the cult of busy

I have been thinking about creativity lately. More precisely I have been thinking about how I used to be a lot more creative than I am right now. We have all heard famous quotes about “the system” killing creativity as we grow up. I recently went down this rabbit hole to explore what exactly happens, here is what I have so far.

There are a lot of internal and external factors (like environment, time, personality, etc) that control how creative you can be in a situation. I blame time (rather the lack of it) to be the reason I lately settle for less creative solutions.

Creative thinking happens when we are using a slow and effortful thinking process and not the autopilot subconscious one. Being free, to the point where you are bored, forces you to think about linear solutions you came up with before and find better creative solutions. I remember being extremely bored after school thinking about random things. At the risk of sounding like a boomer, I’ll say that being addicted to our devices is the major culprit.

I feel successful when I am busy because the environment around me encourages constant action as the primary metric of success. This cult of busy can drive you into brain fog and a lack of creativity.

I won’t talk about how to undo this busyness, primarily because different things work for different people and you are just one google search away from finding a much better-curated list of things that you can try out.

I wanted to write about the detriments of being busy for a long time but almost poetically, I’ve been too busy.

Sources: https://bit.ly/3PWAx8o
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