How To Turn Your Creativity Into A Workout, Not A Performance: The science-backed guide for making things more often, without the baggage
Deep Dive: Dissecting the scientific research behind creative habits, and the exact formula to turn your creativity into a tool for your health, happiness and capacity to flourish.
Deep Dives is where we go deep into the science of Creative Health: exploring the latest research behind how our brain, body, and imagination actually work and giving you the exact tools to bring them back online in an exhausting, overwhelming world.
Think of it as the first-ever Creative Health curriculum: part psychology, part neuroscience, part rebellion 🧠
Total reading time: ~14 min.
Synopsis: What actually happens when you sit down to create in the real, analog world? Most of us tend to approach our creative expression either as a hobby (something we only do when inspired) or a painful, perfectionistic performance. But, Creative Health requires us to adopt a completely different model: creative expression as a habit.
This Deep Dive breaks down the exact, scientific formula - tested by thousands of creators - for building a sustainable Creative Health practice. Plus: We pull back the curtain on the neuroscience behind specific creative practices (knitting, writing, cooking, building) and their unique impact on your well-being.
WHAT IF MAKING THINGS WITH YOUR HANDS WAS GOOD FOR YOU…WITHOUT HAVING TO LOOK GOOD?
Creative expression - particularly when it comes to our health - has a weird problem.
Unlike other well-being practices where we celebrate the small act of getting off our couch, for some reason our creativity has to clear a high bar: If it doesn’t look or sound beautiful, it doesn’t seem to count.
I know this isn’t just my own personal struggle. In all my years of working with thousands of folks from professional artists to those who haven’t touched their creativity in decades, I haven’t met one person who hasn’t judged their creations - even when they know the visible outcome isn’t the goal.
I’m sure you’ve felt this at some point, too. Let me jog your memory (😅) - maybe after making something, you’ve said:
“I wasn’t even trying anyway!”
“It’s not that good - but I just didn’t have that much time to do it”
“I’m not good at [writing, painting, pick the medium], so I kind of gave up”
We’ve all experienced it at some point: The friction, tension and vulnerability that comes with expressing ourselves in the real world.
The problem is: With the wrong framing, this feeling is exactly why 70%+ of adults say they’re not reaching their creative potential1.
By now, we all know how good creativity is for us. In our last Deep Dive alone, we unpacked the incredible power of the hand-brain connection and why making things in the analog world restores specific aspects of our well-being and vitality that we’re not getting elsewhere.
But, the gap from idea to action is wide: No matter how much we want to create, what happens when we actually sit down to do it?
Why do so many of us come up with excuse after excuse - wanting to “be more creative” - but never actually following through?
