MASTERING CREATIVITY, 1st Edition

From James Clear:
For most of my life, I didn't consider myself to be particularly creative. I didn't play a musical
instrument (or even know how to read music). I wasn't skilled at drawing or painting, or really
anything that involved the words “arts” or “crafts.”
It wasn't until I moved to Scotland and decided to buy a camera to “take some pictures while I'm
over there” that I discovered that creativity was something that could be developed. Over the
next year, I took more than 100,000 photos.
Fast forward to today and I pursue creative tasks all of the time. Every Monday and Thursday, I
publish a new article on JamesClear.com and display creativity as a writer. Occasionally, I'll add
some handdrawn
images to those articles. And, of course, I'm still bouncing around the world
taking photos and trying to tell compelling stories as a photographer.
I'm not sure what your creative goals are, but I am sure that you can make progress towards
them. I wrote Mastering Creativity to share the lessons I've learned and to express one simple
truth about creativity: you have brilliance inside of you, but only if you can find the guts and grit
to pull it out of yourself.
Let's get to it…
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10 Things This Guide Will Teach You

1. How to overcome the mental blocks that prevent creativity.
2. How to be creative, even if it's not natural for you.
3. How to make time for creative work if you're busy.
4. How the world's greatest artists approach the task of creating.
5. How to make creating a consistent habit.
6. Why smart people should create things.
7. One simple trick that makes it easier to be creative.
8. How to stay motivated over the long run.
9. Why it is important to generate a lot of work to find your creativity.
10. And most importantly, how to make these ideas a habit in real life.
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    Table of Contents
    How to Find Your Hidden Creative Genius
    4
    How Creative Geniuses Come Up With Great Ideas
    5
    How to Uncover Your Creative Talent by Using the “Equal Odds Rule”
    8
    The Myth of Creative Inspiration
    11
    The Difference Between Professionals and Amateurs
    15
    The Weird Strategy Dr. Seuss Used to Create His Greatest Work
    20
    How to Be Motivated to Create Consistently
    24
    Smart People Should Create Things
    29
    The Next Step: Where to Go From Here
    32
    Sources 33
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    How to Find Your Hidden Creative Genius
    There is a interesting story about how Pablo Picasso, the famous Spanish artist, developed the
    ability to produce remarkable work in just minutes.
    As the story goes, Picasso was walking though the market one day when a woman spotted him.
    She stopped the artist, pulled out a piece of paper and said, “Mr. Picasso, I am a fan of your
    work. Please, could you do a little drawing for me?”
    Picasso smiled and quickly drew a small, but beautiful piece of art on the paper. Then, he
    handed the paper back to her saying, “That will be one million dollars.”
    “But Mr. Picasso,” the woman said. “It only took you thirty seconds to draw this little
    masterpiece.”
    “My good woman,” Picasso said, “It took me thirty years to draw that masterpiece in thirty
    seconds.” [1]
    Picasso isn’t the only brilliant creative who worked for decades to master his craft. His journey is
    typical of many creative geniuses. Even people of considerable talent rarely produce incredible
    work before decades of practice.
    Let’s talk about why that is, and even more important, how you can reveal your own creative
    genius.
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    How Creative Geniuses Come Up With
    Great Ideas
    In 2002, Markus Zusak sat down to write a book.
    He began by mapping out the beginning and the end of the story. Then, he started listing out
    chapter headings, pages of them. Some made it into the final story, many were cut.
    When Zusak began to write out the story itself, he tried narrating it from the perspective of
    Death. It didn’t come out the way he wanted.
    He rewrote
    the book, this time through the main character’s eyes. Again, something was off.
    He tried writing it from an outsider’s perspective. Still no good.
    He tried present tense. He tried past tense. Nothing. The text didn’t flow.
    He revised. He changed. He edited. By his own estimation, Zusak rewrote the first part of the
    book 150 to 200 times. In the end, he went back to his original choice and wrote it from the
    perspective of Death. This time—the 200th time— it felt right. When all was said and done it had
    taken Zusak three years to write his novel. He called it The Book Thief .
    In an interview after his book was finally released, Zusak said, “In three years, I must have failed
    over a thousand times, but each failure brought me closer to what I needed to write, and for that,
    I’m grateful.” [2]
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    The book exploded in popularity. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller
    list for over 230
    weeks. It sold 8 million copies. It was translated into 40 languages. A few years later, Hollywood
    came calling and turned The Book Thief into a major motion picture.
    The Simple Secret to Having Good Luck
    We often think that blockbuster successes are luck. Maybe it’s easier to explain success that
    way—as a chance happening, a fortunate outlier. No doubt, there is always some element of luck
    involved in every success story.
    But Markus Zusak is proof that if you revise your work 200 times—if you find 200 ways to
    reinvent yourself, to get better at your craft—then luck seems to have a way of finding you.
    How do creative geniuses come up with great ideas? They work and edit and rewrite and retry
    and pull out their genius through sheer force of will and perseverance. They earn the chance to
    be lucky because they keep showing up.
    In her Dartmouth Commencement Address , Shonda Rimes shares a strategy that echoes Zusak’s
    approach…
    Dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that
    makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change…
    Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer.
    Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you’re
    paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth is, it
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    doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know. You just have to keep moving forward.
    You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying
    open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect
    job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring and dreams are not real. Just … do.
    So you think, “I wish I could travel.” Great. Sell your crappy car, buy a ticket to Bangkok, and go.
    Right now. I’m serious. You want to be a writer? A writer is someone who writes every day, so
    start writing.
    How Creativity Works
    We all have some type of creative genius inside of us . The only way to release it is to work on it.
    No single act will uncover more creative powers than forcing yourself to create consistently. For
    Markus Zusak that meant writing and rewriting
    200 times. For you, it might mean singing a
    song over and over until it sounds right. Or programming a piece of software until all the bugs
    are out, taking portraits of your friends until the lighting is perfect, or caring for the customers
    you serve until you know them better than they know themselves. You can make any job a work
    of art if you put the right energy into it.
    How do creative geniuses come up with great ideas? They work hard at it.
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    How to Uncover Your Creative Talent by
    Using the “Equal Odds Rule”
    Paul Erdos was a strange man. He lived out of two suitcases, never learned how to cook his own
    meals, worked up to 19 hours per day, took amphetamines daily and washed them down with
    caffeine, and gave away nearly all of the money that he earned. [3]
    Erdos was also the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century. He wrote or coauthored
    over 1,500 mathematical articles during his career and partnered with over 500 different
    collaborators. As you would expect, his contributions to mathematics were significant.
    Erdos solved a variety of difficult problems. He worked out a proof for the prime number
    theorem. He led the development of Ramsey theory. He discovered the proof for a difficult
    mathematical riddle known as Bertrand’s postulate. Long story short, Erdos was good. He
    worked his tail off and advanced the field of mathematics because of it.
    And yet, do you know what became of the vast majority of his 1,500 articles and papers?
    Nothing. They are long gone. Forgotten. Tucked away in the archives of an old research journal
    or filed into a box at the bottom of some math lover’s closet. And that is why the story of Paul
    Erdos is perhaps the best example of what is known as the Equal Odds Rule.
    Let’s talk about what this rule means and how it can help you uncover your creative talent.
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    The Equal Odds Rule
    In 1977, a Harvardtrained
    psychologist named Keith Simonton, developed a theory that he
    called the Equal Odds Rule.
    “The Equal Odds Rule says that the average publication of any particular scientist does not have
    any statistically different chance of having more of an impact than any other scientist’s average
    publication.” [4] In other words, any given scientist is equally likely to create a gamechanging
    piece of work as they are to create something average that is quickly forgotten.
    Translated to the world atlarge:
    You can’t predict your own success. Scientists, artists,
    inventors, writers, entrepreneurs, and workers of all types are equally likely to produce a useless
    project as they are to produce an important one.
    If you believe the Equal Odds Rule, then the natural conclusion is that you’re playing a numbers
    game. Because you can’t predict your success, the best strategy is to produce as much work as
    possible, which will provide more opportunities to hit the bullseye and create something
    meaningful. [5]
    I’ve seen the Equal Odds Rule at play in my own work each month. I write new articles every
    Monday and Thursday. I know that if I write a new article every Monday and Thursday, then
    that will be about 8 or 9 articles per month on average. And if I write 8 or 9 articles per month,
    then 2 or 3 of them will be decent.
    Which 2 or 3 will be winners? I have no idea.
    After sticking to this schedule for almost two years, it has become very clear to me that I am a
    rather terrible judge of my own work. All I can do is try my best each time, commit to doing a
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    volume of work , and trust if I stick with the process then something useful will find it’s way from
    my hands to the keyboard.
    The Willingness to Create Garbage
    Paul Erdos knew something that all great creators eventually discover: Creative genius only
    reveals itself after you’ve shown up enough times to get the average ideas out of the way. Time
    after time, problem after problem, Erdos kept working on his craft. 1,500 papers later, it turns
    out he had some pretty good ideas.
    If you want to extract your creative genius and make a difference , then embracing idea behind
    the Equal Odds Rule is a useful strategy. Sometimes you’ll create something good. Sometimes
    you’ll create something useless. But no matter what, you should always be creating.
    If you want to make a masterpiece, you have to be willing to create a little garbage along the way.
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    The Myth of Creative Inspiration
    Franz Kafka is considered one of the most creative and influential writers of the 20th century,
    but he actually spent most of his time working as a lawyer for the Workers Accident Insurance
    Institute. How did Kafka produce such fantastic creative works while holding down his day job?
    By sticking to a strict schedule.
    He would go to his job from 8:30 AM to 2:30 PM, eat lunch and then take a long nap until 7:30
    PM, exercise and eat dinner with his family in the evening, and then begin writing at 11 PM for a
    few hours each night before going to bed and doing it all over again.
    Kafka is hardly unique in his commitment to a schedule. As Mason Currey notes in his popular
    book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work , many of the world’s great artists follow a consistent
    schedule.
    Maya Angelou rented a local hotel room and went there to write. She arrived at 6:30 AM,
    wrote until 2 PM, and then went home to do some editing. She never slept at the hotel.
    Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon writes five nights per week from 10 PM to 3 AM.
    Haruki Murakami wakes up at 4 AM, writes for five hours, and then goes for a run.
    The work of top creatives isn’t dependent upon motivation or inspiration, but rather it follows a
    consistent pattern and routine. It’s the mastering of daily habits that leads to creative success,
    not some mythical spark of genius.
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    Here’s why…
    Daily Routines
    William James, the famous psychologist, is noted for saying that habits and schedules are
    important because they “free our minds to advance to really interesting fields of action.”
    An article in The Guardian agreed by saying, “If you waste resources trying to decide when or
    where to work, you’ll impede your capacity to do the work.” And there are plenty of research
    studies on willpower and motivation to back up that statement.
    In other words, if you’re serious about creating something compelling, you need to stop waiting
    for motivation and inspiration to strike you and simply set a schedule for doing work on a
    consistent basis. Of course, that’s easy to say, but much harder to do in practice.
    Here’s one way of thinking about schedules that may help…
    Permission to Create Junk
    Weightlifting offers a good metaphor for scheduling creative work.
    I can’t predict whether or not I’ll set a PR (personal record) before I go to the gym. In fact, there
    will be many days when I’ll have a below average workout. Eventually, I figured out that those
    below average days were just part of the process. The only way to actually lift bigger weights was
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    to continually show up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday — regardless of whether any
    individual workout was good or bad.
    Creative work is no different than training in the gym. You can’t selectively choose your best
    moments and only work on the days when you have great ideas. The only way to unveil the great
    ideas inside of you is to go through a volume of work , put in your repetitions , and show up over
    and over again.
    Obviously, doing something below average is never the goal. But you have to give yourself
    permission to grind through the occasional days of below average work because it’s the price you
    have to pay to get to excellent work.
    If you’re anything like me, you hate creating something that isn’t excellent. It’s easy to start
    judging your work and convince yourself to not share something, not publish something, and
    not ship something because “this isn’t good enough yet.”
    But the alternative is even worse: if you don’t have a schedule forcing you to deliver, then it’s
    really easy to avoid doing the work at all. The only way to be consistent enough to make a
    masterpiece is to give yourself permission to create junk along the way.
    The Schedule is the System
    During a conversation about writing, my friend Sarah Peck looked at me and said, “A lot of
    people never get around to writing because they are always wondering when they are going to
    write next.”
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    You could say the same thing about working out, starting a business, creating art, and building
    most habits. The schedule is the system that makes your goals a reality . If you don’t set a
    schedule for yourself, then your only option is to rely on motivation.
    ● If your workout doesn’t have a time when it usually occurs, then each day you’ll wake up
    thinking, “I hope I feel motivated to exercise today.”
    ● If your business doesn’t have a system for marketing, then you’ll show up at work
    crossing your fingers that you’ll find a way to get the word out (in addition to everything
    else you have to do).
    ● If you don’t have a time block to write every week, then you’ll find yourself saying things
    like, “I just need to find the willpower to do it.”
    Stop waiting for motivation or inspiration to strike you and set a schedule for your habits.
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    The Difference Between Professionals and
    Amateurs
    Last summer, I was speaking with a man named Todd Henry . Todd is a successful author and
    does a great job of putting out valuable work on a consistent basis.
    I, on the other hand, do a remarkable job of putting out questionable work on an inconsistent
    basis. I started to explain this to Todd…
    “Todd, what do you think about writing only when you feel motivated? I feel like I always do my
    best work when I get a spark of creativity or inspiration, but that only happens every now and
    then. I’m pretty much only writing when I feel like it, which means I’m inconsistent. But if I
    write all the time, then I’m not creating my best work.”
    “That’s cool,” Todd replied. “I only write when I’m motivated too. I just happened to be
    motivated every day at 8am.”
    The Difference Between Professionals and Amateurs
    It doesn’t matter what you are trying to become better at, if you only do the work when you’re
    motivated, then you’ll never be consistent enough to become a professional.
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    The ability to show up everyday, stick to the schedule, and do the work — especially when you
    don’t feel like it — is so valuable that it is literally all you need to become better 99% of the time.
    I’ve seen this in my own experiences…
    When I don’t miss workouts, I get in the best shape of my life. When I write every week, I
    become a better writer. When I travel and take my camera out every day, I take better photos.
    It’s simple and powerful. But why is it so difficult?
    The Pain of Being A Pro
    Approaching your goals — whatever they are — with the attitude of a professional isn’t easy. In
    fact, being a pro is painful.
    The simple fact of the matter is that most of the time we are inconsistent. We have goals that we
    would like to achieve and dreams that we would like to fulfill, but we only work towards them
    occasionally; when we feel inspired or motivated or when life allows us to do so. It’s just easier
    that way.
    I can guarantee that if you set a schedule for any task and start sticking to it, there will be days
    when you feel like quitting. When you start a business, there will be days when you don’t feel like
    showing up. When you’re at the gym, there will be sets that you don’t feel like finishing. When
    it’s time to write, there will be reports that you don’t feel like typing. But stepping up when it’s
    annoying or painful or draining to do so, that’s what makes you a pro.
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    Professionals stick to the schedule, amateurs let life get in the way. Professionals know what is
    important to them and work towards it with purpose, amateurs get pulled off course by the
    urgencies of life .
    You’ll Never Regret Starting Important Work
    Some people might think I’m promoting the benefits of being a workaholic. “Professionals work
    harder than everyone else and that’s why they’re great.” Actually, that’s not it at all.
    Being a pro is about having the discipline to commit to what is important to you instead of
    merely saying something is important to you. It’s about starting when you feel like stopping, not
    because you want to work more, but because your goal is important enough to you that you don’t
    simply work on it when it’s convenient. Becoming a pro is about making your priorities a reality.
    There have been a lot of sets that I haven’t felt like finishing, but I’ve never regretted doing the
    workout. There have been a lot of articles I haven’t felt like writing, but I’ve never regretted
    publishing on schedule. There have been a lot of days I’ve felt like relaxing, but I’ve never
    regretted showing up and working on something that is important to me.
    Becoming a pro doesn’t mean you’re a workaholic. It means that you’re good at making time for
    what matters to you — especially when you don’t feel like it — instead of playing the role of the
    victim and letting life happen to you.
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    How to Become a Pro
    Going about your work like a pro isn’t easy, but it’s also not as complicated or difficult as you
    might think. There are three steps.
11. Decide what you want to be good at.
    Purpose is everything. If you know what you want, then getting it is much easier. This sounds
    simple, but in my experience even people who are smart, creative, and talented rarely know
    exactly what they are working for and why.
12. Set a schedule for your actions.
    Once you know what you want, set a schedule for actually doing it.
    Note: Don’t make the same mistake I have made, which is setting a schedule based on results.
    Don’t map out how much weight you want to lose each week or how much money you want to
    make. “Lose 5 pounds” is not an action you can perform. “Do three sets of squats” is an action
    you can perform.
    You want to set a schedule based on actions you can do, not results that you want.
13. Stick to your schedule for one week.
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    Stop thinking about how hard it will be to follow a schedule for a month or a year. Just follow it
    for this week. For the next 7 days, don’t let distractions get in the way.
    Setting a schedule doesn’t make you a professional, following it does. Don’t be a writer, be
    writing. Don’t be a lifter, be lifting. For one week, do the things you want to do without letting
    life get in the way. Next week, start again.
    The Power of the Schedule
    Ira Glass is the host of the popular radio show This American Life, which is broadcast to 1.7
    million listeners each week. This is the advice Glass gives to anyone looking to interesting,
    creative work: “The most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of
    work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to
    finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that … the work you’re making will
    be as good as your ambitions.” [6]
    If you want to do your best creative work, then don’t leave it up to choice. Don’t wake up in the
    morning and think, “I hope I feel inspired to create something today.” You need to take the
    decisionmaking
    out of it. Set a schedule for your work. Genius arrives when you show up
    enough times to get the average ideas out of the way.
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    The Weird Strategy Dr. Seuss Used to
    Create His Greatest Work
    In 1960, two men made a bet.
    There was only $50 on the line, but millions of people would feel the impact of this little wager.
    The first man, Bennett Cerf, was the founder of the publishing firm, Random House. The second
    man was named Theo Geisel, but you probably know him as Dr. Seuss. Cerf proposed the bet
    and challenged that Dr. Seuss would not be able to write an entertaining children’s book using
    only 50 different words.
    Dr. Seuss took the bet and won. The result was a little book called Green Eggs and Ham . Since
    publication, Green Eggs and Ham has sold more than 200 million copies, making it the most
    popular of Seuss’s works and one of the bestselling children’s books in history.
    At first glance, you might think this was a lucky fluke. A talented author plays a fun game with
    50 words and ends up producing a hit. But there is actually more to this story and the lessons in
    it can help us become more creative and stick to better habits over the longrun.
    Here’s what we can learn from Dr. Seuss…
    The Power of Constraints
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    What Dr. Seuss discovered through this little bet was the power of setting constraints.
    Setting limits for yourself — whether that involves the time you have to work out, the money you
    have to start a business, or the number of words you can use in a book — often delivers better
    results than “keeping your options open.”
    In fact, Dr. Seuss found that setting some limits to work within was so useful that he employed
    this strategy for other books as well. For example, T he Cat in the Hat was written using only a
    firstgrade
    vocabulary list.
    In my experience, I’ve seen that constraints can also provide benefits in health, business, and life
    in general. I’ve noticed two reasons why this occurs.
14. Constraints inspire your creativity.
    If you’re five foot five inches tall and you’re playing basketball, you figure out more creative ways
    to score than the six foot five inch guy.
    If you have a oneyearold
    child that takes up almost every minute of your day, you figure out
    more creative ways to get some exercise.
    If you’re a photographer and you show up to a shoot with just one lens, then you figure out more
    creative ways to capture the beauty of your subject than you would with all of your gear
    available.
    Limitations drive you to figure out solutions. Your constraints inspire your creativity.
15. Constraints force you to get something done.
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    Time constraints have forced me to produce some of my best work. This is especially true with
    my writing. Every Monday and Thursday, I write a new article — even if it’s inconvenient.
    This constraint has led me to produce some of my most popular work in unlikely places. When I
    was sitting in the passenger seat on a road trip through West Virginia, I wrote an article . When I
    was visiting family for the 4th of July, I wrote an article . When I spent all day flying in and out of
    airports, I wrote an article .
    Without my schedule (the constraint), I would have pushed those articles to a different day. Or
    never got around to them at all. Constraints force you to get something done and don’t allow you
    to procrastinate. This is why I believe that professionals set a schedule for their production while
    amateurs wait until they feel motivated .
    What constraints are you setting for yourself? What type of schedule do you have for your goals?
    Related note: Sticking to your schedule doesn’t have to be grand or impressive. Just commit to a
    process you can sustain . And if you have to, reduce the scope .
    Constraints are Not the Enemy
    So often we spend time complaining about the things that are withheld from us.
    ● “I don’t have enough time to work out.”
    ● “I don’t have enough money to start a business.”
    ● “I can’t eat this food on my diet.”
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    But constraints are not the enemy. Every artist has a limited set of tools to work with. Every
    athlete has a limited set of skills to train with. Every entrepreneur has a limited amount of
    resources to build with. Once you know your constraints, you can start figuring out how to work
    with them.
    The Size of Your Canvas
    Dr. Seuss was given 50 words. That was the size of his canvas. His job was to see what kind of
    picture he could paint with those words.
    You and I are given similar constraints in our lives.
    You only have 30 minutes to fit a workout into your day? So be it. That’s the size of
    your canvas. Your job is to see if you can make those 30 minutes a work of art.
    You can only spare 15 minutes each day to write? That’s the size of your canvas. Your job
    is to make each paragraph a work of art.
    You only have $100 to start your business? Great. That’s the size of your canvas. Your job
    is to make each sales call a work of art.
    There are a lot of authors who would complain about writing a book with only 50 words. But
    there was one author who decided to take the tools he had available and make a work of art
    instead.
    We all have constraints in our lives. The limitations just determine the size of the canvas you
    have to work with. What you paint on it is up to you.
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    How to Be Motivated to Create
    Consistently
    Twyla Tharp was born in Indiana and was named after the local “Pig Princess” at the Annual
    Muncie Fair, who went by Twila.
    It wasn’t the prettiest of starts, but Tharp turned it into something beautiful.
    She is widely regarded as one of the greatest dancers and choreographers of the modern era. She
    has toured across the globe performing her original work. She is credited with choreographing
    the first crossover ballet and she has choreographed dances for the Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal
    Ballet, New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, and many others. Her work has appeared on
    Broadway, on television, and in films. In 1992, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, often
    called the “Genius Grant”, for her creative work.
    To put it simply: Twyla Tharp is prolific. The question is, how does she do it?
    The Power of Ritual
    In her bestselling
    book, The Creative Habit , Tharp discusses one of the secrets of her success:
    I begin each day of my life with a ritual; I wake up at 5:30 A.M., put on my
    workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk
    outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the
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    Pumping Iron gym at 91st street and First Avenue, where I workout for two
    hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body
    through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the
    driver where to go I have completed the ritual.
    It’s a simple act, but doing it the same way each morning habitualizes it —
    makes it repeatable, easy to do. It reduces the chance that I would skip it or
    do it differently. It is one more item in my arsenal of routines, and one less
    thing to think about.
    Let’s talk about what makes Tharp’s morning ritual so important and how we can use it to
    master our own habits.
    The Surprising Thing About Motivation
    If you have trouble sticking to good habits or fall victim to bad ones, then it can be easy to
    assume that you simply need to learn how to get motivated or that you don’t understand how
    willpower works .
    But here is the surprising thing about motivation: it often comes after starting a new behavior,
    not before. Getting started is a form of active inspiration that naturally produces momentum.
    You have probably experienced this phenomenon before. For example, going for a run may seem
    overwhelming or exhausting just to think about before you begin, but if you can muster up the
    energy to start jogging, you’ll often find that you become more motivated to finish as you go. In
    other words, it’s easier to finish the run than it was to start it in the first place.
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    This is basically Newton’s First Law applied to habit formation: objects in motion tend to stay in
    motion. And that means getting started is the hardest part.
    I often find this to be true with my articles. Once I begin writing, it’s much easier for me to
    power through and finish. However, if I’m staring at a blank page, it can seem overwhelming
    and taxing to take the first step.
    And this, my friends, is where Twyla Tharp’s morning ritual comes back into the picture.
    Rituals Are an On Ramp for Your Behavior
    The power of a ritual, or what I like to call a pregame
    routine , is that it provides a mindless way
    to initiate your behavior. It makes starting your habits easier and that means following through
    on a consistent basis is easier.
    Habits researchers agree. Benjamin Gardner, a researcher in the Department of Epidemiology
    and Public Health at University College London recently published a paper in the Health
    Psychology Review that covered how we can use habits to initiate longer, more complex
    routines:
    A ‘habitual’ bicycle commuter, for example, may automatically opt to use a
    bicycle rather than alternative transport (so automatically enacting the first
    behaviour in a superordinate ‘bicycle commuting’ sequence, such as putting
    on a cycle helmet), but negotiating the journey may require higherlevel
    cognitive input.
    JamesClear.com 26
    In other words, getting started with a simple ritual like putting on a helmet or checking the air in
    the bike tires makes it easier to follow through on the bigger behavior (making the commute). If
    you focus on the ritual, the next step follows more automatically.
    Twyla Tharp’s morning routine is a perfect example of this idea in practice. Naturally, there are
    going to be days when she doesn’t feel like getting out of bed and exercising. There are bound to
    be times when the thought of starting the day with a twohour
    workout seems exhausting.
    But her ritual of waking up and calling the taxi takes the emotion, motivation, and
    decisionmaking
    out of the process. Her brain doesn’t need to waste any energy deciding what to
    do next. She doesn’t have a debate with herself about what the first step should be. She simply
    follows the same pattern that she always does. And once the pattern is in motion, the rest of the
    sequence follows more easily.
    The key to any good ritual is that it removes the need to make a decision: What should I do first?
    When should I do this? How should I do this? Most people never get moving because they can’t
    decide how to get started. Having a ritual takes that burden off your shoulders.
    The Idea in Practice
    Here are some other examples of how you can apply ritual and routine to your habits and
    behaviors:
    ● Exercise more consistently: Use the same warm up routine in the gym
    ● Become more creative: Follow a creative ritual before you start writing or painting or
    singing
    ● Start each day stress free: Create a fiveminute
    morning meditation ritual
    ● Sleep better: Follow a “power down” routine before bed
    JamesClear.com 27
    Whatever it is, make it your own. Use your ritual as an onramp
    for the bigger behavior and
    habits you want to build into your life. When you master the ability to mindlessly initiate the
    tasks that are important to you, it’s not necessary to rely on motivation and willpower to make
    them happen.
    Where can you use a ritual or routine to help you create more consistently?
    JamesClear.com 28
    Smart People Should Create Things
    It was 1974 and Art Fry was spending his weekend singing for the local church choir. On this
    particular Sunday, Fry was dealing with a relatively boring problem: he couldn’t keep his
    bookmarks in place.
    In order to find hymns quickly, Fry would stick little pieces of paper between the pages like
    bookmarks. The only problem was that every time he stood up, the pieces of paper would slide
    down deep between the pages or fall out of the book completely. Annoyed by the constant
    placing and replacing of his bookmarks, Fry started daydreaming about a better solution.
    “It was during the sermon,” Fry said, “that I first thought, ‘What I really need is a little
    bookmark that will stick to the paper but will not tear the paper when I remove it.’” [7]
    With this idea in mind, Fry went back to work the next week and began developing a solution to
    his bookmark problem. As luck would have it, Fry happened to be working at the perfect
    company. He was an employee at 3M and one of his coworkers,
    Spencer Silver, was an
    adhesives specialist.
    Over the next few months, Fry and Silver developed a piece of paper that would stick to a page,
    but could be easily removed and reapplied over and over. Eventually, this little project became
    one of the bestselling
    office supplies of alltime:
    the PostIt
    Note.
    Today, 3M sells PostIt
    Notes in over 100 countries worldwide. You can find them at libraries
    and schools, in offices and boardrooms, and scattered around nearly every workspace in
    between.
    JamesClear.com 29
    What can we learn from the story of Art Fry? And is there something we can take away from this
    to make our lives and the world better?
    Create Something Small
    Art Fry wasn’t trying to create a bestselling
    office supply product. In the beginning, Fry was
    simply trying to design a better bookmark for his choir hymnal. He was just trying to create
    something small.
    For a long time, I thought that if I wasn’t working on something incredible, then it wasn’t of
    much value. But gradually I discovered the truth: the most important thing isn’t to create
    something worldchanging,
    but simply to create. You don’t have to build something famous to
    build something meaningful.
    And this brings us to the most important lesson we can learn from Art Fry and his PostIt
    Notes:
    when the world presents you with something interesting or frustrating or curious, choose to do
    something about it. Choose to be a creator.
    In other words, the world needs smart people to build things. We need employees who invent
    things, entrepreneurs who create things, and freelancers who design things. We need secretaries
    who make jewelry as a side project and stayathome
    dads who write amazing novels. We need
    more leaders, not more followers. We need more creators, not more consumers.
    And perhaps the most important thing to realize is that we not only need to create for each
    other, but for ourselves as well. Creating something is the perfect way to avoid wasting the
    precious moments that we have been given. To contribute, to create, to chip in to the world
    around you and to add your line to the world’s story — that is a life well lived.