The Scientific Secret Cultivating Creative Health (Pt 2): Why you need to stop monetizing (all) your hobbies
It might feel impossible, but the science is clear: Having an autotelic mini-c creative practice - outside of monetization and virality - is the key to our Creative Health
A note from Katina: Our goal is always to fight back against superficial content - so, we built only place on the Internet dedicated to exploring the science of creativity.
We go deep into the scientific papers, concepts + findings that drive our creative brain - and never make it into the mainstream. Deep Dives is for those who want to strengthen their Creative Intellect - but everyone who believes in our mission, that creativity belongs to all of us, is welcome here 🫶🏽
Total reading time: ~8 minutes.
Synopsis: No one is immune to the pressure of simply just surviving in our world today. And for many reasons, it can feel like monetizing every aspect of your free time is necessary. But, decades of scientific research show that especially in times like these, protecting your autotelic, mini-c creative health practice - without an ultimate “goal” to capitalize off it’s presence - is how we claw our way back to living a good, healthy and even creatively successful life.
Background: In Part 1, we explored the scientific history, research and traits of autotelic experiences. In this piece, we’ll break down Creative Squeeze of modern life, and exactly how to fight back against it using micro-autotelic creativity.
Missed Part 1? Read it here.
The Hobby-to-Virality Pipeline 🫠
Do you feel like every single thing you do has to ladder up to some bigger goal?
For most, it’s not enough to have a simple writing practice anymore - at some point, it has to reach millions. It’s not enough to just bake cupcakes for fun - there’s a business plan (or seven) lurking in the background.
This is what I call the hobby-to-virality pipeline: the pressure for every single act of creative expression to become productive, profitable, or at the very least, public.
I’ve interviewed thousands of people in my years of researching creativity, and I haven’t met one who hasn’t fallen prey to the hobbies-to-virality pipeline at some point - myself included.
And frankly, it’s not our fault: Our society has spent centuries engineering it this way - all the way back to The Industrial Revolution, which taught us to measure human worth in output1. Now, social media makes that quiet part visible: We can quite literally see how much validation we get for making our self-expression to go viral.