Productive Creativity
Do you find yourself judging your creative life by what forms of creativity you focus on?
I’ve often divided my creative endeavors into productive creativity and non-productive creativity, and I’ve assigned more weight and value to projects that fall into the productive creativity bucket.
There are external metrics we can use to measure the “productivity” of our creativity: whether there’s a polished product, if there’s financial compensation, the level of visibility and reach, winning some recognition/validation, and whether others express appreciation of our work.
Yet are these valid metrics to judge which forms of creativity are productive and which are not?
What about all the creative endeavors that don’t produce external results, but serve as critical learning and growing experiences?
What about the projects that expand our creative capacity, knowledge, awareness, or skill?
What about the projects that fail completely, but serve as the catalyst and inspiration for greater works than we would have imagined without them?
Don’t these creative practices deserve to be valued—even if no one else ever sees them?
I’m learning to value time spent on the forms of creativity I’m not good at and have no intention of sharing with others. This, like everything, is a process.
Yet, creativity as a whole has value. And whatever mediums we practice will still contribute to the larger whole, whether or not we end up using it in a “productive” way.
Engaging in non-productive creativity can elevate our creative ability. Because there isn’t a clear external expectation attached to it, we have more freedom to explore, to bring curiosity into the experience, and to think outside the creative boxes we’ve set for ourselves.
This, in turn, can alter our perspective. We become more creative, more comfortable with failure, and will build new skills along the way.
Maybe there’s no such thing as non-productive creativity.
After all, isn’t creativity all about seeing with a new perspective?
All creativity serves a purpose, even if we don’t go into it with intention or a final goal in mind.
We gain perspective when we build new skills and work on creative projects, whether or not we’d deem them to be externally productive. Our perspective on the world strongly influences how we show up in it, which means that cultivating creativity, even in “non-productive” ways, can still ultimately be creatively productive.
Do you struggle to validate non-productive creativity? Do you feel pressure to be productive even during creative play?
Happy creating!
🦋 Amarie