Will I lose my creative edge if I get organized?

In this episode I talk about how, from the outside, organization looks different for each and every creator. What you choose to spend time organizing, what you choose to keep and prioritize, doesn't have to make sense to anyone but you.

But the core of having a life that is organized in your own unique way, is maintaining a clear mind that so you are able to catch ideas as they come to you, and respond with your art.

I'd love to connect with you further! You can find my weekly art-share newsletter at justadrip.substack.com

Thanks for listening and see you next week! 

Transcript

Hello, ambitious creators! I hope you're ready to dream, and scheme, and create some great art. My name is Brielle Goheen and I'm so excited to be your productivity and creativity coach for the next fifteen to twenty minutes. Before we get started on today's episode, I want invite you to sign up to my mailing list. I send out a short email every week where I share something that has captured my attention and inspired me that week. So the purpose of this email is mainly for me to just share beautiful things with you. It might be a beautiful thought or an intriguing piece of art. Maybe a thought provoking poem or just a perfect quote or a story from me about something I'm learning about how to live life just a little bit better. it's called Just A Drip and you can sign up for that by visiting justadrip.substack.com. The link will be in the show notes and I just invite you take connect with me in that way.

Welcome to episode 3 of A Little Bit Unstoppable! I just have to say I love the month of May. I think May and June are my favorite months of the year because the warm weather is back and people are all outside chatting to each other. It's easier to meet your neighbours and go on walks. And then you can connect with friends while you're walking and getting some of your steps in - oh my goodness, I'm such a millennial talking about getting my steps in! That's okay. I own that. I think of roller blading and the kids getting their bikes and scooters out. And sitting outside, chatting with friends and soaking in the vitamin D. I just adore the beginning of summer. These months are also the perfect months to begin getting organized again. It's not so hot yet that you want to stay inside to keep cool. It's like the perfect weather to be inside and outside. So you can haul your stuff outside and work out there and have a garage sale to sell the things you don't want to keep in your life anymore. And it's just the perfect time for spring cleaning.

But one thing that I found is that often people who are creatively oriented and creatively gifted are just a little bit tentative to get organized. They think, "If I get organized, will I lose my creative edge?" Or the way I like to say it, "Will I die a little inside?" So that's what I want to talk about today.

So think of someone that you know whose main characteristic is that they're incredibly organized. What adjectives come to mind? For me there are positive words like principled, or disciplined, orderly...but there are also the more extreme, and honestly, negative words that also come to mind like inflexible, rigid, tightly wound. And I associate both of these sets of words with a supremely organized person - which is hilarious because I am actually really organized person now and I'm not really inflexible or rigid or tightly wound, I don't think. So I'm here to tell you that it is entirely possible, and preferable to most artistic types, I think, to cultivate a kind of organized messy life.

I like the fact that my kids make an enormous mess when their friends come over. I love that they use all their toys and they make art with abandon and they spill things all over the place because they're learning to become more capable by trying things that are on the edge of their abilities. I honestly like a messy life. But I can handle a messier life if it's organized at the core. And this, to me, is the key. Your organization can look however you want it to look from the outside. Your home doesn't need to look like a Pinterest pin about organizational hacks and, you know, the latest home renovations. And nor should it if you don't desire that. But I want to suggest to you that if you're an ambitious creator, you'll be able to create and practice your art more consistently and do the things that you've set out to do if the core of your life is organized. For someone who is naturally more organized, their direction of growth is probably somewhere in letting go and releasing to the unpredictable, harnessing spontaneity. But for you becoming more organized and streamlining your repetitive tasks will actually release you to be more flexible. More of what you already are. More disciplined in the practice of creating your art. More principled in how you align your time with your core values, and just completely relaxed about where you are in this moment in your artistic process.

I think for most creative types this looks like an organized mind. An organized core looks more like an organized mind than a perfectly organized home. My mind is the core where my creativity gets to play. I like to actually think of my mind like a giant white room. There are shelves along all the walls and every idea I have ever had has a space in this room in a clear bin with a beautiful 'The Home Edit'-like labeling system. And when I want to make art, I just sit in the mental space enjoying the sunshine. And then I pull out a few bins that seems kind of interesting in this moment and start playing around with the ideas that are inside of them.
I have my favourite bins, of course. The ones that are my 'go-to's, that always kick start the creative process. But they're all there and they're all available.

It took me a few weeks of intentional effort for me to actually organize my mind in this way. I actually have a fully functioning external physical system for organizing all of my thoughts and ideas. Because my mind, and I imagine your mind - I think most people's minds - come up with enough possibilities for life, for things to do, for things to experience, that there's enough there for several lifetimes. And so getting it out of my head and into this external physical system helps me actually see it all and choose what things I want to actually work toward, what things I actually want to create, and what things I am okay with just leaving for another lifetime.

And I engage with my chosen mind organization tool every single day. So it took a few weeks to create the system but a few weeks of work for a lifetime of a calm mind to me is just well worth it. I think it may have been the best decision I ever made, aside from marrying Brad and deciding to have my two gorgeous girls. I actually really love teaching this and I teach how to set up a mind organization system comprehensively in my 12-week Become Unstoppable course. But something that I would love for you to play around with this week is to get into the practice of continually Mind Sweeping.

Start a new note on your phone. You can - if you have an iPhone you can do this in your Notes app. Label the note "Mind Sweep". And every time you have a thought that needs to be captured - something that you need from the grocery store, or a snippet of a song lyric, or an idea of how you might communicate the message of your last book, or maybe something that needs to be fixed around the home that you notice, or a big project that you're just kind of mulling over, maybe a question that your mulling over in your mind...write it down immediately. It's like taking a little dust pan and just sweeping it out of your mind and into this note. Our phones are on us almost all the time so there's no need for us to be using our limited mental RAM to remember that we need to buy grapes the next time we're at the grocery store. Get into the habit of sweeping out your mind and you'll have more white space to create and to play around with ideas.

But here's the kicker. The state of your spaces follows your mental state. So if your mental state is in chaos and angst, your physical spaces will follow, and it will be nearly impossible to have organized spaces, and especially to have effortlessly organized spaces. But if your mental state is calm and clear, if you have a place to put every single last creative idea that you catch, the outflow of that is that you're able to prioritize your life in a way that makes sense to you. And then your spaces become the perfect balance of messiness and organization. That perfect balance that works for you. It's not for anybody else. This balance is for you. You're in the driver's seat. So if the space being a little bit chaotic doesn't bother you, then it doesn't bother you. That's okay! There's no need to organize it just to say that you did. But if it does bother you, then it's going to take up mental energy. And from your calm mental state you'll naturally prioritize organizing that aspect of your life because it's bothering you. It's taking up mental energy. If having a loosey goosey approach to some process in your life is really working for you that's awesome. But as it begins to cause problems and make things more difficult than they need to be, you'll notice that because you're in a place of mental clarity. And you can address only the things that need to be addressed. Organize the things that need to be organized to be made easier or maybe more efficient.

Here's an example from my life. Our laundry room has a wall that wasn't fully painted by the previous owner. They had this bulky cabinet in front of it and when we moved in and removed the cabinet, we realized that they had painted around the cabinet. And so the trim is this weird blue colour and the - I don't even know what colour the wall is. It's some ugly - I don't know. Whatever. It's super super ugly and it's not the same colour as the rest of the room. It's really ugly. So it's on my projects list. But it's on my Someday/Maybe projects list because it gives my mind absolutely no grief at all that it's like that. Because I just don't care in this stage of my life if my laundry room is beautiful. Like, I would really love to paint it one day and I will when the timing is right for me - when it starts bothering me - but right now, from a place of an organized mind, I know that painting that wall is just not important to me. And I have no guilt whatsoever. But what is important to me is that I have a really streamlined system for laundry. Because I have so much of it to do every day. So I spent time organizing my system for streamlining my laundry process until it became the thing of beauty that it is today. And, like, I'm not even joking - laundry is pretty much my favourite thing in the world now. But it took some time to figure out that streamlined process. But that was worthwhile because that's something that I do every single day. And for others of you the space and how the space looks that might have such a huge effect on your mental state that it is worthwhile to prioritize that over having the perfect system of folding or something like that. So organizing the mind is essential because your spaces flow naturally from there and organizing your spaces will happen when the time is right for you, so you're not being influenced by what other people say is important, or what the magazines are showing to be the latest trend. You are organizing according to what is the most important for you to have just this wonderful state of calm and clarity in your mind.

Organization is an honestly beautiful thing. I am in awe of people that organize physical spaces to maximize. I totally binged The Home Edit when it came out, and season 2, same thing. First week, I just binged it. It's really a thing of beauty. Organization really creates space. I always joke that I'm a medium-alist with my stuff but a definite minimalist when it comes to what I hang on to in my own mind. I don't actually really love the minimalist aesthetic for my life, for my things. I have a lot of gear. I have a lot of art stuff. I have a lot of music gear. I have a lot of office supplies. I have just a lot of things that I need. And I like having these things. So I'm definitely a medium-alist. I'll never be, like, you know, having sixty items - or maybe it's even less than that the minimalists have. I don't understand how that's possible. But I will never be a minimalist with my things. That's just not who I am. But being a minimalist with my mind helps me create helps me be more ready in every moment to just respond to my environment with creating art. To be able to respond with creation. To be present and respond with creation.

I clear the space in my mind regularly and rigorously to protect the white space. Because without white space in your mind, art actually becomes anemic. Like a fire when the kindling is packed too tightly, it can't get enough oxygen. So without both the kindling and the spaces between, the fire just won't burn as brightly it could with just a little more space. So I'm constantly seeking out the right kindling by reading, by listening to music, by experiencing art from other people, by having conversations and being exposed to new ideas - that's the kindling. And then the space is keeping all of the things - all the daily stresses of life - swept out of my mind. Everything in its place, prioritizing, knowing what I want to do each day and in every moment.

So I want to encourage you to spend some time in the deep dive of mind organization, starting by just keeping a simple Mind Sweep note in your phone. You won't lose your creative edge, I promise. You'll fuel your creative fire.

It takes bravery and it takes courage to walk the artistic path and we need to support and encourage each other as much as possible. If you found this episode helpful consider sharing it with a friend - maybe another ambitious creator that you think might find it helpful as well. Another way that you can help other ambitious creators find our Unstoppable Community is to leave a review of this podcast episode with a sentence or two in your preferred podcast listening app. I'd appreciate that just so much. It really does affect how many new listeners find out about the podcast and I want as many people as possible to be empowered by these episodes. If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe so that you'll be notified every time there's a new episode.
 
Remember: the worlds we imagine are the worlds we build. So, ambitious creator, imagine something beautiful and take the next step - no matter how small - toward building it.