The 7 Benefits of Creative Practice

Find­ing a way to be artis­tic can add tremen­dously to your qual­ity of life.

For most of us, much of our active time every day is dom­i­nated by task-completion-activities, things that aren’t par­tic­u­larly mean­ing­ful or impor­tant to us, but just have to get done. Cre­ative prac­tice is about mak­ing a time for meaning.

Here are some ben­e­fits of a cre­ative prac­tice: (Any­where where I’ve writ­ten ‘writ­ing’ feel free to sub­sti­tute any other kind of artis­tic activity).

1) To be hap­pier. Aristotle’s def­i­n­i­tion of hap­pi­ness is “deploy­ing your full force along lines of excel­lence.” Writ­ing allows you to do exactly that. It’s about dis­ci­pline and see­ing some­thing through. And I do find it makes me hap­pier, feel­ing a piece come to form. As Hugh Macleod says, “Every­body has their own pri­vate Mount Ever­est they were put on this earth to climb.”

2) To learn. Peo­ple always say, “Write what you know,” but writ­ing is always a process of dis­cov­ery. By writ­ing you’re not just doc­u­ment­ing what you already know, but you’re coming-to-know things you hadn’t yet realized.

3) It’s good for your career. Before I was hired for my most recent job I was Googled by my inter­view­ers. They men­tioned in my inter­view that they’d read by blog about Roger Fed­erer and were impressed. I could tell that they were more com­fort­able with me because they had some evi­dence of how my mind works. In a way, they knew me. It made me more of a known entity and slightly less of a risk. I don’t write my blog for the recog­ni­tion. But it’s nice.

4) To be gen­er­ous. When you share your art, you’re being gen­er­ous. Even the tini­est, hon­est obser­va­tion is a gift. (That’s what I think any­way). And gift-giving cre­ates com­mu­nity. If you share some­thing that peo­ple can read (or  look at and see truth in) that, if noth­ing else, is com­fort­ing to peo­ple.  Also by writ­ing, you put your­self out there. You make your­self a lit­tle vul­ner­a­ble. You show that you’re human and peo­ple appre­ci­ate that.

5) To keep a record. I sit in air­ports and cafes around the world, writ­ing mun­dane minor details about how the light is shin­ing in through the steam of my morn­ing cof­fee or about how the smell of saw­dust takes me back to my dad’s stu­dio above the garage on Sec­ond Street.  Tak­ing the moment to write these thoughts makes me aware of things I wouldn’t oth­er­wise notice. It helps me appre­ci­ate the moment, in the moment. And read­ing my notes later reminds me of the life I’m liv­ing. It shows me what I like about my life and explains, in lit­tle ways, how my life is com­ing together. Cather­ine Bowen said that, “Writ­ing … is not apart from liv­ing. Writ­ing is a kind of dou­ble liv­ing. The writer expe­ri­ences every­thing twice. Once in real­ity and once in that mir­ror which waits always before or behind.”

6) To stay bal­anced. We all want jobs that value our human­ness. But it’s okay for a job to just be a job. It doesn’t have to fill absolutely every void in our lives. Hugh MacLeod (in his ebook) shares what he calls his Sex and Cash The­ory. He explains it like this: “The cre­ative per­son basi­cally has two kinds of jobs. One is the sexy, cre­ative kind. Sec­ond is the kind that pays the bills. Some­times the task in hand cov­ers both bases, but not often. This tense dual­ity will always play cen­ter stage. It will never be tran­scended.” This the­ory sug­gests that it’s okay that your col­leagues value your ideas about life or appre­ci­ate your humour, because it’s just a job. In a way, it’s a good prob­lem, I find that the ten­sions from my work­ing life give me some­thing to write about. They feed my art. A few times, when I finally have no dis­trac­tions and all the time in the world to write, I draw a blank.

7) It feels good. Author Natalie Gold­berg com­pares her cre­ative prac­tice with exer­cise: “Some days you don’t want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it any­way. You prac­tice whether you want to or not. You don’t wait around for inspi­ra­tion and a deep desire to run… You just do it. And in the mid­dle of the run, you love it. When you come to the end, you never want to stop… That’s how writ­ing is, too. Once you’re deep into it, you won­der what took you so long to finally set­tle down at the desk.”

In more ways than one, the future belongs to the cre­ative classes, the peo­ple who have devel­oped a voice and have both­ered to share.