darren r hill

the creative minimalist

Tag: creative practice

The Habits That Quietly Kill Creative Output (And What to Replace Them With)
There’s a version of this I know well. The idea is there. The time is there. The tools are there. And yet… nothing actually gets made.

For a long time I thought that was a motivation problem. A discipline issue. Something I needed to push through or fix about myself. My bad.

But now I see, it is mostly habit. Specifically, a handful of habits that look like creative work but are actually replacing it. Creative habits that are anything but.

Over-Planning Instead of Doing

Planning feels productive. It really does. You’re thinking about the project, mapping it out, refining the idea. It has the texture of creative work without the vulnerability of actually making something. And that’s the issue.

At a certain point, planning stops being preparation and starts being avoidance. Art is safer as an idea than as a thing in the world that might get rejected.

I’ve started whole songs, novels, and other creative projects in my head. In detail. Multiple times. Some of them never made it to an actual instrument or even the blank page.

The fix isn’t to stop planning entirely. It’s to notice when planning has gone past useful and turned into a holding pattern. For me that usually looks like revisiting the same thoughts or notes without adding anything new. That’s the signal to just start: imperfectly, incompletely, but actually start.

Constant Tweaking That Delays Finishing

The other end of the same problem. You’ve started. You’ve got something. And now you can’t stop adjusting it.

One more revision. One more mix tweak. Just fix that line before you move on.

Tweaking is seductive because it’s low risk compared to sharing something done. Finishing is a commitment. It invites evaluation. Tweaking lets you stay in the comfortable space of “almost there.”

But I’ve noticed something about creative work that gets tweaked indefinitely: at a certain point it stops getting better and just gets different. The thing you thought needed fixing wasn’t broken, it just felt exposed.

This pattern is well-documented. A meta-analysis of studies on perfectionism found a clear positive link between perfectionistic concerns (the fear-of-judgment side of perfectionism) and procrastination. In other words, the more we worry about the work being judged, the more we delay finishing it, often disguised as “just one more pass.” (Source: A Meta-analytic and Conceptual Update on the Associations Between Procrastination and Multidimensional Perfectionism, European Journal of Personality, 2017)

At some point, done has to be a decision, not a destination you arrive at. And “good enough to share” is a reasonable standard that “perfect” rarely meets.

Comparison That Drains the Room

This one is quieter but it does so much damage, a real killer. The quiet ones always do!

You hear someone else’s composition and it’s brilliant. You see what someone’s crafted art and it makes yours feel small. You open Instagram, spend ten minutes in someone else’s world, and come back to your own work with the energy gone.

Comparison isn’t always conscious. It’s just the background noise of being a creative person with access to everyone else’s finished, polished, best-foot-forward output.

The problem is you’re comparing their finished work to your in-progress work. It’s not a fair fight. Their rough drafts, their deleted tracks, their abandoned projects are invisible. Yours are right in front of you.

Research backs this up. An Instagram-based study found that ability-related social comparisons (the “look what they can do” kind) consistently lowered wellbeing more than opinion-based comparisons did. Creative work is almost always an ability comparison, which is part of why scrolling through other creators’ output can leave you feeling flat about your own. (Source: The Impact of Social Comparisons More Related to Ability vs. More Related to Opinion on Well-Being: An Instagram Study, Behavioral Sciences, 2023)

The practical answer is obvious: limit the inputs. Not permanently, not fearfully, but deliberately. When I’m in the middle of making something, I go quieter on other people’s output. Not because their work isn’t good, but because mine needs the space.

Simpler Habits, Better Output

The replacement habits that have made the most difference for me have all been boring in the best way.
- Start before you’re ready.
- Set a time limit and begin.
- Keep the tools accessible so the friction is low.
- Give the work a constraint so there are fewer decisions to navigate.
- End each session knowing what you’re starting with next time.
None of these are clever. But they remove the conditions where over-planning and endless tweaking and comparison tend to breed.

Creative output isn’t usually blocked by lack of inspiration. It’s blocked by the habits we’ve built around the work. And habits, unlike inspiration, are something you can actually change.

Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
namaste
d
xox

If you enjoyed this post please support my writing by making a donation of any amount.

Sign up for my (ir)regular newsletter to keep up to date with my creative adventures, including special offers, and join me on Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | Pinterest
16 May 2026
What Years of Creating Taught Me About Discipline
Introduction

For a long time I thought creative discipline was something you did or didn’t have. The people who showed up every day and consistently created, they must have something I lacked. More willpower. More commitment. A stronger sense of purpose.

So I’d try to force it. Push harder. Tell myself this time would be different. And for a while it would be. Then it wouldn’t.

What I’ve learned, slowly and not without a fair amount of failed attempts, is that discipline isn’t about force at all. The people who seem most disciplined aren’t necessarily trying harder than everyone else. They’ve just built better structures around themselves. And those structures, those creative practices, do the heavy lifting that willpower, or certainly my willpower, can’t sustain on its own.

Willpower fades. Systems don’t.

The research on willpower is pretty humbling. The American Psychological Association summarises it well: self-control draws on a limited mental resource that depletes through use. Every decision you make, every temptation you resist, every moment you push through resistance costs something. And the tank runs dry.

What’s more interesting is what the research says about people who seem highly disciplined. They don’t have stronger willpower. They’ve structured their lives to need it less. They’ve removed friction, built routines, and designed environments that make the right behaviour easier and the wrong behaviour harder. They’ve taken the decision out of it. (Source: What You Need to Know About Willpower, American Psychological Association)

This was a significant shift for me. Discipline stopped being about trying harder and started being about designing better.

Small commitments, consistently kept, build more than grand intentions

One of the most useful things I’ve picked up over years of creative work is that small consistent commitments beat big ambitious ones almost every time.

A daily creative session of twenty minutes that actually happens is worth infinitely more than an hour-long session you keep intending to have. The small commitment is achievable. You keep it. You build evidence that you’re someone who shows up. That evidence compounds.

BJ Fogg’s research at Stanford backs this up. His Behavior Design work shows that motivation is the least reliable factor in building lasting behaviour. Instead, he advocates for making habits so small and easy that they don’t require motivation at all. The habit gains its own momentum once it exists. The size of the commitment is less important than the consistency of it. (Source: Tiny Habits, BJ Fogg, Stanford Behavior Design Lab)

Environment matters more than intention

Here’s something that took me longer to really absorb: your environment shapes your behaviour more than your intentions do.

If your creative tools are put away, you’ll procrastinate more. If your notebook is on your desk, you’ll pick it up. If your guitar is in its case in the corner, it’ll stay there. If it’s on a stand in the room, you’ll play it. My guitar is within touching distance of my desk as I am typing this!

James Clear puts this plainly: “You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” And the environment is a core part of that system. Making the thing you want to do obvious and easy, and making the distractions less visible and less convenient, is one of the most effective forms of discipline there is. Not because you’re forcing yourself. Because you’ve designed your space to support the habit rather than compete with it. (Source: Atomic Habits, James Clear)

Discipline feels lighter over time

The other thing worth saying is this: it does get easier.

Not because you develop an iron will. But because the habits become automatic. The decision to sit down and work stops being a decision you have to make each time. It’s just what you do at that time in that place. The friction disappears.

What felt like discipline at the start, showing up, starting, keeping going, starts to feel less like effort and more like rhythm. And rhythm, once you have it, tends to sustain itself.

Practical takeaway

If you’re trying to build more discipline in your creative practice:
- Look at your structure before you look at your effort. Where are the friction points? Where do you reliably stop?
- Make one small commitment you can keep consistently. Smaller than you think you need.
- Change something in your environment that makes the habit easier to start.
Discipline isn’t a character trait. It’s something you build, one small decision at a time, in a structure that supports you rather than fights you.

Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
namaste
d
xox

If you enjoyed this post please support my writing by making a donation of any amount.

Sign up for my (ir)regular newsletter to keep up to date with my creative adventures, including special offers, and join me on Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | Pinterest
3 May 2026
Why Creative Constraints Make You More Productive (and More Creative)

Constraints simplify decisions, speed up creation and explore unique solutions

Introduction

Most of us assume that more freedom equals more creativity. Remove the limits, open up the options, give yourself room to explore. It sounds right.

But spend any time actually making things and you start to notice something strange. The projects with the most open briefs are often the hardest to finish, or even start. The ones with tight constraints, a fixed tempo, a word count, a single instrument, a limited palette, tend to move faster and sometimes come out better.

This isn’t a coincidence. There’s a lot of evidence, both from research and from centuries of creative practice – and no I’m not that old, I’m talking about other creatives – that constraints don’t hinder creativity. They focus it.

Fewer choices, less overwhelm

There’s a well-documented psychological phenomenon sometimes called decision fatigue. The more choices you have to make, the more mentally draining each one becomes. Given too many options, people either freeze up or make worse decisions than they would with fewer.

Barry Schwartz laid this out clearly in his book The Paradox of Choice, and it applies directly to creative work. When you sit down with no constraints at all, every decision is open. What tempo? What key? What length? What tone? What structure? Each choice requires mental energy. Multiply that across a whole project and you’ve spent most of your creative energy just navigating options before you’ve made anything.

A constraint removes a category of decisions entirely. Pick a tempo and stick to it. Write in a fixed structure. Limit yourself to three colours. Suddenly you’re making the work, not managing the options. (Source: The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz, TED Talk)

Constraints force focus and push you toward new solutions

There’s a deeper creative benefit too. When you remove the easy paths, you have to find different ones.

A peer-reviewed meta-analysis of 145 studies on creativity found that moderate constraints consistently boost creative output, both in individuals and teams. The reason: a limit is perceived as a challenge rather than a barrier, which increases basic motivation and pushes people toward more original solutions. Total freedom, by contrast, tends toward the familiar. When anything is possible, we tend to reach for what we already know. (Source: Creativity and Innovation Under Constraints, Journal of Management, 2019)

You can see this in creative history. Monet’s decision to paint light rather than line pushed art toward impressionism. Stravinsky famously wrote: “The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself.” These weren’t people working around limits. They were using limits as a creative engine.

Temporary constraints work best

The good news is you don’t have to impose permanent rules on your creative work. A constraint is most useful as a temporary tool, something you pick up for a session or a project and put down when it’s done its job.

Try giving yourself one rule for your next creative session. Write only in the second person. Record using only one microphone. Finish a piece in under an hour. Use only three chords.

The constraint doesn’t have to be logical or even particularly meaningful. Its job isn’t to make the work better by being a good rule. Its job is to reduce the decision space and get you moving.

And, once you’re moving, the constraint has done its work. You can keep it or drop it.

Practical takeaway

Next time you’re stuck or overwhelmed at the start of a project, don’t try to solve it by opening up more options. Try closing some down.

Pick one constraint. It doesn’t matter much what it is. Apply it for the session and see what happens.

You might be surprised how quickly a limit turns into momentum.

Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
namaste
d
xox

If you enjoyed this post please support my writing by making a donation of any amount.

Sign up for my (ir)regular newsletter to keep up to date with my creative adventures, including special offers, and join me on Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | Pinterest

28 April 2026
The Difference Between Inspiration and Momentum
Introduction

A lot of creative people, myself included at times, talk about inspiration like it’s a tap you can turn on. As if the right mood, the right setting, or the right moment will suddenly unlock everything. I used to think the same, and sometimes still do unfortunately.

The problem is that inspiration is wildly unreliable. It shows up uninvited when you’re in the shower, and it vanishes entirely when you sit down to actually create something. If build your creative process around waiting for it, you’ll spend more time waiting than making.

There’s a better way to think about this. It’s not about inspiration vs. no inspiration. It’s about understanding what inspiration actually is, and replacing the waiting with something that works.

Inspiration is unpredictable. Momentum isn’t.

Inspiration is a feeling. It’s real. It’s useful. It absolutely makes creative work feel easier. But like any feeling, you can’t schedule it, summon it reliably, or make it last.

Momentum, on the other hand, is mechanical. It doesn’t care how you feel. It just requires motion… small, consistent actions that keep the work alive even when the feeling isn’t there.

Think of a car engine. You don’t need to feel enthusiastic to start it. You just turn the key. The car doesn’t know you’re tired or distracted. It just runs.

Your creative practice works the same way. When you show up and do something, even something small, the machine keeps turning over. When you stop, it gets cold and harder to start again.

James Clear captures this well: he notes that professionals don’t wait for inspiration to strike, they follow a schedule and show up regardless. The schedule is what produces the work; inspiration is what occasionally makes it feel wonderful. (Source: The Myth of Creative Inspiration, JamesClear.com)

Waiting doesn’t preserve creative energy: it kills rhythm.

There’s a quiet lie we tell ourselves when we skip a creative session: “I’ll do it when I’m more inspired.” It sounds reasonable. Protective, even. But what it actually does is break rhythm.

Rhythm, the habit of returning to your work regularly, is one of the most underrated creative assets you can build. Once it’s broken, restarting is harder than it sounds. The longer the gap, the more the work starts to feel unfamiliar, and the higher the mental barrier to getting back in.

Research from Scott Barry Kaufman and colleagues (published in Harvard Business Review) found that inspiration is more self-sustaining than most people realise but only once you’re already actively engaged with your work. In other words, inspiration doesn’t arrive to start the process. It tends to show up inside the process, once you’ve already begun. (Source: Why Inspiration Matters, Harvard Business Review)

Waiting doesn’t protect your creativity. It drains it slowly while you’re not looking.

Action creates inspiration, not the other way around.

This is the part that most people get backwards.

We assume inspiration has to come first, that we need to feel sparked, interested, or motivated before we can do anything useful. But in practice, it usually works in reverse. You start doing something, and the doing generates the feeling, et voila inspiration.

Start writing a song and you’ll often find the melody somewhere in the third or fourth attempt at a chord progression. Start writing a blog post and the real point of the post surfaces during the second or third paragraph. The action doesn’t require inspiration. It produces it.

This is why even a minimum viable session, just 15 or 20 minutes of turning up, is worth more than waiting for the perfect mood. You’re not just making progress. You’re creating the conditions for inspiration to arrive.

“Motivation comes after starting, not before.” Is a principle well-supported by creativity researchers and summed up simply: the emotional state you’re waiting for is often a byproduct of the work, not a prerequisite for it.

Practical takeaway

If you find yourself waiting to feel inspired before you start:
- Set a minimum: five minutes, one idea, one sentence. Just something.
- Treat showing up as the creative act, regardless of output quality.
- Notice what happens when you start anyway. Nine times out of ten, the inspiration follows.
The goal isn’t to stop wanting inspiration. It’s to stop depending on it.

Momentum is what keeps your creative practice alive between the inspired moments. And the good news is, you build it the same way every time, by starting.

Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
namaste
d
xox

If you enjoyed this post please support my writing by making a donation of any amount.

Sign up for my (ir)regular newsletter to keep up to date with my creative adventures, including special offers, and join me on Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | Pinterest
5 April 2026
What I believed about creativity that turned out to be wrong

Some creative beliefs only make sense in hindsight. I believed in perfection, I needed faith in the imperfect.

Beliefs shape behaviour

Believing something is impossible means we will not even try to do it. If we think we will never be a writer, a painter or a composer, we will not even attempt to be one. However, if I think I can write a sentence, a paragraph, then I will. If I believe I can add a brush stroke I will. If I know I can hum a tune, I will compose.

Early assumptions often wrong

My personality type means I like to see the big picture. I like to see a perfect, complete creation. I thought something I created, a song, a drawing, a story, needed to be perfect. If the idea in my head had little to no relation to what I was creating then I’d lose interest. I didn’t create.

It wasn’t until later I learnt that this was something I could address. It was part of me, but I didn’t have to let it control my creative output.

Experience changes perspective

I spent years as a commissioning editor for a publishing house. I was always encouraging my authors to think about small chunks of their work. They didn’t have to “worry” about the editing, the layout, the cover… their primary focus had to be the words they were writing.

It is often a fact that it is easier to see the mistakes others are making while ignoring ourselves doing similar. It took me years to learn that. Perhaps it won’t take you as long.

Just to add, once those words were written by the authors, then they could engage in editing, marketing and cover discussions.

Growth requires revision

It isn’t just about one belief. We pick up many beliefs as we develop our creative practice. We listen or watch others create. We learn from tutorials or are taught at schools and universities. We learn. However, some things that are learnt, may not work for us, or they may take us down a wrong path. For years, I had believed music had to be structured in a certain way. I had failed to understand that rules underpin, they create frameworks for us to hang our creative acts upon. Rules and beliefs are also there to be broken, when required. There is nothing as liberating as breaking a creative rule and discovering something beautiful.

Creatives do this all the time. We should always be revising what and how we create; as we revise we grow.

Learning never stops

I mentioned being taught. There is nothing wrong with going to college or university and learning a creative process or skill. We all “learn” to some extent. Our challenge is to keep learning. Just like breaking rules and growing through revision, we should never stop learning new techniques, skills or creating in unique ways. Those of us who use technology as a creative tool need to constantly keep our eye on software as it develops. There is also the use of A.I. What is our stance on using it? More and more software, and hardware, is integrating it. Perhaps we currently steer clear because the energy cost in data centres. But A.I. will soon be portable, using only the battery charge on our phones, tablets or laptops. I’m not advocating for or against its use, but it is an example of how things change, and change means learning, or adapting, how to create within such environments.

So…

I believed my creations needed to be perfect. I was wrong. Learning that has enabled me to create, and enjoy creating.

Do you have any beliefs that are stopping you from creating?

Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
namaste
d
xox

If you enjoyed this post please support my writing by making a donation of any amount.

Sign up for my (ir)regular newsletter to keep up to date with my creative adventures, including special offers, and join me on Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | Pinterest

3 March 2026