When Your Creative Output Overwhelms Your Work Systems
I’ve been reflecting on how a lot of changes can happen at once, without you noticing, until suddenly you do. One such change that my main creative stumbling block shifted from having too few ideas to having too many. I’m in a whole new regime regarding what limits my progress.
There’s been much discussion of how humanity has moved rather quickly from information scarcity to information abundance with the advent of the internet. Pre-internet, the hardest part of any research project used to be tracking down the information you need, and now the hardest part is filtering out all the information you don’t need.
On a smaller scale, in my own little world, something similar happened with the information I generate.
Starting out, I typically had fewer, bigger ideas for projects (blog posts, comics, novels). Most possibilities didn’t seem worth my time. I’d only jump in when an idea wouldn’t let me sleep because I couldn’t think about anything else. I’d start, and then I’d spend a few years on it.
One project consumed all my time until it was done, and then I was open for business again. Waiting for the next one. I wished that excitement would a little more often. But only a little.
