You’re the boss of your inspiration, not the other way round

As many of you may have experienced, the random bursts of motivation we get at times can be very powerful - they have the potential to make you want to produce supreme-quality work, or change your routines, or do anything you normally don’t have the energy to do. A sentence in a book, or a quote in a YouTube video can as well trigger this inspirational jumpstart, but truthfully, how often is this spontaneous motivation enough?

I’ve noticed for myself that I often run into artworks or videos that inspire the hell out of me, and I use this short adrenaline-fueled flame to either draw something I’m really proud of, or clean my room when I haven’t done so in quite a while. However, if I only rely on these random moments in order to make our life run smoothly, we probably won’t get too far. While it may sound counter-intuitive, many people have turned inspiration into a habit, and don’t simply wait for it to appear out of nowhere. Yes, it doesn’t work like magic - you wake up at 6 am, pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit down to work/create, and the energy and creative flow hit us full-force, erasing the bags under our eyes momentarily (I wish it worked like that tbh). No, not really, you wake up, sit down to do your work and sometimes it just isn’t the quality you wanted it to be. Yes still, this is one piece of content, one drawing, one page of your novel, one step further in your learning journey. As we all know, getting better at something isn’t the straight-and-easy road we wish it was, but surely by waiting for an external force - a.k.a motivation - to pull us forward, we can only get this far, and this is only if we always use up the full potential of the inspirational burst, which oftentimes doesn’t happen.

Still, don’t let that thought make you feel bad!

From my experience, when I turn something creative, like my digital illustrations, into a daily habit, instead of a hobby I only practice when I feel like it, I have managed to get a lot more progress in a few months than I did during the years when I used to draw on and off, whenever I was in the mood. Yes, when I try to draw for an hour every day, for example at 9 am, I don’t always get the best results, and I often just sketch some basic anatomy, which doesn’t even look neat enough for me to upload it on my page. And still, this helps me build inertia, which is useful for two reasons:

1. Whenever inspiration strikes, I’m trained enough to act on it, and this is why I occasionally create illustrations that would have otherwise been much less high in quality.

2. Inspiration actually strikes me much more often!

It is actually logical, when you expose yourself to the chance of motivation occurring more often, by engaging in a creative process regularly, you raise the possibility of entering the state of ‘flow‘, and thus producing outstanding work.

This particular blog was inspired by the video by Ali Abdaal linked below, which reviews the book “The Motivation Myth“, delving into the topic of motivation. The main point is what this whole article is about - you should try your best to make motivation the thing that works for you, not the other way round. This way you will get much more done and you would actually be able to fit in creative work in an otherwise busy day, by turning it into a daily routine.

And also, something which comes as a bonus, is that you end up with tons of content, which may not be your magnum opus, but might as well push you in the direction of your next big hit!

Go check out Ali’s video below, and stay tuned for next week’s post! See you in 9 am for your next creative session!