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Updated November 3, 2022Youโre reading an excerpt of Creative Doing, by Herbert Lui. 75 practical techniques to unlock creative potential in your work, hobby, or next career. Purchase now for instant, lifetime access to the book.
In 2018, the average Instagram user on Android spent 53 minutes a day on Instagram. Over the course of the year, thatโs 322 hours, the equivalent of over eight full 40-hour work weeks.
Imagine what you could create with 53 minutes a day! (Especially if youโre reclaiming that time from Instagram.) Even five minutes will move you further along your creative path than no minutes at all. You can begin to reclaim time for creative work by setting yourself a manageable limit.
You can use a technique called timeboxing, which means giving yourself a set amount of time to do one thing. One of my favorite devices is the kitchen timer. Iโve bought maybe a dozen of these in my life so far, and I plan to buy dozens more. I set the timer for a few minutesโfor a short workout, for a sprint through really boring paperwork, or to get started on a big creative projectโand then I press start. I give myself a window to work through. After that, I can choose to stop, and sometimes I do. But many other times, I keep going.
In the professional world, a popular productivity strategy is the Pomodoro method: set a timer for 25 minutes of uninterrupted time to complete a task, take a five-minute break, then start the timer again. After three of these 25 minute sessions, the person takes a longer 30-minute break.
A deadline is a variation of this time constraint. In her memoir Bossypants, producer and actor Tina Fey quotes Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels: โThe show doesnโt go on because itโs ready; it goes on because itโs 11:30.โ You can set a deadline and timed event to happen regularly: โEvery day when I wake up, Iโm going to take two minutes and write a note.โ You might also challenge yourself to make something whenever you have idle time, like when youโre waiting for a bus or during commercial breaks. You wonโt find inspiration by waiting for it; youโll need to put the work in to uncover it. And you donโt only do creative work when youโre inspired, you do it because itโs on your schedule to do it.
The two most common dimensions weโre constrained by are space and time. If setting a time limit is timeboxing, then perhaps the space-analogous exercise can be called sizeboxing. You pick a limited size for your work and work within that.
One popular format Iโve seen is an essay that fits in a screenshot on your phone. When working on articles, I write my notes to fit a 4-by-6-inch index card; any longer and it has to be a new note. This keeps me concise.
If youโre recording music, scale down by committing to recording a song with only two instruments if you usually use more; or if you want to produce a lot of ideas, commit to writing thirty-second melodies for one week.