour spent on creative work needs to be spent on the highest gear. I’m gradually realizing that I can structure my time in a way that supports these deep creative bursts, while still getting a lot done in the other moments. Here are a few of them:
First, I’ve actually found it freeing to create a clearer boundary between “deep, creative work” mode and “other stuff” mode. Knowing that my deep, creative work has a bit of a hard stop to it helps me protect the time I set aside for it.
Second, I’ve realized I can use systems and structures to help decrease my cognitive load on a daily basis and open up more time for truly creative work.
For example, I’m working on a new album right now. When I open a new track to work on it, if I’ve already created a bunch of effects racks and templates specifically designed for this album, it means that I’m starting from second base and the whole album will sound more coherent. For every track that has piano on it, I can just pre-load the settings I created for the entire project, and then tweak them as needed.
That’s just one example. When I was making weekly YouTube videos, the more we could systematize the process — scripting, review, storyboarding, review, editing, review — the more we could focus on the ways we could add creativity and originality to each piece, since we didn’t have to expend any creative effort thinking about the process. I’ve included a few of my favorites from that time below this article in case you’re looking for something fun.
This newsletter is also an example. I have a kind of template in my mind for the types of articles I can write when I’m not up to my creative best, and this is one of them.
Third, I’ve found that I can do some really creative work after my brain is already fried as long as I don’t care too much about the quality of it. That sounds counter-intuitive, but what I mean is that Tired Mode™ is great for a lot of things: for generating off-the-wall ideas, for trying stuff, for putting ideas down, for taking risks, etc.
That’s why I still like to work on music in the evenings. I rarely produce something final in that time — but I’m able to practice things, prepare, produce drafts, and do a lot of other stuff for which quality isn’t the benchmark. I’ll then go back and edit it the next day.
And finally, I’ve found that I can do a lot of creative thinking to prepare for those periods of deep focus in my head in quiet moments between them. This has always been an important part of my creative process, but has become more deliberate in the past year. I can develop articles in my mind while walking to pick up the kids. I can write the B section of a song in my head on the subway.
In fact, this is necessary. When we’re in deep work mode, our Executive Control Network is activated, which tends to prioritize focus and productivity over openness and unexpected connections. When we look up from deep work mode, our Default Mode Network is activated, which tends to allow for more creative connections, for ideas to bubble up unexpectedly, for your mind to wander. This is an oversimplification, but a useful one so I’m going to run with it.
What about you? Do you ever run up against a cognitive limit to your ability to be creative and focused? What do you do about it? I’d love to hear it.
Have a great weekend,
Ian
Ian Temple
CEO, Soundfly
ian@soundfly.com
Three of my favorite YouTube videos from the archive
A couple years ago, we made a lot of YouTube videos, supported by the amazing people on my team John Hull, Sam Amos, Martin Fowler, Mahea Lee, Jeremy Young, and Carter Lee. I was recently revisiting a few of my favorites, and here they are:
A deep analysis of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name.” Oh man, I still love this song, and I loved learning about the music theory of this song — the way it basically cycles through every mode of D.
We spent so long on this one, but I know it gets used in film scoring programs and schools, so that’s really gratifying. It’s tough to try to summarize 100+ years in like 15 minutes.
This was one of the first things we worked on at Soundfly, pioneered visually by Jeremy with a script written by an amazing Australian composer and educator named Tim Hansen. I still love this. Visually, it’s so creative and enjoyable.
This actually just happened to me with the last two big songs I have been focusing on. There was a riff that I really liked that I came up with last May-ish and I just finished writing it around October. I came up with some lyrics for one and a half verses and then a chorus which sounded a little disjointed. I got stuck for many months and then, one day on the way to school, I put the album, Villains, by Queens of the Stone Age because I only heard it one other time about a year prior. Somehow, either that night or the next day, I had a major breakthrough by that album influencing a chorus to another song I wanted to work on. I finished the song within the next few days. A slightly similar instance happened just last week. I was on Spring break so I wanted to write something in that free time. I spent several nights pouring through old recordings of riffs and sheets of half-written lyrics. I even just recorded a drum track and a full demo for another song but I'm still currently stuck on that one. I couldn't write anything in any of these nights and it really frustrated me. Towards the end of the break, I rewatched the movie Sinners so, obviously, I tuned my guitar to a slide tuning that I never used before. Then, for some reason, I looked up this newer Rolling Stones song I don't really like but then, without really trying I came up with a riff I liked. It was simple and, instead of brushing that kind of riff aside like I always do, I embraced it and wrote the instruments completely within the next two hours and the lyrics the nest day which is the fastest I have ever written a song.
My point is, my writing brain usually needs to things to make its best ideas:
1: I guess kind of a sense of moving on and, in a way, almost giving up on working on a certain song.
2: Listening to some random song that I don't usually listen to.
I don't know why but, as soon as this happens, the new ideas flow out very quickly and very fully formed. Anyway, that seems to work for me but I know there's probably a more efficient method.