
What habits of yours kill your creativity? - ariels
From a Steve Jobs interview: There's an old Hindu saying that comes into my mind occasionally: "For the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you." As I'm going to be 30 in February, the thought has crossed my mind.
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philk
Distractions.

The internet[1] being the major one, occasionally video games or books.
Somewhat unpleasantly I seem wired to seek new distractions whenever I don't
have one currently occupying my mind.

I've been thinking of forcing myself to spend half an hour each day without
stimulus, just thinking and writing on a paper notepad to get around this.

[1] I find posting on the internet much more distracting than surfing, because
there's the constant desire to check back and see what responses you got.

~~~
eegilbert
This is why I like to walk to work. It's not possible for everyone; I
understand. If you can do it, and don't bring along any devices, you have
forced yourself into thinking time. This is usually when I have my best ideas.

~~~
jgilbert
riding my bike to work is good.

i find i do my best thinking in the shower. nice hot water and no
distractions.

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Luyt
Having to anticipate implementation problems kills my creativity. Instead of
developing the application and solving problems as they arise, thinking and
worrying in advance about potential roadblocks, showstoppers and lack of
acceptance can be a cause that I don't even _start_ a project, or be reluctant
with it.

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gsivil
Just a few random thoughts

\- Thinking too much how great you are

\- Worrying too much about the progress of other people

\- Ignore the original sources and look always for second hand solutions

\- Ignoring the "lazy" part of your brain

\- Being too lazy

\- Thing that books are only for people that do not act

\- Dream day and night of how to make more money

\- Never stop for a second to think out of the box

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mahmud
Forgetting how big the world is. I get a spiritual awakening every time I take
a flight longer than 5 hours.

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ljordan
My day job. I have to build space into it and put interesting things into the
space or it's nearly intolerable. But that is why I'm working on changing
jobs. I'm 31.

~~~
wladimir
Can't agree more. I don't intend to complain about my job at all, my
colleagues are great and I earn enough, but I cannot put my creativity into
it. I'd love to do new things, actually write (Python) code, solve interesting
problems, work with huge distributed systems and optimize performance and
scalability. But also doing more on the creative and user experience side. Now
I'm just making minor fixes and adding minor features, and the most
challenging aspect is avoiding stepping on mines in a big minefield of poorly
written tightly coupled legacy code. Even the simplest things take days, and
then there's the bureaucracy... This makes those 8 hours a day seem a bit
wasted, time flies and when I get home I'm too tired to do much constructive.
Too bad I'm a fucking wuss and too scared to start freelancing :/

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daimyoyo
Beer kills my creativity. I'm about to turn 30 so I need to cut back but now
I'm in limbo at my job. So I get the "why not?" drink and from there it
cascades until I'm 12 in and can't see straight. Feels bad, man.

~~~
angrycoder
If you are regularly drinking 12 beers in one night, killing your creativity
is the least of your problems.

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xtho
It's not a habit but when I think 30 years back I'd actually say that what
killed most of my creativity are computers and the Internet. They simply offer
too many distractions and cannot replace the intimacy of working with pencil
and unlined paper. But maybe it's just the way I use it -- e.g. that I answer
questions like yours and follow sites like hn etc. They offer
pleasant/stimulating distractions but on the whole ... Maybe it's a good idea
to display your question as screen saver.

Nice quote although my habits were much better when I was 30 than they are
now.

~~~
dpcan
Creativity is expressed in many forms, and if it were not for computers, my
creative talents would never have been realized. I develop video games from
the ground up, and these games wouldn't have come to life if not for
computers.

To answer the poster's question however, I'd have to say my creativity is
stunted by the myriad of distractions in my life. Within eye-shot right now I
see 5 screens. 3 of them are turned on. If I were in my office, double it.

Sure I can control these distractions, but I choose not to because I think I'm
addicted to constant info and visual overload, white noise, and a desperate
need to be entertained every second of my life. Just being honest.

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paraschopra
Inertia. Taking too much time to make a decision or passiveness can sometimes
derail the whole thing.

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woadwarrior01
Working for a paycheck.

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math
eating too much lunch -> afternoon drowsiness.

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yason
Latencies in communication. As long as I'm working on something that depends
on other people's responses, I get drifting aloof while trying to figure out
something sensible to do until I get my next piece. In contrast, programming a
big task in a long-going flow almost demands me to distract myself away from
the work so that I won't be totally consumed by it.

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Mz
I don't think I really have any habits that kill my creativity. I spent many
years deconstructing myself. I don't hesitate to question and discard
something about myself that isn't working for me.

The two biggest obstacles to me getting more done are my job and my ongoing
efforts to get well. They both take up a lot of my time and frequently leave
me too tired, both mentally and physically, to spend the kind of time I would
like to spend on other things. If I am 'mindlessly' surfing the web or
something, it is because I am not together enough to do something more
productive. Still, looking back, little by little, some things gradually make
forward progress anyway, in spite of my constant lament that "I never get
_anything_ done!!"

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KevBurnsJr
Drinking.

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photon_off
To dodge the question: I don't often find creativity to be the bottleneck of
my output. Execution is what takes time.

To answer the question: Probably beliefs that act as rules. It's written
somewhere in a PG essay that it's best to not know what is "impossible." To
generalize, if I believe that Google owns search and it's not possible to
enter that market, then I'll subconsciously prune any ideas stemming from
"search".

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kaiwen1
Hacker News

~~~
gsivil
I would disagree here :). Hacker News can harm the so called "productivity",
but it can boost your creativity.

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sudont
I can blame you guys for getting me re-interested in Arduino and Cocoa.

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mkrecny
1\. Exposing myself too much to the creative output of others.

This is bittersweet for obvious reasons.

Btw: check out thehackedbrain.com for similar discussions.

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Skywing
World of Warcraft.

~~~
mahmud
Playing video games is a loser thing to do. Just stop it already.

It's irritating to see so many grown men hunched over a joy-stick. No one ever
changed the world playing a game.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Nobody ever changed the world getting over 13k karma on HN, either. Recreation
is an important part of being human, and choosing to spend some of your
recreation time playing games does not make you a loser.

Some people take it too far, but that's true of pretty much every recreational
activity.

~~~
mahmud
If you're talking about my karma; in my time on HN, I made friends, learned
something, made business acquaintances, made money, helped others, hired some
people, etc.

How could I have accomplished those things shredding sprites?

~~~
eswat
I think you’re overlooking the potential rewards that such a “loser thing to
do” can have. There can be quite a bit of overlap between a like-minded gaming
community and Hacker News.

It may not be possible to accomplish all of the things you’ve got on HN while
playing video games themselves. But it is when you have a chance to meet other
creators that share a passion for this hobby and how can you have the passion
to create if you don’t consume a little? I’ve met my share of talented
creatives and entrepreneurs through my hobby, which have lead to business
acquaintances, contract work and also hiring other ”losers” to help me create.

I assume you’ve done the same thing I’ve done through gaming, by having a
genuine interest in startups/creating and sharing that interest with others
here.

~~~
mahmud
Just a little perspective: I was replying to someone who admitted that playing
a video game was killing his creativity.

In your case, you work for a game company, hardly a typical gamer. My
experience with gamers, usually friends, roommates and acquaintances is not
that flattering.

I am sure there are "functional gamers", but let's not confuse being
functional _despite_ of something, for being functional because of it.

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TikiKitchen
The biggest killer for me are distractions like Facebook and Twitter. I also
tend to fall prey to the anxiety of influence. I start feeling like my work
will never be as good as other's work and begin to withdraw from creating.

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algorias
Adding too many feeds to my reader. A site like HN is tolerable, since I won't
even notice if I've been away for a couple of days, but the unread count on my
reader...

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bennyk
I always wanted to write a book called, "Overcoming inertia or How I got off
my lazy ass"

~~~
tomjen3
I always wanted to read that book - do you take preorders?

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stretchwithme
All the poems about water in the world will not prepare you for the first
splash.

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yourfluffiness
having the "i don't have enough time" mindset. there's no such thing as "no
time." if it's important, if it's a priority, you'll have time and you'll get
it done.

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egypturnash
ooh hey i think i'll just browse the innanet some more i'll start drawing
right after a couple more articles on reddit

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laxj11
going to school.

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plurinshael
I'm more held up by the other people at school than the school or profs
themselves (though sometimes you just want to slap your prof silly, ya know?).
Math class is one right now that is so bittersweet for this reason. I'm just
foraying into multiple variables (calculus 2) and I'm so deeply fascinated by
mathematics. I've never studied something that has such far-reaching and
unexpected side effects for my consciousness. I don't know whether mathematics
changes the structure of my brain, but it certainly changes the structure of
my mind in ways I cannot describe to someone who hasn't done it.

So having to deal with mathematicians'/scientists'/engineers' egos, hearing
the light snickering every time I ask anything less than a brilliant question,
is extremely disheartening. At times I want to turn around and explain stern-
facedly to please contribute or keep silent, this is the closest thing I have
to a religion. But I lack the ability to deploy such a rebuke that would not
detract overall from the learning environment, so I take the jibes. I swear,
college isn't that different from high school. (it's been a while since high
school, so maybe that's an exaggeration. but the social interaction has a real
and discouraging potential for immaturity.)

Also, the strict time schedule around classes screws up my natural creative
rhythm, and I'm still working on the concept of a school that addresses my
kind of temporal sensibilities.

But yeah, I hear you.

~~~
krmboya
I second you on the school time schedule killing your creativity. Having to
memorize methodologies and stuff when you'd rather be building something cool

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rafawhs
Noise or silence. Work without music.

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miraj
Facebook & TV.

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cruciform
simple.

GAMING.

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to
minecraft.

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kingsidharth
Thinking too much about what others think is the best "creativity killer".

I prefer to be the kid I am (I am 19) and free in thoughts - careless. That's
what keeps my creativity up.

Make your question more specific?

