Helping the next step of your work reveal itself to you

Many creative professionals would love to execute their ideas and become more prolific, but they don’t know where to start.

If that’s the case for you, a wonderful recommendation is to use a tool called seasonality.

This is an intention in the personal creativity management system for aligning yourself with nature’s timing of creative expression. It’s the discipline of understanding the essential rhythms and intervals and periods of your artistic needs.

Once you solve this baseline problem, the next step of your work will almost certainly reveal itself to you.

The good news is, there are only three possible seasons. At any given time, for any given project, for any given personality, here are the different ways you can locate yourself creatively.

First is inhaling. Also known as input or the creative season of inspiration, this period invites you to listen for what wants to be written.

Now, how will you know when you’re in this season? There are several key markers.

First is the boredom and restlessness of not having discovered something worth doing. You’re in between creative endeavors. It feels like you’re trapped in limbo. All of your ideas seem puny and uninteresting to you. And you end up chasing projects that you want to want, but in your heart, you know that none of them are going to last.

This means it’s time to inhale.

I’ll draw on my experience as a songwriter here. When I’m in this particular season of creative inspiration, nature is telling me that it’s time to discover new music. To pump some fresh sounds into my body and feel the vibrations of my favorite art form flowing through my veins.

Renting a car for a day or two usually does the trick. Highway driving forces me to turn on the terrestrial radio for a change and expose myself to the random variation of genres, artists and songs that can only come from listening to a mainstream broadcast medium. Within a few hours, my brain is usually overflowing with new melodies, rhythms and language to inspire new songs.

Next in the seasonal progression of creativity is pausing. Also known as throughput or the creative season of organization, this period invites you to manage your ideas as an inventory system.

Question is, how will you know when you’re in this season? Here are the markers to watch out for.

You have more ideas than you know what to do with. It feels overwhelming and scattershot to even look at your desk. There are dozens of potential creative avenues to pursue. And you end up paralyzing yourself with option anxiety, resulting in none of your ideas actually taking shape.

This means it’s time to pause.

Let me use another example from the songwriting world. There’s a folder on my computer filled with tens of thousands of notes from various books, podcasts, conversations and other sources of creative inspiration. There’s also a massive master document of all my daily writings on a variety of topics.

That’s my creative inventory. It’s simple and easy to organize, and ready to be picked from the warehouse and put into production. And so, if my goal is to write a new song about forgiveness, all I have to do is search for the word forgive, and the system will populate dozens of potential passages for me to use for lyric inspiration.

That simple organizational tool of pausing enables me to move projects forward.

Finally in our seasonal progression is exhaling. We’ve already talked about inhaling and pausing, so now comes the creative season of production, aka, output, in which work can be shipped out of the factory.

How do you know if you’re in this season? Consider these indicators.

You’ve been working on your idea for so long that you don’t even recognize it anymore. It feels like your wheels are spinning. Procrastinatory urges are nipping at your heels. The resistance to crossing the finish line weighs heavy.

And part of you wants to either start over, move on to something else, or just run away.

Sounds like it’s time to exhale. You need an out breath that will complete the creative cycle.

Here’s one last songwriting case study to illustrate the tool of seasonality.

Most of my songs take a few days to a few weeks to write. But that’s only the first draft. It’s not until my new songs are performed in public during my weekly park busking sessions that they find their true center of gravity.

Sometimes it will take that song twenty renditions before the tune finally matures.

But as it pertains to execution, there comes a certain point where I have to stop creating and start judging. I have to get out of my bedroom and into the world so the song can be road tested.

In summary, there are three possible seasons. Inhaling is the creative season of inspiration, pausing is creative season of organization, and exhaling is the creative season of production.

Once you understand how to oxygenate that process, you’ll have a baseline understanding that will make you more prolific than you ever imaged.

What did you tell yourself when you don’t know where to start.