There are a lot of good reasons to write. It’s high leverage, it improves your thinking, it can build a business. These are true, but so relentlessly practical that they aren’t enough to keep me engaged when I don’t feel like working. However, I realized that there’s another reason to write that’s much more hopeful, and which in retrospect has guided a lot of my creative projects up until now.
You can write, and create, because it’s an opportunity to put into the world the messages that a past-you needed to hear, that present-you needs to be reminded of, and that help build the world that future-you wants to live in.
Looking back at my improv projects, this thread is pretty obvious. In the Improv Dojo, which I co-created with Jim Karwisch, we developed a mindfulness based improv warm-up called the Flow. The Flow starts with time to build self awareness, to check in with where you are right now. The self-awareness part ends with a message that I needed to hear as a young improvisor, “You are enough.” That all that’s required of you in this space is that you are willing to be present and to play.
I also developed a solo improv show, Party of One, to serve as a space where I could take bigger artistic risks without succumbing to my inclination to take care of everyone I play with. It was also a space to develop improv that could travel with me when I invariably moved again.
Over time, Party of One became exactly what the name promises, a party. A constant exploration of what I, alone on the stage watched by a group of strangers, thought was the most fun and engaging thing to do in that moment. This show became the personification of another message that I had needed when I was starting as an improvisor: that you don’t have to care about the “rules” as long as it’s fun for you and, through you, fun for your audience.
Now that both of those projects are on the backburner due to the pandemic, I still coach improvisors, providing an opportunity to remind myself of both of these messages and to help others not only hear them but to internalize them through play.
What I find particularly motivating about this idea of speaking to the needs of a past-you is that it can be used to reason about the actions of present-you. This idea can help present-you build a better future, one where other people don’t need to go through as much of the pain or uncertainty past-you did. That’s why I decided to start my writing by focusing on creativity, ideally to build a nuanced view of the practice of slow creativity.
This isn’t where I started. I’ve been learning a lot about personal productivity the past few months, and more importantly starting to put the lessons into practice. I considered writing a personal productivity blog. After all, a common bit of advice on what to write about is teach what you’re learning as you learn it, as Austin Kleon said in “Show your work!” that
“The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others.”
Now, it’s worth saying that I don’t think the idea of writing for a past-you is that different than the admonition to teach what you know. The messages that past me needed to hear are all things that I’ve learned through hard experience and careful reflection. What it does change is the depth of the lesson that you share, in other words how impactful the message was for your own growth.
As I thought more about a personal productivity blog, I realized that just sharing productivity advice sends the message “Be more productive.” I don’t really need to hear this message. Nor have I ever really needed to hear it. “Be more productive” is something that my surroundings and my culture (especially as an academic) yell into my ear on a daily basis.
Not only do I not need this message, I’m convinced that to make truly creative products you only need a base level of productivity, enough to get a bit of work done regularly. Any more than that and the focus on productivity can become an obsession that devolves into how many things you can make and not whether any of them matter.
If you want to share what you’ve learned today, every day, it means that you mainly share small lessons. This can be very useful, especially as people are learning to express themselves and get less precious with their ideas. But if all that is shared are small lessons, the whole enterprise of writing on the internet begins to feel like people pushing little pieces of information back and forth. Like an ant hill with workers carrying information in constant, writhing motion, but without the underlying regularity that makes the ant hill function in the real world.
This post is, in an incredibly meta twist, an example of the message of the post. The me of even a few months ago needed to hear that it’s okay to produce things that are meaningful to you, at the pace that they naturally develop, instead of grinding in the name of productivity. That it’s okay to add your own perspective of good writing to the world, even when you’re just starting, because then you get the challenge and the joy of trying to live up to it.
In the grand scheme of things, I’d rather make things that help others stay human, present, and playful and through helping others, help myself do the same. I’d rather let my creativity be a garden than a factory. I’d rather be indulgently subtle instead of quick and simplistic. Above all, I’d rather let my creative work use the past to pave the way to a future I’d like to see.
