The Creative Mess

A calming guide for creative entrepreneurs with too many ideas and not enough focus.

I don’t think we are made to create in the modern world.

Our brains can’t handle the constant notifications, feeds, and aggressively crafted demands for attention. No matter how hard you work to find your calm, tranquil place of focus and productivity – it’s just a matter of time until another distraction tac team busts your door.

We need to find ways to distance ourselves from the rest of the world – from time to time. If you want to create something unique and true to yourself, you have to separate consuming and creating. Because real creativity happens when you give your brain and subconscious create new connections between all the things you’ve consumed.

You can’t force that. It just happens. But it can’t happen if you never stop bombarding your senses with new information.

This is a collection of essays about that. Maybe you love it; maybe it doesn’t make any sense. But you know what? I don’t care. I can’t. If I’m trying to write what I think you will click, like, or share, it’ll be just another article like all the others.

And I don’t want to waste your time with more of that crap. Enjoy!

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Essays about You

• All your creative friends are depressed as f*ck
• We were not prepared for social media
• Your brain is faster than regular brains
• That thing, when you can solve any problem… That is not normal.
• Why you are being overwhelmed

Essays about Focus

• How to focus on doing one thing ^[1]
• Focus is a muscle – you can train it
• FART: Reminding yourself to stay on track
• A system to save ideas for projects while doing other things
• You don’t need another tool, you need to make it simpler
• Build-in-Private: You don’t have to share everything.

Essays about Creativity

• The Future-You-Method: How to not start too many projects at once.
• 3 levels of project pace: Pausing, Orbiting, or Plowing (POP).
• How to get started on big projects ^[1]
• Gamifying ideas
• Separate Consuming and Creating
• How to keep motivated
• How to break away from the echo chamber
• Not starting another project (by putting it in the Backburner)

Essays about Productivity

• The never-ending to-do list
• Asynchronous Productivity: Work at your variable pace, within a set time frame ^[1]
• How I finally found a way to capture (and use) my ideas.
• A system for keeping track of projects (that isn’t as complex as Notion)
• Don’t eat the frog first
• Time-blindness: Why setting reasonable expectations is important
• The minimalistic productivity system

Essays about Screens

• Keeping track of trials, and apps you pay a subscription to.
• Use AI (AudioPen) to dictate texts and articles.
• Understanding how video and feeds kill your focus and creativity.

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