Following is the transcript of the above video and Subscribe to my Channel for your free startup and meditation course and 3-5x weekly videos on startups, success models, and writing: https://www.youtube.
Hi, this is Karan Bajaj and today we’ll talk about how to become exceptionally creative. For my third novel ‘The Seeker I wanted to write something that would make a true dent in my readers’ lives. So I went about researching what makes people truly creative. What makes extraordinary creativity and through many years of reading many books about creative people from Michelangelo to Neil Diamond to Murakami. Again and again there are two things that are consistent between all extraordinarily creative people.
First, they have an extraordinary sense of routine. This actually appears as a little counter-intuitive because we typically associate creative people with wild ideas and sudden inspiration. But what I saw in my research was that people who were extraordinarily creative did their creative work at the same time in whichever days they chose to work. Right, so for me that means that I write from Monday to Thursday between eight o’clock in the night to eleven o’clock in the night. And that’s the kind of discipline I’ve seen with almost everybody who I saw was exceptionally creative. So for me, I work eight to eleven at night. And then I actually don’t write on Fridays and Saturdays.
And then on Sunday, I write between two o’clock in the afternoon to seven o’clock in the night. Why this becomes extraordinarily powerful is that it allows you to construct your whole life around your creative process. So for me, this means that I will always leave work at a certain time, typically at six-ish. I come back from work, I exercise. You know, I spend time with my family etc, but then I am at my desk working from eight o’clock and I’ll keep working till eleven in the night.
After that, I meditate and do whatever I need to do to relax before I go to sleep. But for those 8-11 pm periods from Monday to Thursday I’m completely concentrated on my work. And Friday and Saturday I take a break and then Sunday I write for five hours. To have this sense of routine allows you to make the creative part of your life the true center around which you plan everything. And that is held so sacrosanct that you never break it. And you always show up and you complete your work as a result of which creative people have a strong output that is driven by the sense of routine.
So I think that’s the first thing I learned is that have a very, very strong sense of routine for your creative activity.
The second thing I learned is that creative people are constantly thinking about learning and growing at every moment.
And that kind of shapes their worldview and every choice they make. So for instance, if they are watching movies they would always choose to watch a movie that would make them think. Versus a movie that would entertain them. If you are reading a book you would kind of do the same. If you’re seeing new art you are always kind of constantly seeking every experience whether that be an artistic experience or experience in the world even in the work. As a constant work in progress to learn, grow and become a better and almost a more complex thinker. So I guess that the choice is yours. If you are picking up a book to read today would you pick up a popular fiction novel that you know will entertain you or would you pick up something again it could be fiction or it could be nonfiction which actually makes you think and grow as an individual? And I’ve seen that creative people are always making the choice to learn and grow.
So quite simply, if you make the choice to learn and grow at every moment and then you have a way to capture that output on a very disciplined routine basis every day or five days a week or three days a week whatever you may choose. But you have that very religious sense of routine that’s all you need to be, exceptionally creative and produce exceptionally creative output.
I hope this was useful. This approach worked really, really well for my third novel. And as you can see on Amazon the reviews have been much, much, much stronger than my previous novels and I attribute a lot of it to having the discipline as well as constantly exposing myself in the last few years to stimuli that would help me grow as an artist and as a person.
Thank you and see you again next week.
Subscribe to my channel for your free startup and meditation course and 3-5x weekly videos on startups, success models and writing, https://www.youtube.
