Stop, and you're dead

The three things that keep me creating

One summer, I was absolutely determined to learn Swedish. I might even move there, I thought. For a month, I was in the zone. I learnt about everything from Fika to Surströmming (which I thankfully never tried) and practised my inandningsjo, which to my relief was not a sign of an asthma attack but the sound of Swedish agreement.

Then I dropped the entire thing. A month later I’d moved on to juggling with clubs, which I obviously had to focus on! The month after that I was getting up early every day to work on a novel (for the third time).

I’m a serial project starter. Some things I see through, most I don’t. I’ll get hyper-obsessed with a topic, pour my heart into it, and then never touch that thing again.

For a long time, I saw that as failure. I lacked discipline. I was building a life made of half-finished things. I was gathering a few experiences on the way, but never really achieving anything.

Talking with Dave Kang on the podcast helped me confirm a growing feeling I’d been having over the last few years that this is completely untrue.

I now think of creativity a bit like Stephen King’s The Long Walk (which is, ironically, a book I put down halfway through). The premise: stop walking, and you’re dead. We’re all on that walk with our creativity. There’s no finish line or time limit other than the one nature eventually hands us.

That means the goal is to simply keep walking. I’ve landed on three things that help me do that.

Novelty

I need newness! I need to intentionally find ways to have new, exciting experiences. As Dave put it: “the joy is in the discovery.” Picking up something new is genuinely fun. I can’t not do it. I don’t want to not do it. Novelty literally triggers dopamine release.

I’ve stopped feeling guilty about the projects I drop after six weeks, because the spark they gave me often carries over into something else. Novelty creates energy. It’s the rocket fuel at the start of every project.

The easiest way to get a hit of novelty is adjust one variable. A new bit of photography gear, a new style of writing, a new place, a new hobby. If it keeps you moving, it’s worth it.

The trick is dosage. Novelty follows an inverted U-shape. Too little and you stagnate. Too much and you fragment. Moderate novelty-seeking seems to be the sweet spot. Enough to feel alive, not so much that nothing compounds.

Play

As Stuart Brown puts it, “the opposite of play is not work, it’s depression”.

Play means not worrying about failure, staying in the experiment, and letting curiosity lead. This is often powered by novelty, but not always. It’s an essential part of having fun.

Karin Majoka described this beautifully: you may know the finished picture, but you don’t yet know where the pieces go. Or you deliberately rearrange the pieces to see what emerges. That process is one of play.

Whatever you do, it’ll go better if there’s a feeling of aliveness and joy. And without play, everything starts to feel like homework.

Kill the joy, kill the project.

A reason to finish

This one runs completely contrary to the other two, because I believe everything actually does involve a bit of homework, but having some form of commitment to “hit publish” on your work is what can get you through it.

Finishing is rarely glamorous. It’s the final 20% of the Pareto principle. The sticky, fiddly, mildly boring stretch that kills a lot of projects.

That’s why if I don’t have somewhere I’m publishing my work, I will abandon it. I write way more because I publish this newsletter. I edit my photography more because I share it. Plus, putting work out there gives you feedback, which helps you steer, which keeps you going.

Don’t try to finish everything, but at least some things.

Having a rough deadline may even help. You want enough time to let ideas percolate without so much time that you never finish.

The research on this says creativity survives under deadlines when three things align: you understand why the deadline matters, you believe the work is meaningful, and you're protected from constant interruptions. That's what Teresa Amabile calls being “On a Mission.” Purposeful pressure, rather than pressure for it’s own sake.

---

The mistake I kept making was assuming every creative project needs all three things.

Sometimes a new hobby brings a burst of novelty that spills over and energises something else entirely. Sometimes I’ll abandon a project halfway through, and the lessons from it pull into a different one — or the clarity of dropping it gives me the resolve to finish something I actually care more about. The projects don’t even have to be connected to keep me on the walk.

The main thread, I think, is play. The day that genuinely goes dark is the day to worry. Without novelty, there’s less joy in starting. Without a reason to finish, nothing compounds. But without play, the whole thing grinds to a halt.

When I keep that one alive, the rest tends to find its footing.

On the podcast

Dave Kang joined me to talk about living like an octopus and embracing your multiple interests without apology. As always, we chat about all sorts:

• Why the popular Ikigai diagram is actually a lie

• Finding your “tentacle configuration”

• Why quitting isn’t failure

• How cultural obsessions with optimization are often artificially self-imposed and don’t help at all

• Why not everything needs to be monetized, and the danger of turning every passion into income

You can read the full summary here or listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Worth your time

I’ve been battling a pretty tough dental issue and not been in much of a “deep reading” state this week, but here are a few things I’ve really enjoyed:

• An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece On Me - This is absolutely horrifying. In short: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece against the person who rejected its code. This is… not great.

• When “nothing” is working and why is Linkedin like that? from Renee are both fantastic. I had completely forgotten about “the button”.

• New Ferality from Venkatesh Rao. The once-wild indie internet has been tamed into a “grinder” creator economy. This makes me quite sad, as I worry I’m part of the problem but I’m also not sure how to make things better.

• This Scattered Brain - A reading life is always a fun read, and it makes me want to include more images and fun headings into these articles.

• Someone is using AI to exploit lonely writers on Substack from Jayson Fritz-Stibbe - Dead internet theory strikes again. I hope Substack will do something to combat this. I have seen more and more ghost likes on my own articles from quite clearly AI driven accounts in the last few weeks.

• Becoming an artist to outrun the machines from Dan Hockenmaier - the skills that still matter as AI progresses, and how to develop them.