The End of Creativity
How to make better art by knowing when to quit.
Article Voiceover
Six o’clock Tuesday morning… I’m settling in to work on a fiery painting for my early morning creative hour. I brush away with a tray of acrylics, juggling between a reference image and my inner vision for how the sparking logs should look. At the end of this session, plagued with doubt as I take a photo to track progress, I start to wonder - did I just spend an hour making my painting different rather than better?
Why do I need to think about quitting when working on a creative project?
Quitting is inevitable in life. Eating, sleeping, exercising, working - each task has some mix of physiological, practical, social and psychological boundaries that determine when we stop. Creativity is no exception. A random mix of external and internal factors will define the endpoints for our creative process if the decision is left to chance and whim rather than being a conscious choice.
We need a simple way to take the guesswork and emotional investments out of the process for deciding when to stop working, present our creation to the world for feedback and move on. We need a system to budget creative energy.
Now, if art is a hobby for you, a way to relax and take a mental vacation, then you don’t need to set boundaries for your creativity. Just have fun!
But if you are serious about making an income doing whatever stokes your inner fire, then you have to stop spending your creative energy blindly on whatever seems necessary at the moment and instead be an intentional quitter.
Mindfully choosing when to quit can make your art better by reducing the amount of time and effort required to create the same amount of value.
I’m sure you’ve heard these sayings:
- Quality is better than quantity.
- Quantity IS quality.
- Done is better than good.
How you feel about these catchphrases depends on what good and quality mean to you. Both of these terms can be summed up as VALUE.
If you believe value is a feeling that can only be judged by you, the artist, then you probably resonate with the first phrase in the list. You’re invested in a project indefinitely until you get that peaceful feeling of completeness which tells you the creative process is complete. It does not matter what other people think, as long as the artwork resonates with you.
However, if you believe value is determined by happy customers wanting to buy your art, watch your video or read your article, that’s where the second two phrases in the list come in. And here’s why:
When creating for an audience, YOU CAN’T KNOW what will resonate with other people’s experiences and emotions…
This is especially true when you’re first starting out. So the more quantity you produce, the more opportunities you give other people to discover something they love and value, and the more feedback you can collect to fine tune your understanding of what quality, goodness and value mean to your audience.
Here’s a personal example. This is my most watched YouTube video. It’s a tutorial that I almost didn’t make because the project failed. I messed up.
If I had gone with my own definition of what was valuable (successfully completing a project), then I would have given up on the project, and my viewers would have missed out on a story that they enjoyed - me failing and sharing that process honestly.
Going back to the common saying which argues that completing a project is more valuable than reaching some personal, emotional judgement we call “good,” the truth here is that you don’t know what will be judged as good by other people until you finish something, put it out there and listen to both the complements and criticisms.
Does this mean you should drop all personal standards in favor of people pleasing?
No, of course not. Your unique beliefs on what is valuable, beautiful and important are what make you polarizing and, therefore, interesting, so hold onto your ideals. Just… loosely. Let EXPERIENCE continue to refine your skills - mindfully consume both positive and negative feedback as tools to sharpen and focus your perspective.
How do you know when to stop one stage of the creative process and move on to the next or call the project done?
If you want to build a profitable business, then you need to set up a system for dispensing your creative energy where it will have the most impact.
I made a simple plan for myself to help strategically set endpoints for each stage of a project. It’s inspired by Ramit Sethi’s Conscious Spending Plan. (Check out the I Will Teach You To Be Rich podcast which coaches couples about money. It’s both entertaining and educational.)
The following is a sample of a completed Conscious Creativity Plan:
Here’s how to set up the plan for your own project.
- Under the Total Time heading enter the number of hours that you will spend on the project.
- Customize the Categories, adding or removing rows as needed to fit your creative process.
- Enter the percentage of your Total Time you want to use for each category.
The worksheet will automatically calculate the amount of time you have to complete each category line. Don’t get too caught up in the details on your first attempt - try dividing your project into steps, assign some numbers and get started. You can change all of this later as you gain experience and a more practical understanding of what categories to include and how much creative energy to allocate for each stage of your artistic process.
To take this one step further, you might consider further breaking down your plan into high impact creative tasks, typically best done in the early morning, vs. low level creative tasks that can be completed when you’re already tired toward the end of the day.
You now have a simple, actionable plan for how much time to spend on each stage of your creative project.
I like this Conscious Creativity Plan because it removes the burden of figuring out exactly when I’ve found the perfect composition, sketched enough detail, tweaked the colors until they feel right, and on and on… Work truly does expand to fill the available time.
There is no single perfect design solution to please every person in your audience, and nothing is more crippling to creative progress than infinite possibilities. External boundaries help narrow the scope without you having to put in extra effort to eliminate options. LEARN TO LOVE LIMITS!
Consciously choosing when to quit is also an important step for determining how to price your work - you need to know how many widgets you can make in a month to determine how much profit you must make on each widget to earn the living you want, and then ensure that the market will support that price. If not then it’s an indicator you need to find a way to add more value to your widget so that customers will be happy to pay the price tag.
You don’t have infinite energy, so be intentional about how you use it.
Don’t get stuck in a rut of indecision and wasted creative effort. Increase the value of your work by consciously planning when to quit creating, and then let the world decide how they feel about what you made. You are well prepared with a clear plan that you can tweak based on what you learn.
You might be surprised at what people love about your creations, and their opinions may even help you to appreciate your own work in a new way.
By the way, here’s the painting I was working on during that early morning when I first began to doubt my process. Which version do you prefer?
Let me know by leaving a comment on my Substack!