Creative Motivation: 5 Tips To Help You Stay Creatively Motivated

Summary: Top 5 tools to help motivate you as a creative. I share insights on building a life around your creative passions. Additionally, I address common issues like feeling burned and overwhelm.

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Transcription

Recently I had a question online about MOTIVATION, and it’s gotten me to think a lot about the topic. One of the things that’s easy to do is to hop online and Google motivation. I think what you’ll come across is probably some version of a listicle, you know, “Top 10 Ways to Stay Motivated as an Artist.” They’ll include things like take a walk in nature, go to a cafe, talk to a friend, go to the library, those sorts of things. Those are all true, but one of the things I think we very rarely see on those listicles is “put your butt in a chair, grab a pen and paper, and get to work.” I think that’s always a thing, and certainly, that has to do with self-discipline as much as anything.

With that in mind, I thought today we’d have a little walk and talk and discuss MOTIVATION, and I’ll share my “Top Five Tools for Motivation.”

1. Create a place to create, that’s solely just for you.

This brings us to the first point of motivation: I think it’s important to have a place that you sketch, draw, or create, that’s solely just for you. There’s plenty of stuff to put online to market your work or to put it out there and get accolades from your friends. But first and foremost, have a private space. Often, I think people are creative because it’s a part of who they are.

2. Is this a necessity?

That brings us to the second point. The second one comes from my friend and mentor, my teacher, Mark Ean. One of the things I learned from Mark was about the poet Rilke, and moreover, there’s a book called “Letters to a Young Poet.” Just to paraphrase, basically in the book, the young poet is asking Rilke, “Am I good enough? Is my work good enough?” Rilke’s response is essentially, “You are asking outside for inside answers.” The real question we need to ask ourselves is, “Is this a necessity? Do I have to do this? Is this a thing I must do?”

Each of us needs to ask that question, and I would urge you to ask it at multiple times in your life. If you find yourself with the answer of “No, this is not something I must do,” then leave it behind. It’s fine. Go and find what it is that’s more fulfilling for you. That’s okay. It’s fine to set things down, pick them up, and pick up new things and set those down too until you find what’s good for you. However, if you find yourself answering “Yes” to that question—yes, it is a necessity that I draw, paint, make art, or make music, or whatever it is that you do to create—then build your life accordingly.

What does that mean? It means that that’s something that you have to do, something that you must do, and so you can build your life around that.

In my own personal experience, one of the reasons I got a first out-of-the-house studio was exactly this. My life had been turned topsy-turvy, and I was put in a position where the world was my oyster. I could do whatever I wanted, and I asked myself this question and realized that I must draw, I must paint—this is something that I have to do. In fact, I get crabby if I go a couple of days without doing it. This was the motivation for getting that studio, and through a series of events, that studio leads me to my current position. This leads me to the current projects that I’m working on, etc., because you’re laying a foundation for that, allowing that to be a part of your life.

BONUS PLAYLIST

These are previews. If you click on the title it will take you to Spotify where you can follow my account!

A few tracks to help get you moving forward!

3. Accountability Groups

The next thing I want to talk about is accountability groups. Having a critique group or someone to be accountable to is a great way to keep ourselves moving forward with our work, whatever stage we’re at. I think the important part of an accountability group or a critique group is that they are also motivated in the same way—that they’ve made it a function of their life to do this work as well. Once you find a group of people like that, continue to go, and that can be sometimes enough to spur you on to do the next project or, “Oh, I’ve got a meeting; I better do something for that,” and that’ll help to keep you moving forward.

4. Online Courses

Likewise, if you’re having a hard time finding people who are either online or near you, you can start to do online courses. I’ve used Domestika courses, and there are a lot of options out there now. There’s Skillshare, Domestika, Gumroad, which is a really good one as well. You can support the artists who are making the content you enjoy, buy a PDF or a video course, and do the exercises. Sometimes, that can be enough to get you going again.

5. Give Yourself a Real Goal

The final thing I’ll say about motivation is to set an intention. Give yourself a real goal. When I say a real goal, I mean something like, “I’m going to draw every day for the rest of my life.” Sure, some people can do that. I have; I’m not that guy. But I think, “Oh, I’m going to go to a book conference, I am going to go to an event where I need to have something that is going to be presented, I’m going to set this goal to have my submission to an art director by this point or that point,” or whatever. Give yourself whatever motivation is necessary for that. You can think in terms of carrot and stick. One stick that tends to work is, “If you don’t do it by a certain point, you would donate money to some cause that’s antithetical to yourself.” Another carrot might be, “Think about something cool—a toy, a present, a thing that would be a nice gift for yourself—something cool,” and you’re like, “Man, I would really like that thing.” Well, set that as your goal: “If I meet my goal, then I will buy this for myself.” You can get yourself to move forward in that way.

The Very First Question You Need to Ask

Those are my top five things that I’ve used over time. I think the final word on the subject of motivation should be something along the lines of understanding why you are feeling unmotivated. This may be the very first question you need to ask yourself. Why is it that you don’t feel like doing the work that you’re doing, or that you feel burned out, or whatever? Is it because you’ve oversaturated yourself with online information and now you feel like your work is not measuring up? Is it some false sense of, “I should be at this point in my life by now, and I’m not there—why am I not there?” Those can be demotivating factors. Crippling self-doubt is always a fun one. Or it could be something external—like a big event happened in your life, and you’re feeling completely washed out from it. Those are all very real things, and they’re not going to have a one-size-fits-all solution, but it may be worth seeking help from a therapist or someone to talk with just so you can work through those things and get back to your natural state of being and creating work.

I hope this helps. I hope these topics and ideas are something you can try and use to get yourself back to the drawing board or the creation space, wherever you might be working. Let me know if you’d like more of this kind of content, or better yet, if you have things that have helped to motivate you, please leave a comment below. I would love to hear about those kinds of things from everyone out there.