I recently read an article called Why Your Best Ideas Come After Your Worst, and it stuck with me. The first thing I took away from it was the legitimising of two psychological states when creating something. One state (the clown) is the messy creative. It throws out all sorts of ideas, some good, some terrible. The other state (the editor) puts the best stuff into some kind of coherent form. Any creative process is a negotiation between these states. Too much clown and you have lots of mess. Too much editor and you have something bland. The second thing I took away was that you probably need the clown to show up first and dump all of the ideas (good and bad) before the editor steps in and hones the best ones.
That reminded me of a piece of advice I once heard on a podcast (I wish I could remember where). It went something like: the most creative people are also the most productive. If you make a lot of things (sketches, songs, essays, photos) some of them will inevitably be new, interesting, or even brilliant. They’ll appear creative because you were productive. It is a no-nonesense tip for improving one’s creativity.
Then, as the neural networks were obviously firing, I thought of Elizabeth Gilbert’s take on creativity. I can’t recall her exact words (I seem to remember themes, but not the details or references), but the message that stayed with me was: you just have to show up. If you keep showing up with curiousity, willingness & readiness, creativity (or creative ideas) will eventually meet you halfway. For the artist it is making sure they are sketching everyday. For the musician it is making sure they are regularly writing and recording musical phrases and passages. For the writer, it could mean writing time and word count goals.
Together, these ideas point to at least two states of creative work:
- The showing-up state — sitting down, making marks, writing words, generating ideas, playing with concepts.
- The shaping state — when something begins to cohere, when the fragments start to connect.
Both are necessary. But we often try to skip the first because it’s uncomfortable. That brings me to perfectionism.
In academic circles, perfectionism usually gets framed around outcomes: I’m scared to start this assignment because it won’t be perfect. But I think we also idealise the process. We imagine the process by which we arrive at that perfect outcome will itself be elegant and linear, when in reality, it’s often chaotic, confusing, and full of false starts.
I’ve been reminded of this recently while starting to write a book chapter on flourishing. It’s my first proper academic writing exercise in years, and I keep catching myself wanting both a perfect product and a perfect process. Not only do I want the chapter itself to be the perfect articulation of wise ideas, I want the process by which I arrive at that chapter to feel ordered, disciplined, precise. But it doesn’t. It feels messy and uncertain, with lots of false starts.
In addition to it being an aspect of my personality, I do wonder whether that urge for a “perfect process” also comes from my training in psychology. The way we (my Flinders colleagues) were trained prizes clear methods, replicable processes, and logical order. That’s great for testing already well-defined hypotheses, but not so much for creative exploration. Creativity needs a bit of wiggle room. It needs space for mess, play, and things that don’t quite work (yet). [Interestingly, you see this contradiction in clinical work. We train in manualised, ordered therapies, but you soon realise when you try to apply them in real life, it is a lot messier].
If I’m going to make good art, I’ll likely have to make a lot of bad sketches first. If I want to write something good, I’ll probably have to wrestle with words for a while. And if I want to come up with my best ideas, I’ll have to produce plenty of mediocre ones first.
I’m not suggesting the process is random and chaotic, with no hope for some degree of order. Habits and routines do help, from scheduling creative time, setting up workspaces, and developing and trialling different workflows. But even with those in place, it’s still going to feel unpredictable at times. That’s normal. We (I) need to make room for that.
Recognising this, its why we (try to) help students develop good study habits AND encourage them to start assignments early. The good study habits will generally help them produce acceptable work. The starting early, and giving themselves enough space to move through the messy middle, helps them produce excellent work. If they leave it too late, they’re stuck polishing their first idea instead of discovering their best one.
So, to all those out there for whom perfectionism is a regular companion, I ask you: does the desire for perfection apply only to the outcomes you want, or also the experience of getting to those outcomes? Maybe perfectionism means lowering our standards not just for what we make, but for how we make it. Giving both the clown and the editor a fair go. I know that might feel like a lot to ask. But life aint too bad here in the messy middle.
Dr Gareth Furber 