Habits are important ways for us to go about our lives--a way for us to move around on autopilot and not have to think about every little part of an activity. One common form of habit is your trip to and from work, the destination of which often comes with little to no recollection of how you got there.
But there are habits that just aren't good; and our technological world are foisting behaviours on us that while seemingly normal are actually terribly unhealthy--and can kill your creativity. Here are only a handful of them:
1. Binge-Watching TV Shows: One of the conveniences of Netflix is the way it lets you watch six episodes of a show in a row without viewer having to click a button or find the next one on a menu. If you fall asleep during a show, who cares--it'll just continue on without you, and when you wake up you can just keep following the plot-line. The problem with this is it can totally mess with you in a number of ways. First, if you're eating the whole time, you can gain tons of weight. Binge eating and binge-watching typically go together. Second, if you're binge-watching at night, you're likely to stay up later--it happens to many of us. And if you're staying up later, you're not getting as much sleep, which will seriously mess with your health. Third, it's not good for your brain. As psychoanalyst and creativity researcher, mihaly csikszentmihalyi claimed in his book Flow, your brain is more active while sitting on the toilet than watching TV. Think about that one for a moment...
2. Phone Notifications: You've got to turn that thing off. Mobile phone notifications are a form of behaviour modification that pulls you away from the present moment into that of the fantastical (who's getting a hold of me? Did someone like my post on FB? and so on). When you are in the creative moment, such distractions can be damaging. When it's at night while you're sleeping, you're breaking your natural sleep patterns and thus a channel for new and fresh ideas. Take a moment to reflect on the percentage of notifications that actually are urgent--1-5%? Think also of the millennia of life that existed prior to mobile notifications and the kinds of things people were able to accomplish without them.
3. Staring at your device too much: When you've got your head buried in your phone, you're looking down all the time. There are actually health risks with this posturing in which people are actually straining and causing long-term damage to their neck and back--it's ridiculous. But what's even more problematic is in the act of looking down, you're no longer looking up at all the beauty and potential of what is all around you. There is an importance in gazing up at nature and being present and open to it and taking it all in that is part of being a creative individual--indeed a human being. It should not surprise us when reports come out that humans have lost the ability to see in 3D. And indeed it reminds me of a story about Picasso: he was on a train once, during which a stranger next to him criticized his paintings for being too abstract and thus not real. "What is real?" Picasso asked his interlocutor. "This!" the man exclaimed, holding up a picture of his wife. "Oh--" replied Picasso, "she looks quite flat..."
4. Posting everything you think: Social media can be a good vehicle for getting some of your ideas out there to connect with others; however, when all you're doing is posting everything you're thinking, you're doing more harm than good. When creating new ideas or strategies or works of art, there is something about holding onto a good idea and letting it germinate in the mind before committing it to paper or canvass or proposal. It's best to carry around a notebook and pen to put your ideas into when they come to mind--not putting them out there for the world to see half or one-quarter baked.
5. Using device to fill every free moment: When you're thinking about ideas or strategies, it's good to get away from your work, to pull away from what you're working on, and get out into the world. Taking a walk is a great way to do this, whether in a field or along a busy street. Taking a nap is another. Spending quiet time just sitting with your eyes closed can be good as well. But now that we have mobile tech attached to ourselves, we tend to fill every free moment with news feeds, social media boredom, or video games, rather than giving our body and mind the variety they need. It's most often when we've broken away from our work that new fresh insights come. Unless we can break from the mobile device, we will not have the variety of experience necessary for ideas and insights to develop.
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