Most creative advice is about what to add. A new technique. A new process. A new habit. The assumption is always that progress comes from doing more, learning more, trying more. It’s consumerism’s gift to the masses!
But what if some of the things already in your workflow are the problem?
Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, argues that the “stop doing” list is as important as the to-do list. His research into high-performing organisations found they were as disciplined about what they eliminated as what they pursued.
“They displayed a remarkable discipline to unplug all sorts of extraneous junk.”
The same principle applies to creative practice. Not everything you’re currently doing is helping. Some of it is actively in the way.
Here are three things I stopped doing that made an immediate difference. They apply across every creative discipline I know.
Switching Modes Mid-Session
There are two fundamentally different mental states in creative work: the generative mode, where you’re making something, and the evaluative mode, or evaluating, where you’re judging it. They feel like the same thing, but they’re not. And trying to do them at the same time is one of the most effective ways to miss the mark on both.
Checking your stats mid-session is evaluating. Seeking feedback before something is finished is evaluating. Scrolling through other people’s work while you’re supposed to be making yours is evaluating. All of these pull you out of the generative state, and research on context switching shows it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully refocus after each interruption. In a 60-minute session, one distraction can cost you nearly half of it. How much?!?
When I stopped checking anything during a creative session, the quality of the time in that session changed. Not the length of it. The depth.
The fix is structural, not motivational: close the tabs. Turn off notifications. Put the phone in another room. Make evaluation mode physically unavailable during the making window. I use focus modes on the Mac. I have separate focus modes for music and writing. These hide the apps, and distractions that I don’t need.
This applies equally to the musician resisting the urge to check streams mid-session, the writer who keeps re-reading yesterday’s chapter instead of moving forward, the painter who stops to photograph and post every stage, and the filmmaker who reviews rushes before the shoot is finished. All those are valid actions, but not when you need to be in the flow
Starting Before I’d Finished
Creative work has a gravitational pull toward new beginnings. The new song idea, the new chapter concept, the new project: all of them have a shine that the project currently in progress has lost. The work-in-progress is familiar. The new idea is possibility.
“Oh shiny”
The problem is the pile that builds up. Every unfinished project carries a small but persistent cognitive weight. You’re not consciously thinking about it, but it’s there, quietly occupying space. And the more unfinished things there are, the heavier the collective weight.
There’s also the lesson you miss. Finishing is its own skill — completely distinct from starting — and you only develop it by doing it. The songwriter who has started forty songs and finished three hasn’t learned what finishing thirty-seven of them would have taught. The writer who abandons chapters when they get difficult hasn’t developed the muscle that pushing through would build. The photographer with a thousand ideas half-executed hasn’t found out what a single project taken to completion looks like.
When I started finishing things before starting new ones, two things happened: the mental load got lighter, and the quality of what I completed got better. Because I had no choice but to work through the difficult middle rather than escape into a new beginning.
Bonus thought: capturing the new idea somewhere safe so you don’t lose it, then deliberately returning to the current project, is a simple system that works. It might take a moment to get back into the “zone” (see above) but that is better than ditching the WIP
Trying to Make Each Piece Do Everything
This one is subtler and took me the longest to notice, and something I still struggle with. Every creative piece has a natural scope. A song does one thing well. A photograph captures one moment. A chapter moves one part of the story forward. The piece is what it is.
The temptation is to load it with everything you want to say. The song that needs to be the definitive statement. The painting that has to contain every idea from the series. The blog post that tries to address every angle of the topic. The result is almost always a piece that does many things adequately and none of them well.
Stopping this means accepting that the current piece doesn’t have to say everything. The other ideas belong in future work. Letting a piece be exactly what it is, without forcing it to be more, is one of the most practically useful things I’ve learned. It simplifies the making, and it improves the result.
Removal isn’t always about eliminating bad habits. Sometimes it’s about releasing the expectations that are weighing the work down.
Making Your Own Stop Doing List
The habits worth stopping are different for everyone. What gets in the way of your particular creative workflow is personal. But the question is worth asking directly: what am I currently doing in my creative process that isn’t actually helping?
Not what you should add. What you could remove.
One session spent honestly auditing what’s in your workflow, and what it’s actually doing, is often more useful than a new technique or a new tool. The friction that’s slowing you down might already be there, waiting to be identified and removed.
Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
namaste
d
xox
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