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The term "structured creativity" might sound like you're forcing something that should flow naturally, but hear me out! Putting some restraints on your creative process could help you move beyond an overwhelming list of ideas and decision fatigue.
I recently learned about the term "decision fatigue," and I realized a lot of content creators, myself included, currently have or have had this problem. And the solution may very well be to put clear parameters and structure around our creative time (but in a way that is fully supportive of us, of course.)
Join me as I explore this concept and what it looks like for me in this episode.
Have any reflections on decision fatigue? What do you do when you have too many ideas? I invite you to share in the comments below. Enjoy the episode!
Below is a transcript of the episode for your reference—please excuse grammatical errors!
Hello creators, and welcome back to the Mindful Content Creator Podcast. This is episode 12, and today I want to focus on when we have too many ideas and how what I'm calling “structured creativity” could help.
So having too many ideas is a really common challenge that a lot of people that I've worked with have had, and I've had myself. I can always seem to have new ideas popping up, but not enough time to tackle all of them, or not enough time to really pursue all of them fully. It's hard to know at the time which one is worth pursuing. And often this ends up leading to us making no movement at all, or really scattered movement, and a lot of things being left basically incomplete, and I really do see this with a lot of my clients who I work with with content creation. There will be a couple ideas floating around, they'll kind of start in a couple areas, but then everything will kind of peter out because they're not sure which one's the best one to go with and they want some sort of assurance that they're on the right path. And that can get really tricky because you end up not really outputting anything at the end of the day, which will make you feel unproductive, and the whole spiral begins, right?
So there's this term that I learned about that I actually hadn't been aware of, but I've experienced this so much myself that it really clicked with me, and it's called “decision fatigue.” And I learned about this term on Instagram, of all places, that seems to be where I learn a lot of things these days, or Substack. I wish Instagram wasn't always the case, but it is. But I saw this really great reel from Amy McNee, and her handle is @inspiredtowrite, and she's a writer, she's a creative, she talks a lot about creative challenges, things that really would apply to a lot of us as well, as mindful content creators.
And this really, you know, gave me a look into what was actually happening when I was experiencing these moments of decision fatigue. And I used to have a full time job, too, and in the reel she talks about how she had a full time job and then she would have structured time to create. But even with that, because I worked entirely from home, remote, and I think this is part of the problem, it's really hard to keep yourself structured when you, uh, work from home, but my day would end, with my official day job, and I'd be kind of out of it, exhausted, just burnt out from it because I wasn't enjoying it all that much, and then it would be time to say, okay, well I, I can switch gears now. It's my time, it's my, my free time.
And I'd kind of wander around the house, and I'd joke about this with my husband, but I'd be like, but what do I do now? What takes priority? And I, I just always felt so lost. And at the time I was seeing a yoga therapist, and I was telling her about this, and she gave me some advice to help me make clear transitions to my day, and so maybe that was putting on a certain, you know, music to transition from the end of the day to my own stuff, taking a break to do some yoga and resetting, doing some type of movement, even diffusing a certain type of essential oil, just working with anything, having a hot cup of tea, anything that would help me sort of shift gears. And I got a little bit better by trying to do that, but I still was pretty scattered.
And it's funny because I thought, like Amy says in her reel, and I am going to link it in the show notes, she thought, oh, if I have a whole day to create, like I'm finally going to put out so much, there's going to be so much content, so much great things, or at least that's what I thought as well. And once I quit my job and had my own businesses, it very quickly turned out not to be the case.
I was not outputting at the level that I thought I would be. I was taking on freelance clients, and I was doing a lot of work for them. But as far as my own creative stuff, the things that I really wanted to keep building and putting out there, I wasn't really doing much of anything on that.
And every day I'd get up and I'd be like, oh, there's this client work, and I would prioritize that. And I'd get it done and then send it off, but because I would output so quickly, the people would come back to me, the clients, and they'd say, oh, this is great. Now can I have all these changes? Or can you do something else? And it would just keep building and building, and I would keep putting off my own stuff.
So I was surprised, naturally, that this wasn't really working for me. I thought for sure, when I didn't have a structured job, and I could focus on what I wanted to focus on when I wanted to, that I would finally break through and make all the things I wanted to make—and it just wasn't the case.
But you know what did happen, is I had a baby. And I became a mother. And this happened, uh, almost a year ago now. We're approaching that. But back in November of 2022, and, you know, once I got through the first six or so weeks of postpartum, and started to, to kind of get back into doing things, uh, for myself, and getting used to having a newborn around, all of a sudden, things changed. I had very limited time, uh, to, to create and I had to make the most of that time. And it's usually while she's napping or someone else is watching her, right? And if she's napping, I don't know how long that's going to last. So I have to keep it moving, right?
And I have to say that since becoming a parent, when I've had more time restrictions than ever, I've outputted more of my own creative work than ever before. Ever before. And it seems on the surface to not make sense at all. But, when you think about the term decision fatigue and what that is, it makes perfect sense.
So when we have decision fatigue, we've got too many options available to us. And you may have heard about this when it comes to other areas of your life. Like, I think one of the really common ones is, uh, what you wear, right? So if you have fewer options, and you're only switching around between a few things, in the morning, when you get up and look in your closet, you're not going to stand there for 20 minutes and wonder, what the heck do I wear? You have very few pieces, you know how they mix and match together, and you just put the thing on, right?
And it's also similar with food. We've seen this before where people say, oh, well, a lot of time can be wasted with you just trying to decide where you want to go for lunch, what you want to make for lunch, what you want to make for dinner. So having things pre-set, pre-cooked, and ready to go, now you don't have to think about that. You're saving yourself a lot of time. A
nd, not surprisingly, it's really similar with our own creative work. So, if you're going into your structured creative time, if you've got, you know, a certain window of time to work, if you already know going in, this is the only time I've got, and this is what I want to work on, you're going to do it, right?
And the reel that I saw from Amy, she kind of basically explained this, that that's what happened with her, that, you know, she needed to have some, what she calls, creative restraints. Creative restraints often motivate us to keep going and get things done, rather than sitting in that decision fatigue, spinning hamster wheel, and I really have found this to be completely true.
So, how do we get ourselves out of that hamster wheel where we aren't producing outputting? We're just stuck saying I have all these ideas now, where do I go with it? Well, I think one way and I've talked about this in earlier episodes, and this may seem contradictory to, or even just against the idea of free flowing creativity, but I'm gonna say, impose a little bit of structure on yourself. So maybe you set certain times of the day to create, you set certain days of the week. You have blocks of time, and you don't have those blocks of time be all that long. You'll want to have breaks between them, maybe of at least 20 minutes or so.
I used to do, I think they're called Pomodoros, and I was part of Katie Dalebout, she's a podcaster as well, her podcast is, uh, Let It Out. And I joined her creative group, uh, I think this was probably about two years ago now. And we would do these group Pomodoros on Zoom. So we would, I think it was for about 15 or 20 minutes, we'd create something and then we'd take a break and kind of like tell each other what we were working on. And then we would do like another 15 to 20 minutes, something like that. And it was really interesting because it did help you kind of focus in and hone in on one task and then take that break to kind of step away and then come back to it.
Because another thing that I see with myself and also with a lot of creators that I've worked with, when you kind of get super stuck on something, you know, you're obsessed with this idea that you have and say, you know, the problem isn't that you don't know which idea to go after, it's that you really want this one idea that has really a lot of components, more than you can tackle in the time that you have, but you're so obsessed and you want to get it done and you try to keep pushing through and you spend hours and hours and hours on it—and the hours all add up and you stop and you're like, wait, but I didn't actually get that much done! How is that possible?
This happens all the time! And this is when you have too much decision fatigue, even within the one project you're working on, right? That you're like, well, I could do it this way, or I could do it this way. And well, maybe now it needs this. Having that break to step away and then come back to it really makes a huge difference.
And that's what I've learned in this whole parenthood journey, this new parenthood journey that I've been on. I can't work for three, four straight hours on something. I just don't have that luxury. And I might get to work only 10 or 20 minutes on something, and I have to stop. And I'll, you know, I'll fight that in my body. I'll be like, no, why do I have to stop? And she's crying, and I gotta go do this now. And, ah, I'm on a roll. I want to keep going!
But inevitably, I come back to it when I'm able to, and I don't feel that anything was lost. In fact, I come back to it, and I might have a different perspective, something that made it flow a little bit easier for me. And my stuff actually gets done, whereas before when I could spend hours upon hours on the same thing. I wasn't getting stuff done at the same time, pace or level, and I wouldn't say that I'm moving faster now or that I'm hustling or all of that stuff that you might say is part of like the corporate masculine culture.
I'm really going at my own pace. I really don't have the luxury of doing something, you know, really concentrated really quickly. I'm breaking it up over time, but yet I'm more productive. So I don't know if this is something anybody else has experienced. And if you have, I would love for you to share in the comments over on Substack.
But once I saw that reel and that term, I just realized this is what's going on. This is what's happening with all of us who are struggling or finding challenges when it comes to really staying, you know, committed.
And along those lines, I want to mention, I do have a interview episode coming up. I do want to release it next week. I'm hoping that it will be that, uh, next episode and it was with Cassie Uhl. And Cassie's a creator I've followed, a spiritual creator I've followed for, for several years now, and really admire, and I've worked with her, and she's inspired me, but we were talking about the, you know, creativity and flow, and she was talking about how she brings in more structure now, or that she has found, she's gotten to a point where she wants a little more structure. And I think that's true, and you'll hear this in the interview episode, we kind of go through these points of ebbs and flows where maybe, you know, we want to really just have everything be open, and maybe that works for us for a time, and then we get to a point where we need to bring in a little more structure to our creativity.
So I really encourage you to explore that, especially if you're at that point of decision fatigue where you've just got too many ideas and can't pursue them. And, or feel that you can't pursue them.
And another thing I want to say about having lots of ideas and being worried that maybe you'll lose momentum or lose the idea entirely if you don't act on it right away—I, I believe I mentioned this in an earlier episode, but I use the app Evernote. And so I have different notebooks that I have split up and put different, you know, projects that I'm working on within those notebooks, I capture the ideas as they come in. Even if they're small, even if they're little things, I know that I can come back to that. That's that little golden nugget, another thread that I can follow. And when it is time for me to sit down and create and I've got a window of time while my baby's napping or somebody else is watching her, even if I don't know in that moment, gosh, what am I going to do with this time? I can go and look at all of that and usually something will pull to me.
I will say, oh, you know, I want to go in that direction. And also because I have a limited time, I really can't get that fussy about which one I'm going to do. I know that I need to make a decision and if I don't, then it means I'm not creating that day, or I'm not creating in that window. And I, you know, I'm driven by the fact that I want to be creating.
And it also makes it so that I'm a little less perfectionistic. I mean, even with these podcast episodes, I think it was the one last week, I recorded it, and I record these, uh, whenever my husband takes my daughter to go see his parents who live nearby. And so I get this, like, you know, one to two hour window where I can record things, and he took her and I just recorded really quick. But I'm always, you know, like, oh, there's so many things I want to do in this, you know, block of time, so I got to go quick. And I went back and listened to it and I was like, oh my gosh, I talked so fast. And that's common for me when I have, you know, these time restraints. Sometimes I'll talk a little fast and I, I was like, oh, I don't like this episode. I think I'm talking too fast. And part of me debated like, oh, do I need to re-record this? Should I get rid of it?
But I had no option to re-record it. There was no window of time where I could do that easily. And I finally just said to myself, and this was all only within like a five minute span, I was like, I can't be precious about things anymore. I can't be so precious. And it's not just that I have the restraints, but because I won't put anything out if I continue to be so precious about my content and what I'm creating.
And I think that's what's prevented me in the past from sharing my stuff and making my stuff and getting it out there, is because I too often wanted to have it perfect, and I had too much time in front of me in which I could attempt to do that.
If this was me pre-baby, I would have probably re-recorded the thing and it would have taken double the time out of my day than it actually did. And most of the time, what I created isn't as bad as I think or as flawed as I think it is. And at the end of the day, I'm happier and I feel better when I create something and put it out there.
And I think a lot of us, unfortunately, don't quite get to that point or it takes us a long time to get to that point. Like, for me, it took me having a child to finally get to that point. You know, I had years upon years where I could have been putting things out, but just wasn't. So, that's what I wanted to share with you today.
And I also wanted to share that this is a slightly different episode format. I don't know if you can tell, again, these are things where my perfectionistic brain gets in my way, but, I normally write out fully my scripts for these episodes, and I didn't really plan to do that in the beginning. It just kind of happened where, you know, if baby was napping on me or feeding, I just kind of started writing out the whole episode instead of, you know, just doing some notes. And I would end up reading the script. And after I did my recording of my interview episode, I was like, oh, right, you know, I could just talk. And I wanted to do that. And I wanted to be perhaps just a little bit more natural. So for this episode, I did just talk. I did not have a script. I do have notes in front of me, but I'm going to tell you right now, I actually stopped looking at them maybe 10 minutes ago.
So we're all going through these periods where we're trying to adjust and change and get a little more confident. So if you're at that point where you're just still struggling with figuring out how to be, you know, a content creator that shows up quote unquote consistently—and this is another thing we talk about in the interview episode, Cassie and I, so I can't wait for that to come out—but, if your struggle is being consistent, I think some of this is just letting go of the perfectionism and what you think it's supposed to look like.
And as I mentioned in the interview episode that you'll hear soon, I think it's best to get rid of that word consistency. That can feel like school, like work, like a homework assignment. Think of it more as commitment and devotion to what you're doing, to the message you're trying to get out there, to the people you're trying to serve.
And that commitment and devotion doesn't have to look like outputting something every single day. But you do want to be at a point where you are putting out things at a pace that you like, that you are excited about, and that you're happy with at the end of the day.
I wasn't happy when I wasn't outputting stuff because I was being a perfectionist and, you know, spinning on things. I am much happier now, but I'm putting out imperfect things. So, just something to think on.
Thank you all for joining me on this journey, now that we're at 12 episodes, and I'm about to launch the first interview episode, and I really, you know, want more of those to come, and I think there's going to be a lot of great conversations we can all have, a lot that we can do together to try and change the current climate, the current culture around content creation.
So thank you again for joining me, and I can't wait to have you tune in to the next episode. Thanks so much.
EP 12: Structured Creativity: A Path Through Too Many Ideas