WHY I DON'T FIGHT DISTRACTIONS IN MY CREATIVE SPACE - (Notes to self)

As creators in our different crafts, the power of a good creative space cannot be overemphasized, if you are going to spend hours on end in your craft, then it's normal to try to make your creative space conducive for yourself.

Although, our creative spaces can oftentimes come with its own set of distractions as we stray away gradually to other things, Most especially in the digital world where there is a major influx of content on our fingertips.

Personally, I also have attention issues when focusing on one thing for long periods, especially when am working on something creative, I often times find my self-straying away from what am doing.

In the past, I've read tons of self-help blogs that give advice on how to fight or stop distractions. Most of their talking points actually work for the people that possess some disciplined personality traits but people are different and a lot of people end up struggling with their distractions.

You can call me dreamy but I don't think everything has to be a struggle, especially when it comes to distractive thoughts, I believe in the Don't fight it Philosophy. This also stems from the Zen philosophy which teaches meditation and inner mind exploration.

In Zen philosophy, when it comes to negative and random thoughts, it is advised not to fight them because fighting them naturally creates more tension which defeats the purpose of meditation.

By just observing these thoughts with indifference, we can easily guide them to focus on the breath. There is a 1:42 min clip of some Zen philosophy below.

The same principle can be applied here, we know that distractions will always be there, we cannot magically wish them away. All we need to do is just understand our distractions, If you can be able to set the terms of your type of distraction, it becomes easy to tune it out and focus on your craft.

I'm going to use myself as an example. I design graphical illustrations and my distraction is mainly watching movies when I'm in my creative space. I oftentimes get carried away by that. I realized that I get distracted by visual cues.

By Understanding the root of my distraction, I decided to make my distraction my ally, so anytime I'm designing something with a particular theme, I watch movies with a similar theme. let's say, I'm designing something with a tech theme, I watch a tech-based movie.

Having a similar distraction to my craft, It becomes easy to tune out my distraction. Sometimes I get inspired from my distraction, sometimes I get triggered to continue my craft from my distraction, other times I just easily tune out the distraction as the movie play in the background.

Most eureka moments also happen when the innovator is doing something outside and similar to his craft, letting our self to get distracted but not carried away can help the creative process. For Newton, it happened in the apple yard, for Archimedes It happened in the bathtub.

I could remember when trying to draw some cartoons, I was watching the Simpsons. Then I began to imagine how I would look like in the Simpsons universe and that spawned my Simpsonization episodes on steemit. where I drew people as Simpson characters and had a lot of positive feedback from that.

I know my case could be an Isolated scenario since I'm the only case study here but maybe the same principle can be applied to other people facing distractions in their creative space. You can tell me in the comments what you think about this.

Thanks for reading friends, see you next time.

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