How quiet are you willing to be?

If there was ever an adjective worth being described as, it would be the word quiet.

Any time someone or something is referred to as quiet, there’s a part of my heart that just glows.

Quiet is not only a warm compliment, but it’s a smart philosophy for living. Carlin used to joke that about the cliché, it’s the quiet ones you gotta watch. He said it was a very dangerous assumption, because while you’re watching a quiet one, a noisy one will kill you.

Imagine you’re in a bar and a guy was in the corner reading a book, not bothering anyone, and there’s another guy by the door jumping up and down screaming with a machete yelling, I’ll kill the next guy who walks in here!

Who you gonna watch?

And this isn’t about introversion or extroversion, either. Quiet is much bigger than that. Let’s break down the four different meanings of the word and how they can hep you have a fulfilling, prolific life as a creator.

First, quiet means free from noise and disturbance.

Say you wake up early in the morning to do some kind of daily practice like movement or reflection or meditation, before the rest of the world is awake and freaking out. In this private sanctuary of the self, your quiet invites the calm voices whispering words of encouragement to be heard.

Quiet is how the answers you’re looking for float up to the surface. In such a peaceful space, you can feel what you need to feel and face what you need to face. You can remind yourself that you have more, not less time, for the demands in your life.

There’s a tool called gasketing, which is daily ritual of emotional release where you metabolize your experiences, make serious mental headway into your ideas and get the creative faucet flowing. That’s been my way of using the quiet to free myself from noise and disturbance, and it can do the same for you.

Second, quiet means restrained in speech and manner.

Say you work a mundane but still meaningful nine to five job to help underwrite your creative dreams and support your family. On any given day at, you make calm decisions promptly, crisply and confidently. You state you needs to people calmly and confidently.

You detach from all the distracting trials and tribulations of your coworkers. You perform your work in a regular, undramatic manner that supports your life purposes, without any complaining, gossiping, blaming or making excuses. That’s the way work should work.

There’s another tool in personal creativity management called ungunking, which is when you use a simple, binary evaluation to unclog the creative pipes and shepherd ideas through the system. In my experience, it’s quite helpful for restraining my speech and manner.

Third, quiet is expressed in an inconspicuous way.

Imagine you’re a working artist who shows up every day to their studio to create new work. Not knowing if anyone will notice, care about it or pay money for it. The quiet part is knowing that you have to sustain yourself over the long arc of a career.

And so, your executional focus is not on making your one great masterpiece, but quietly stumbling forward on experiments that might lead to breakthroughs. With each creative expression, a little more of your talent is revealed. Not in a loud and bright way full of boom and flash, but in that working class, daily grind, professionalized way.

Another tool for this expression of quiet is called punching out, which is a ritual of leave taking at the end of your creative workday. It’s a perfect tactic for placing quiet punctuation marks throughout your day to gain a sense of normalcy and rhythm.

Finally, here’s our fourth definition of the word quiet. Refraining from immodest activity.

If you’re an entrepreneur launching a new brand that might change the world, you’re not coming out of the gate guns a blazing with an expensive, hard launch that hopefully earns attention. Resting in the center point of quiet competence, you’re treating your product as a marathon, not as a sprint.

It’s a slow drip campaign, gently pointing out your alternative solution and why it’s different from the competition. And your energy comes from secure, tested place that doesn’t need to prove itself, but express itself.

You might consider a tool called reins and blinders to express this facet of quiet. This is when you use restraint as the quiet backbone of your creative habit. Having spent many years working on setting this kind of boundary, let me tell you, it’s powerful stuff. Helps keep humility in play.

In summary, let’s review the four definitions of quiet.

One, free from noise and disturbance.
Two, restrained in speech and manner.
Three, expressed in an inconspicuous way.
Four, refraining from immodest activity.

Leverage the tools that match each of those expressions, and you’ll become quietly prolific before you know it.

Which adjective do you wish people used to describe you?