The development of habits has been a hot topic in the business world of late, but is often avoided by creatives as something that will dampen their creativity or hamper the artistic flow of ideas. However, current research shows that the opposite is actually true. The more repetitive processes that we can convert into routines and decisions we can eliminate through habits, the more brain power we leave for creative pursuits.

Why Habits Free Our Creativity

Decision fatigue is a real thing. Our brain’s capacity for making decisions is limited. And every decision, big or small, counts toward the overall tally. An example would be deciding what to wear each morning. There can be many decisions associated with an outfit for the day. But if you look at many major fashion designers, they have a “uniform” of sorts. They basically wear the same thing every day. This frees that mental energy to designing or other more valuable activities. Habits produce a similar result as their automaticity grows.

When a day is filled with lots of decisions, it doesn’t take long before our brains actually get tired. As with our muscles, a tired brain is incapable of doing its very best work. And without question, true creative work requires our best efforts. Therefore, the more parts of our ongoing existence we can develop into habits (or at least routines or systems), the more capacity we will have for the creative aspects of our business, often the parts of the business we truly love.

Start with What Already Is Working

Although there are many habit building philosophies available, my personal favorite is the Tiny Habits methodology developed by Stanford professor BJ Fogg. As such, most of what I am sharing here is a few key points from his thought leadership on the topic. If you wish to go deeper, I encourage you to check out http://tinyhabits.com/.

When you first look at creating a new habit, take the easiest possible path to success until the process becomes much more natural. As such, consider building your first several habits around things you really want to do as opposed to the things that you think you SHOULD do. This may seem less than effective, but the “shoulds” rarely have enough motivation in an of themselves during the early stages.

Next, build on something that is already working and/or is already a habit. For example, many of us, our work is sedentary and we want to start exercising daily. So the idea is to look at when/where you are already moving your body. If you walk the dog every day, that is a point that your body is already moving. Look to extend the time to a minimum length versus being done as quickly as possible.

If you can’t identify a habit that is already in place, look to discover an aspect that you enjoy. If you enjoyed swimming as a child, swimming as an adult might be a good choice. Early on you might make “bad” choices on timing, effort, activity, etc. This requires you to try, evaluate, and repeat multiple times until you find the “right” version for you. Change one element and try again. A habit rarely forms until most of the conditions match your particular set of needs and circumstances.

Design a Habit

Often we are told (or we tell ourselves) we are not able to create an important habit due to lack of willpower. But willpower is also a limited personal commodity. So depending exclusively on willpower just sets us up for a high probability of failure. Instead, if we consider the development of a habit in a similar fashion to how we design most anything, we are much more likely to create success.

A great quote from BJ Fogg is:

Change leads to change and success leads to success.

Design never starts completely from scratch but begins with something and makes an incremental change. In the world of habit formation, the smaller the change, the easier it is to implement it.

For creatives finding the time to create is often relatively easy (because it is something they love), but finding the time to document their creations (writing patterns), is significantly more difficult. So make creating a reward for documenting. But to develop the habit, only require a minimal amount of time prior to rewarding yourself. For example, commit to 15 minutes of documenting before you move into creation mode. For most people, when they hit the 15 minute mark, they continue on because they are in the groove or they want to reach a more logical stopping point. But if not, they can just stop. Regardless, they have 15 minutes of work done they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Over time you might expand the time or change the order. However, at some point, things might stop being (or feeling) successful. This is where our natural tendency is to completely give up or say we are not capable of creating the habit. However, instead of giving up, think like a designer and look at the design of your habit. Is there a different element that could be changed to create success? Should we reduce the minimum time? Would a different “reward” be more inspiring?

When Does a Habit Take Hold?

There are lots of studies cited about how long it takes to form a habit, but the real answer is it will vary based on the person and the habit being created. The more personally satisfied you are and the greater the emotional pay-off with the activity and/or result, generally the quicker the habit will form. Replying to comments on social media (particularly positive ones), is often an easy habit to develop as it has both personal satisfaction and strong emotional payoffs.

However, this also means that certain activities may never become true habits – where the automaticity is very high. But these activities can still become an important routines. For example, paying your bills and completing your bookkeeping in a timely manner will probably never become an actual habit, but ending each week with your accounting in order could become a very valuable routine.

Ultimately, the more habits you can build into your life, the greater the brain power you will have left for much more creative pursuits. But even the process of developing habits can and should be approached with a creative/design mindset:

• Start with something that you are already doing or enjoy.
• Make a tiny tweak to get you closer to your bigger goal.
• Celebrate the success – it creates the emotional pay-off.
• Repeat and adjust until the habit is formed.

Treat habit formation like a design challenge and you will undoubtedly be much more successful. Design your habits and free your creativity!