Wake up.
Read the news.
Start work.
Answer emails.
Open Twitter.
Work more.
Send texts.
Go to meeting.
Binge Reddit.
Watch TV.
Browse Amazon.
Sleep.
Repeat.
Oh.
Someone.
Help.
Me.
I know without a shadow of a doubt that you’ve been in this loop before. Your world feels dry and repetitive. It feels like all you’re doing is consuming garbage and you can’t produce anything original.
I call it Small World Syndrome, and it’s the nemesis of creativity.
Small World Syndrome makes you feel tiny and uninspired. No thought that comes to you feels new. You’re just opening and closing Jira tickets for the zillionth time.
In contrast, when your world feels Large, you have countless ideas, and your only problem is not having enough time to try them all. You feel motivated to discover because you believe the best is yet to come.
I’ve been a creative professional for 12 years, and as much as I try to keep Small World Syndrome at bay, it always finds it way back to shore.
The thing is, we’re hardwired to feel more productive doing things that are small and easy rather than those that are hard and urgent. And that invites you into a dry and boring cycle where your world becomes imperceptibly smaller each day.
The funny thing about Small World Syndrome is that curing it feels so much harder than it actually is. It feels like you need to do something extreme. Take a long vacation to a remote island. Go a week without the internet. Renounce your profession!
Those are all fine, I guess. But in my experience, all you need to do is intentionally inject a little originality back into your life.
1 page a day
Captain Obvious here, but reading is one of the best ways to flow new ideas back into your brain.
What’s that? You’ve stopped reading? And now starting a new book feels big and heavy? Don’t think about that.
Just commit to reading 1 page a day. That’s it. It doesn’t matter what the book is. Just do it. A real, actual book.
This trick works every time because after you’ve read a page, you realize it’s not so hard, and you want to read another, and another.
And after a few dozen pages, you’re appetite grows to read something better. You pick up another more interesting book and away you go. New ideas back in your world.
Make a swipe file
It’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world — Lester Burnham
Another quick way to resuscitate your creativity is to start a swipe file. The idea of a swipe file comes from advertising, where you write down bits of text that you like so you can use them later. But it works for anything.
My swipe file has a list of my favorite social media hooks. It has screenshots of web designs that stick out to me. It has bits of prose that ring beautifully in my ears.
You can add to it whenever you want and no one can tell you that your file is wrong.
And then, at any point in time, you can dip into it and make something. Your Small World a little less small.
Force yourself
Last, but not least: force it. Make yourself create something on a daily basis, no matter how crappy it is. It’s been shown over and over that quantity leads to quality.
The key is not to overthink it.
Writing this newsletter sometimes serves that purpose for me. Even if my world feels like it’s closing in, I know that once a week, every week, I’m going to pick up my pen, open up my world, and make something of value for my readers. And that feels good.