On my last solocast, I talked about burnout.
I was facing it. Hard.
The problem with burnout is that you often don’t recognize it until you’re already there.
Look, I’ve faced it many a time in my life, but this time, I am pretty dang proud of myself that I caught it when I did.
Being vocal about it here on the podcast really forced me into some accountability, and perhaps my husband being my podcast editor had a little to do with that, because we have had some tough conversations about it. I sat down with myself to really face this demon.
I share all of this, because it is so normal to experience this. And, between that burnout podcast and now, I interviewed an amazing woman who was on last week’s episode – Dr. Barabara Kerr – who dished me a giant heaping of mental whoopass about this.
If you haven’t listened to that episode, finish out this one and then go give it a listen.
What Barbara says is that we are creative beings. Creativity is what we do, and we should encourage ourselves to be creative as much as we can. And – here’s the real kicker, my friends – if we are to be as creative as we possibly can, that means working a heck of a lot less.
In fact, she is a proponent of no more than 4-6 hour workdays.
In her research of human history, she says this is what humans have done. Four to six hours of work, and then the rest of the time spent on things that support our creativity.
To quote her exactly, “We’re being robbed of that life very society as we know it.”
Most of our waking time, rather than working, should be supporting our creativity.
This idea she shared is the antithesis of what we know in Western culture. When we track our every waking hour, we aren’t leaving time to feed our creativity. It’s almost like we need to flip it and prioritize the things that help our creativity flourish and take work down a notch.
So, in this episode, I want to share some ways that, as Dr. Barbara says it, we can live a more primal life. Now, we’re not talking about eat raw chicken cutlets. I’m talking about spending more time doing the basic, primal things that humans love to do. To build your personal village of creative support.
To spend more time connecting with others, playing, making and telling stories. These are the things that we inherently love to do!
So, how do you build your personal creative village? How do you start to gather your support?
It’s creative exercise time. My friend!
I did this for myself and it was, first of all, really fun! But it also was also full of all of these little aha moments for me.
What you’re going to do is to take Dr. Barbara’s four primal human activities – the things we LOVE to do, the things that boost our creativity, the things that boost our happiness and joy and fulfillment – and create a list. Now, I want this to be one big list. One after another. Don’t bother writing down the categories and organizing this. Simply do one, write as many things as pop into your mind, and then go to the next.
The four primal things human love to do are:
Now, with gossip, think of it more like “what are the things you like to talk about.” If you’re at a party, what are you excited to get into an engaging conversation about? What are you curious about? What light hearted conversations to you enjoy?
For me, it’s the “why’s” of things. Why the heck did so-and-so do that? I want to know the root or things. But also food. Ideas. People’s strange behavior. Bragging about the wonderful things the people I love do. All of these are on my list.
And when I ran out, I moved to play. What are the things I love to do for play?
Skate. Hug my dogs. Peruse a book store. Read a scummy romance novel. Read product reviews. I know, weird, but it’s seriously so fun to me, but feels like a waste of time so I stop myself even though I like it!
Okay, I hope you play list is suuuuuper long, but if not, that’s totally cool! Now, move onto making. You might notice that some of your play was also in the making list and that’s fine. There are no hard rules here.
Making could be cooking, jokes, bad puns, an interesting drink, an event like a book club, a painting or drawing, music, omg. I broadened out from my own list here to show you the breadth and really get your ideas flowing.
Finally, telling stories. What are the kinds of stories you like to consume or tell?
I like a good reality story. Did you hear... ?!? But I also love to share a good mystery or “can you believe it” or “I used to think, but now…” or a reality story with a comedic ender. I like to consume mysteries and thrillers and comedies and true stories.
Okay, go alllll the way through. Just bam- bam- bam. This is a stream of consciousness situation. Go until you’re done.
Maybe go grab a drink. A snack, check yourself out in the mirror. Come back in like 3-5 minutes and take a look at your list.
How many of these things did you incorporate into your life last week?
I hope there are a ton...but if you’re anything like me, it was a bit sad. For the past few months, I had really let my creative selfcare slide. I’d burned my own village to the ground.
Now, if your list is like mine, please don’t berate yourself about it. It is what it is, and the nice thing about what it is, is that it can be changed.
Now, go through the list and circle 4-5 things you’re going to make sure you intentionally do to help build your creative village this week.
Maybe it’s going roller skating. Maybe it’s as simple as calling up a friend to have an enjoyable conversation. Perhaps it’s grabbing a new book to enjoy just for the sake of enjoying it.
Whatever those four things are, incorporate them into your life this week. Do it intentionally. And do it again next week. And the next week. After a while, my guess is that we will start to naturally incorporate these habits into our life.
Because habits. Those are also something humans do.