Ep 109: The Focused Creator
Productivity Systems for Distracted Minds
SUMMARY
Is your creative genius being hijacked by notification pings, endless emails, and the irresistible pull of social media? You're not alone. In this episode of Creativity Made Easy, we explore battle-tested focus systems specifically designed for your creative brain to help you reclaim hours of deep creative flow amid a world designed to fracture your attention.
As creatives, our minds are uniquely vulnerable to distraction, but also capable of incredible flow states. Traditional productivity advice often fails creative professionals because our brains don't operate in strictly linear ways. We need specialized systems that honor both our need for structure and our natural creative processes.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ Design Your Environment for Creative Flow
⚡️ Practice Energy Management, Not Just Time Management
⚡️ Implement Focused Work Sessions
NOTABLE QUOTES
💬 "Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch a little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch a big fish, you've got to be willing to go deeper." - David Lynch
💬 "A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days, catching whole days." - Annie Dillard
💬 "What you pay attention to determines the quality of your life and the quality of your creative work." - Cal Newport
EPISODE RESOURCES
⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here
TRANSCRIPT
Is your creative genius being hijacked by notification pings, endless email and the irresistible pull of social media? Today, we're exploring battle tested focus systems specifically designed for your creative brain. We're going to help you reclaim hours, deep creative flow amid a world designed to fracture your attention. Let's get into it. Taking creatives from chaos.
Welcome back to Creativity Made Easy, the podcast where we transform creative chaos into clarity. This is a podcast for all creatives, designers, photographers, writers and all creative entrepreneurs who are seeking practical, actionable strategies to grow their creative business through efficiency. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, creative process coach and consultant. And I help creatives know themselves, their process and their teams to create with efficiency as they scale together.
Before we get into today's episode, if you're listening to this podcast, I would love for you to subscribe, rate and review wherever you're listening or watching. You can watch this podcast on YouTube or you can obviously listen to it anywhere where podcasts are available. I want to let you know I have all sorts of free resources just for you on my website at DustinPead.com slash free. Go there, check it out, download as many of them as you would like. That's Dustin Pead, P E A D dot com slash free for your resources. You can follow me on social media as well at Dustin Pead. I'm on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, all the big ones. You can reach me there again at Dustin P E A D.
All right. So today we're going to talk about this topic of the focused creator, productivity systems for distracted minds. And I was once at a place where I had lost a full day's work after constantly switching between client emails, Slack notifications and projects. And I knew that there had to be a better way to help me reclaim my focus. If you're like me, you have multiple screens at your desk. If you're kind of in your in your main office setup. And you switch from screen to screen, from desktop to desktop, constantly looking. And so our brains are not wired for that. Specifically, our creative minds are uniquely vulnerable to distraction, but also capable of incredible flow states, which we've talked about on this podcast before. So building on last week's discussion about creative briefs today, we're going to explore how to protect the mental space needed to execute on those projects efficiently.
So let's start by kind of defining and differentiating what creative focus is versus just general productivity, right? So traditional productivity advice often fails creative professionals because we creatives, we don't think necessarily that way in a very structured, organized manner, right? Creatives tend to rely strictly on the right side of their brain, which functions for ideas or artistic expression and left siders focus only on getting things done. If you're the unique combination like me and Enneagram four wing three, you sit in the middle of Enneagram four traditionally being a really creative mind, but also an Enneagram three being one that is focused on getting things done, checking things off the list. And so that's why I feel like God is kind of built me up to share these types of things and enter into this space from my unique perspective.
The impact, like most things, is kind of somewhere in the middle, right? It's not fully left, it's not fully right. It's when both sides of the brain equally work together to create something special. There's this thing called the open loop problem where creative work requires holding multiple concepts in our mind simultaneously and context switching or screen switching or focus switching, whatever you want to call it. Those costs are higher for creative tasks than they are for administrative ones. Listen, multitasking. It really is a myth and it's devastating to our creative output.
David Lynch says that ideas are like fish. If you want to catch a little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch a big fish, you've got to be willing to go deeper.
So let's start pretty practical, right? Let's talk environment, environmental design for creative flow. You'll notice here in my office, if you're watching on YouTube, I have I'm constantly evolving the environment in my physical space. I have a couch if I need to lay down and rest. I have a chair where I can kind of walk away from my screen. Those are the things that you see in your in your screen right now or on your view right now. I also have notoriously gone through several iterations of desks. I choose my paint color. I have different spaces, very particular. I have a simplified drawer system. I have mood lighting all over that I can dim brighter or lower if I need to. Everything in this room is super intentional to create an environment for creative flow.
So here's some considerations for your physical workspace. There's a massive importance of dedicated creative zones. I really pick up a ton from Austin Kleon on this, who uses an analog desk and a digital desk. And me and my wife, our studios are right next to each other. There's a doorway right here that separates the two of us. And in her space, we have kind of a shared analog desk. And if there are times where I need to work at a desk that's not cluttered with anything digital at all, then we go to the analog desk. There's nothing digital screen wise on the analog desk at all. It's craft supplies, it's sketchbooks, it's wide open space to kind of cut up some things if we need to and we use it all the time.
There can be visual cues for that. It's time to create, right? So you have different things around you that inspire you. I have a print just past this camera right here that says work hard, trust God. So I know when I sit down here and I see that it's time to work hard and trust God with the results, it's a visual cue that it's time to create. There's sound management. If you like silence or ambient noise or music, all of those things play into the environment. And like I mentioned already, there's psychology behind lighting and its impact on creative thinking. We don't have time to dig into that, but trust me, it's real. You can go research that on your own.
But let's talk your digital environment as well while we're on this topic. I will often see, look over the shoulder of a creative and their desktop is loaded with icons and the icons really aren't even like applications. It's there's, or even folders. It's just documents all over the place. And that can cause great distraction when you're trying to context switch from one type of project to the next.
So let's minimize the browser setup as much as possible. Let's close some tabs. It's going to be all right. I'm 100% guilty of being a tab user beyond the norm, but maybe close some tabs to get your focus right. You also want to adjust some different notifications, right? So you want to be able to have different focus modes, as what I use in the Apple world translates from all the devices that I use when I say, hey, listen, this is my work focus mode. Here's what's allowed to come in. Here's what's not allowed to come in. Who and the type of notifications that I receive.
But listen, you also want to think about some transition rituals to help your brain shift into creative mode. When you're thinking about this space, create a physical gateway activity that that signals it's time to be creative. It could be lighting a candle or putting on specific music or walking from one side of the room to the next. Whatever it is, do that and use it consistently. A pre-work routine to prime up your brain, whether it be prayer, sketching or journaling, whatever it is that will massively change the environment for you to trigger your creative mindset.
So you've done all the things you're sitting in the right spot. You got everything ready to go. Now it's time to review that creative brief or project goals before beginning. Don't just jump right in. Take three deep breaths, over the creative brief that's in front of you and mentally reset between tasks. It's important too, and we're talking about creative flow here, to make sure that you communicate boundaries upfront to your team and your clients to let them know that you're in focus mode. I love, my wife does this really well where she will have a certain time of the day that an auto reply email will go off and say, hey, you caught me in deep work mode. I'm not checking my email right now. I will check it here in a little bit. If it's an emergency, here's how you can reach me. But otherwise, I will get back to your request the next time I check my email, which is going to be during this time frame. That's great communication to be able to set up, set up the expectations for your team and your client.
Austin Kleon who we quote and love on this podcast so much. He says this about your physical space. He says your studio is a place where you can lose yourself in your work without worrying what the world will think. Doesn't that sound nice? So let's be intentional about setting up that space for optimal creative flow.
All right, let's talk some time blocking techniques because that's gonna really affect our creative flow as well. So I often talk to my clients in our coaching sessions about energy management versus time management for creative work and energy management is, I pick up a lot of my stuff here from a book called At Your Best by Kerry Nieuwhof where he talks about your green, yellow and red energy zones throughout the day and making sure that you have protected your green zone as much as possible. That's a green energy. That's when you're firing on all cylinders. For some people, it's first thing in the morning. Some people it's midday. Some people it's later in the evening. It doesn't matter, but identifying that and protecting that energy is going to be super important for your creative flow.
That's obviously different than time management, right? Like, are we procrastinating or are we wasting time or are we scrolling through social media? That's not necessarily energy management as much as it is time management. So referring to the at your best book, highly recommend it. It's good to notice to kind of create what I might refer to as like a heat map for your most creative hours. So you start to kind of notice as you go through that book. He'll walk you through some steps to notice when you're at your peak creative hours. And that's when you you want to you want to be able to take notice of that, put it on your whiteboard and say, that's when I'm most creative and that's when I'm going to protect my time and my energy the most so I can get the most out of my day.
Now, I use kind of like Kerry Nieuwhof's at your best and Michael Hyatt's full focus and Dan Martell's buy back your time kind of all of those three things to design my ideal creative day. So for me, 7 a.m. to 11 ish a.m. that's peak creative energy hours. I don't like to take meetings before 11 a.m. if I can help it. It happens sometimes, but on the regular, that's not something that we we've set up for myself. So that time is super protected. The middle of the day is a little bit more of my yellow zone. I can still contribute some things, but it's better for meetings and collaborations and things like that. And then my red zone, which is pretty stereotypical for a lot of people. Most people fall into this where their red zone is going to be anywhere from like three to four o'clock up until about six or seven o'clock where they're really not going to be good for anything that has to, they have to use much mental energy for they're going to, be better off using their time on something physical that does not require admin tasks, things like that that don't require a whole lot of thinking. That's the time that you use that for.
And so you can map out your ideal creative day. You can communicate that with your team and your clients so that everybody understands when you're going to be at your best and why you're protecting your schedule the way that you are.
Let's talk some time management approaches for different creatives. So for writers, there's different times for you to write drafts and there's different times for you to edit. Understanding what those times are and then being intentional about those times will massively change the game for you and your creative flow. Designers, are you exploring, right? Is this like an ideation situation or are you refining these designs in this block? Photographers, are you shooting or are you editing? Obviously big, big difference. Physical space, mental space, all of it. Marketers, is this time for creative development or are you having to be a little bit more analytical and review some things?
But what do we do when a client emergency inevitably happens, right? We know it may not be an emergency to us, but it's an emergency to them. And we need to be able to deal with it without derailing our entire day, right? So here's some things you can do. Number one, you need to implement like a triage system for client requests. And they come in, we go, okay, if this is a level five, then we're shutting things down and we're and we're pivoting to that. And we can do that because we use the do versus do framework and we have the margin to do that because we know those emergencies are going to happen. But as it comes through the filter and you're like, it's really more of like a level two or level three. It's not so much, you know, end of the world kind of thing. We can still get to it later. You'll document it. You'll put it in your project management system and you move on for later.
You need to figure out a way to have some template, templated responses to these things. So maybe it's a "Hey, at a level five response, it's gonna be a phone call. At a level one response, it's gonna be an email, right? And understanding how to communicate those things during those common, urgent situations. And here's a great hack for this. Use the five minute rule, right? If it truly takes less than five minutes, then go ahead and handle it immediately. But be honest about if it actually takes five minutes or if you're just thinking that it takes five minutes or your client will just say, hey, I just need five minutes of your time. Do you really just need five minutes of our time? Or are you kind of using that as a generalization of a few minutes, which turns into an hour and a half phone call?
So with those strategies, you also want to kind of create some type of containment strategy to prevent the spread of those quote unquote emergencies. You need to protect your team and their time as much as you protect yourself and your time from those emergencies kind of breaking through. So you're gonna protect your best creative hours with these focus shields or even focus modes like Apple uses.
Author Annie Dillard says it best. She says, "A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days, catching whole days." A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. Now, there is time for whim, right? But we don't want to be dictated on the regular by chaos and whim. So scheduling things can be that net for regaining whole days back into your creative flow.
All right, we touched on a little bit of this digital clutter stuff before, but I feel like we need to speak a little bit on this digital minimalism in order for you to kind of really gain this creative flow, right? The attention economy that we live in right now specifically targets a lot of creative people because of FOMO. We constantly feel like if we're not on Instagram, that we're going to miss out on the next big opportunity or the next big creative hack or angle or idea and it's gonna pass us by and we're gonna be left in the dust. And we all know that that's just not true. It's just a tactic to keep you distracted. So do not be distracted. Do not let FOMO take you down in the digital space for sure.
Here's a great way to do that. Why don't you go through your phone once a month and declutter some of the apps that you have in there that you just don't ever use. probably, if I were to guess right now, I feel like I probably only use about 30% of the apps that are on my phone. That's a lot of clutter, that's 70% clutter. So I need to sit down, probably gonna do it right after this recording, and go through my phone and delete some apps that I just don't use.
Here's a great tip too. We talked about the kind of the analog desk, right? earlier that my wife and I have down here in our studio spaces, use some analog tools. Paper, pens, a camera that's not digital. Use some analog tools for different creative processes. You don't have to have your entire creative process from beginning to end be sitting in front of a screen. I promise you're not gonna get the most creativity out of that every single time. So break it up. Maybe your dream phase is gonna be outside with a sketch pad and your design phase is gonna be in front of your laptop and your development phase is gonna be at your desk. There's different things you can do, right, according to the 4D creative process that I talk about often on this podcast.
So let's create some digital boundaries, right? We talked about decluttering your apps and things like that, using some analog tools, but you can also batch email. You can have different social media boundaries on your phone. Your phone will actually just say, hey, you're not allowed to use this unless you punch in this code, know, kind of like self protect yourself, know, protect yourself from yourself, right? Of getting onto the social media so much. So, and then I love this too. I'm sure all phones do this. But my iPhone will often tell me how much time I've spent on certain apps throughout the week or throughout the day. And so that's a really good indicator of going, man, I spent six hours on my phone this week on average every single day. That's some hours that I could be getting back, right? And I know that sounds crazy, but if you really stop and think about it, most of us are on our phone that long.
Cal Newport, who is a productivity genius and author, he says, "What you pay attention to determines the quality of your life and the quality of your creative work." Let's think more and more about what we are paying attention to.
So speaking of Cal, I want to end this episode with some, with some few, a few takeaways that you can kind of walk away with that. That's not just from me, right? Number one, Deep Work by Cal Newport. Great book, fantastic way to different strategies in there to keep yourself focused on the work at hand that needs to get done. There's a method out there that I want to share with you as well. It's called the Pomodoro technique. And this has been adapted by lots of creatives, but traditionally the Pomodoro method is that you work for 25 minutes and then you take a five minute break. You can change this obviously in your creative flow because sometimes you might need a little bit longer than 25 minutes to really start to get into it before it stops. So you can extend those focus blocks 50 to 90 minutes for deeper creative work. And then instead of a five minute break, take like a 15 minute break. This is the one that I use all the time.
Timers are really great for this too. I bought this timer is like less than $10 on Amazon. And I simply just turn it like this and it and hit start. And I go, I'm going to do this for the next 60 minutes, set it to 60 minutes, hit start, and then, and then just let's it go. And it's real digital and simple right here in front of me. Know if you can see it on. Yeah, you can see how I just turn it like this and boom. And then I hit start and there it goes. So timers are a great way to keep yourself focused.
And even this past week, I threw out to everybody in our community, does anyone want to hop on a focus session, like a focus mode session? And what we did is we took about a 90 minute block. We started out for the first 10 or 15 minutes, just kind of talking about some things that are going on in our world and what we're going to be working on. And then we all shared, hey, these are the things that I want to get done in the next hour, the next 60 minutes. And then I set a timer for 60 minutes. Had one of my clients share some tunes. We all listened to the tunes together. We all saw each other right there on our side screens and we went to work. And when the timer was off, throughout, let people know, here's how much time we have left. When the timer went off, everybody was really eager to share, here's everything that I got done. Now, if you're not a social person, that may sound like just complete hell to you. But for a social person like me, an extrovert like me, it was fantastic. And we were really able to get a ton done in that one hour because we had that accountability of staying focused.
So in closing, I want to just remind you, focus is a practice. It's not a personality trait. Do not tell yourself that that's just not who I am. I'm just not a very focused person. That's not true. You can be focused because focus is a practice, not a personality trait. The most prolific creative professionals are often the most disciplined about protecting their attention. It is possible to be both highly creative and highly structured. It can happen. I have seen it happen all the time. Small changes to your focus habits. They compound dramatically over time.
So that's it for today's episode. I want to remind you to share your focus challenges on social media using the hashtag creativity made easy and mention me at Dustin Pead. Please rate and review this podcast. I cannot wait to share next week's episode with you. And it's going to be a great one. Y'all have a great week. We'll talk to you next time on Creativity Made Easy.