3 Uncomfortable Tactics to Help you gain and maintain Creative Clarity today

Clean the toilet, Put others first, Find your Mistakes

Even if we wake up with complete clarity, we quickly lose it throughout the day.

I've found myself endlessly tweaking my routines looking for the best ways to start and end my days is it 30 grams of protein in the first 30 minutes, or is it sitting down and writing morning pages? I just know that if I make one wrong move and I could be scrolling Instagram for hours.

And that is one sure way to destroy the clarity of mind required to do creative work!

Here are 3 tactics uncomfortable tactics to help you gain and maintain creative clarity:

Tactic #1: The best way I have found to start my day, is by cleaning the toilet.

This is actually a common practice in Japan, one observed by a number of successful business leaders. This low-effort activity is easy to get into and involves your whole body, but it also generates a humility and general good feeling, a dopamine hit. And research has shown that the place you get your first dopamine hit of the day is the place you will keep coming back to throughout the day.

If you can get your dopamine hits from doing unpleasant tasks, you've already hacked yourself for success!

Tactic #2: Remember, your niche is not about you.

When doing creative work, the natural tendency is to think about the work we want to do and our specialty. But it's useful to remember the work is really about what the reader gets out of it. Putting the reader, listener, and viewer at the center of our work removes a lot of the doubt and second-guessing so common in the creative process.

When making creative work we need to keep in mind who it's for and let that guide our decisions.

Tactic #3: At the end of the day, Review your Day.

This is harder than it sounds try it! When I asked myself what went well today, I can come up with a never-ending list of tiny wins. But when I ask myself, "What could I have done better?", my mind goes blank!

It takes effort to acknowledge our mistakes even to ourselves, but those mistakes are the seeds of Self-Knowledge and Success.

What do you think?

Would you apply any of these in your own daily routine? Do you have any uncomfortable routines that help you gain or maintain creative clarity?