Focus. Part 10

These creativity killers come in many forms, but forming the key creativity habits below will help us to deal with these problems.

the most important creativity habit.

In a word, the most important creativity habit: solitude. Creativity flourishes in solitude. With quiet, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourself, you can focus.

The best art is created in solitude, for good reason: it's only when we are alone that we can reach into ourselves and find truth, beauty, soul. Some of the most famous philosophers took daily walks, and it was on these walks that they found their deepest thoughts.

My best writing, and in fact the best of anything I've done, was created in solitude. Just a few of the benefits I've found from solitude: time for thought.

in being alone, we get to know ourselves we face our demons, and deal with them s.p.a.ce to create.

s.p.a.ce to unwind, and find peace time to reflect on what we've done, and learn from it isolation from the influences of other helps us to find our own voice quiet helps us to appreciate the smaller things that get lost in the roar If you want to nurture creativity, you need to create the proper environment for it: an environment of solitude, free of distractions, full of quiet and a blank canvas. This book is aimed at helping you to create that environment, and once you do, see the other important creativity habits below for what to do in that environment.

the greats on solitude.

Of course, many other creative people have believed in the habit of solitude. I've collected a small but influential sample here. There are many more examples.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheersay, traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal or during the night when I cannot sleep -- it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly."

Albert Einstein: "On the other hand, although I have a regular work schedule, I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn't going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination."

Franz Kafka: "You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

Nikola Tesla: "The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone -- that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude."

Pablo Pica.s.so: "Without great solitude no serious work is possible."

Carl Sandburg: "One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude."

Thomas Mann: "Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous -- to poetry."

other important habits.

Creating an environment of solitude is an important beginning, but there are other habits that help as well.

Deep focus. You're in isolation, free from distractions. Now it's important to learn to pour yourself into your creative task. That means losing yourself in the task, so that you forget the world around you and lose track of time. That happens when you love the task, when it's challenging, when you're free of distractions or other things that remind you of the outside world. It means stop thinking about 108 deadlines and upcoming meetings and tasks, and focus on this one task, this single moment in time. This deep focus comes only with practice. Start small, with just five minutes, and do it regularly, and soon you'll become a master at it.

Small tasks. If intimidation stops us from creating, we need to make things less intimidating, less overwhelming. We do that by making mini-tasks, as small and non-threatening as possible. Need to write a book? Don't focus on the entire book, or even a chapter. Focus on a thought, on a page, on half a page, even on a paragraph. If you only need to write a paragraph, that's not difficult. Any creative task can be made smaller by focusing on less. Do the task, take a quick break, and focus on the next small task.

Constant practice. Set aside time for creating each day, even if it's just for 10-15 minutes a day. Clear away distractions and put yourself in isolation, and just do something small. By practicing, we become good at it, and we keep away the rust.

Enjoyment. If you enjoy the creating, it becomes something you look forward to. Find ways to enjoy the creation, to have fun with it, to do what you love.

Relaxation. If you start to feel pressure, start to become tense, practice relaxation methods: ma.s.sage your own shoulders, try deep breathing for a few breaths, or do a short meditation where you focus on your breath coming in and going out, for a minute. Having a nice cup of tea also helps -- enjoy the tea in silence, without working, and after 5-10 minutes of that, you should be happy and ready to create.

Inspiration. While it might seem contradictory, you need to connect with others sometimes in order to find inspiration. That might just mean reading, watching, or listening to others' work, or it might mean working with others, talking with them, finding ways to collaborate. This means finding a balance between connecting and solitude -- split your day into times for connecting and inspiration, and a time for solitude and creating. We need inspiration from without, but we need creation from within.

Shake things up. When things begin to stagnate, get out of your routine. Try new things. Find something exciting to do. Take a new route home. Stir things up, and see what new ideas emerge.

7: finding stillness and reflection.

"Silence is a source of great strength."

Lao Tzu It's a busy day, and you're inundated by non-stop emails, text messages, phone calls, instant message requests, notifications, interruptions of all kinds.

The noise of the world is a dull roar that pervades every second of your life. It's a rush of activity, a drain on your energy, a pull on your attention, until you no longer have the energy to pay attention or take action.

It's an illness, this noise, this rush. It can literally make us sick. We become stressed, depressed, fat, burnt out, slain by the slings and arrows of technology.

The cure is simple: it's stillness.

pause.

Take a minute out of your busy day to do this little exercise: pause in the middle of all you have to do, all that's going on around you. Close your eyes, and sit still. Breathe in, and breathe out, and pay attention to your breath as it comes in and goes out. Just sit still, for about a minute.

This stillness might seem like inaction, which we're taught is a bad thing. It's lazy, it's pa.s.sive, it's against our Puritan work ethic. And yet, this simple inaction can change our world.

Stillness calms us. It gives us a small oasis of quiet that allows us to hear our thoughts, that allows us to catch our breath, that gives us room to breathe at all. It is the antibody to the stress and rush we feel daily.

the strength of stillness.

Stillness has a calming effect on the world around us as well. By becoming still, we cause others to pause, to pay attention. Our quiet also quiets others. We set the mood for those who work and otherwise interact with us.

When we rush and set a frenetic pace, it stresses others and inspires them to rush frenetically too. Stillness has the opposite effect. It slows the world down, allows us to focus, gives us time for contemplation, for what matters most.

It takes strength to be still when others rush. It takes courage to be different, to go against the stream. But while others might think us weird at first, that's OK. Sometimes it's the weird ones that make the most difference. And soon, as our stillness inspires others to find stillness of their own, we won't be the weird ones -- we'll be the ones with wisdom.

It takes strength to find stillness when the world around us is a chaos of activity, but it's a strength that's in us, and we need only to find it. Paradoxically, it's stillness that will allow us to find that strength. Be still, look within, and it'll be there.

finding stillness.

It's pretty simple, really, and you don't need me to tell you to do this: to find stillness, you just need to take the time to sit still, every day that you can.

Find a time in the morning, when the world is still fairly quiet, to sit still. Don't do anything, don't plan your day, don't check email, don't eat. Just sit, and learn to be comfortable being still.

In practice, we'll gradually find that comfort, and we'll become good at it. If mornings are no good, find time during your lunch break, or after work, or just before you go to bed.

Find a place to be still. It can be a chair in your house, or a front porch, or the roof. It can be a park bench, or the beach, or a path in the woods. Let this be a ritual that you come to look forward to.

From this small place of stillness, calm will carry to the rest of your day, radiating like a soothing force. You'll be calmer throughout the day, and learn to find little pockets of stillness everywhere: when you first start your workday, when you are ready to sit down and create, when you're about to eat, when you are ready to exercise, during a meeting, even.

Practice, regularly. Practice, and learn. Practice stillness, and the stillness becomes a canvas upon which you can paint the masterpiece of your life.

section v:.

others.

1: finding focus, for parents.

"The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Parents might have the most difficult challenges when it comes to finding focus. Whether you're working all day and coming home to your kids, or you stay home taking care of all the household needs and very demanding children, there's almost never a quiet moment, almost never a time when you can relax, find focus, attain inner peace.

I'm a father of six children, so I know. Kids tend to turn up the volume on life, increase the chaos of this already chaotic world by an order of several magnitudes. And while I've found that it gets easier as kids get older, it never gets easy -- they still need you to drive them around a million places, to help them with a million problems, to meet their basic needs and more.

That's Ok -- chaos and work are some of the joys of being a parent. But what if we want to find focus and still be awesome parents? There's the challenge, and I'd like to offer a short guide to doing just that.

the challenges.

The biggest challenge is that parents wear many hats: we have jobs, have a household to run with its unending tasks, have personal things to do (workout, read, hobbies, etc.), possibly have civic commitments (volunteer, serve on a board, work with the PTA, etc.), and yes, we have children to raise.

How do we balance these commitments? How do we find focus in one, when we are constantly being pulled at from the others? In my life, for example, I try to focus on work but have children in my home/office who want my attention. When I spend time with them, there's the temptation to check email or Twitter. When I want to spend time alone, the siren's call of work and the neverending call of my children make focusing on my solo activity a challenge.

Technology presents yet another challenge. Parents these days are connected more than ever. Not only are we online more than ever before, we now have devices that keep us connected wherever we go: iPhones and Androids and Blackberries and iPads and laptops and iPod touches. While our teenager is texting us, we're getting work emails, along with requests from our civic commitments, and a notification of a blog post about our favorite hobby.

Children make a parent's attempt to find focus a bigger challenge than usual. People without children aren't likely to understand this, so we're not given breaks by our bosses or colleagues -- saying that you had to take your kid to the dentist, or that your baby kept you up all night crying, isn't likely to get you off the hook. After all, we signed up to be parents, didn't we?

Still, it's uniquely difficult: there isn't a minute, it seems, when our kids don't need something, or have a problem, or want attention, or have an appointment or practice they need to be taken to. And if there are moments when they're not requiring our attention, often we're thinking about things we need to be doing with them, for them. We're thinking about what we should be doing but aren't: reading to them more, taking them to parks to play, teaching them to build or garden or write, working on craft projects, taking them to museums, handing down the key lessons in life.

It ain't easy. But you knew that.

one approach.

With so many hats, an effective way to find focus is to segregate your roles. Block them off into separate chunks of your day or week. And then focus on each individually, whenever possible.

So set aside certain times of your day for different roles, and block out distractions from the other roles.

An example: Early mornings: wake early, before the kids are up, and spend time with yourself. Go for a run, meditate, do yoga, read a novel. Or use this time for creating: draw, design, write, etc.

Mid mornings: When the kids are up, help them get ready for school, get yourself ready for work, get lunches packed, etc. This is your time as a parent, and don't do anything work-related. Talk with your kids if you find a moment.