Post-surgery scattered my sense of time to the four corners of the couch where I was recovering.

Not just the tick-tock of time on my watch or phone, but that deeper rhythm that hums beneath our lives: my natural circadian rhythm—the one our culture seems determined to override with its relentless chant of do it, do it, do it.

You know that rhythm I’m talking about, the one whispering to you when you’re about to rush through a piece, but something inside says saalow down.

Don’t you think it’s time we hacked our way out of this persistent, cultural obsession with productivity?

Buying into the notion that constant motion = success, and rest is kin to failure, has become an epidemic.

I’ve definitely fallen prey to this not-so-subtle form of collective hypnosis.

Even though my body demanded its time to heal after surgery, I felt a vague unease, as if sleeping on and off around the clock was a forbidden luxury in the Land of More, Now, and Forever.

But then, after letting my body take the lead for five weeks—at the time, a hundred years—I had a creative breakthrough that blew the door off the productivity myth

When Creativity Can Breath Again

The experience was palpable. Energizing. Creatively explosive. And it sent me curiously poking about.

Why had my fallow field of activity burst into bloom? Why had a decades old, ArtLife idea of mine, as bone-dead as it could be, suddenly come to life? (More on this soon …promise.)

First, I explored the decades of research connecting periods of brain-rest to a following period of high creativity.

The research I found confirmed what I experienced. But I wanted me-specific details.  I wanted to replicate my experience without having to go through surgery. Ha!

So I kept digging until I ran into chronotypes, which dictate how your circadian rhythm expresses itself day after day.

I know, we’re getting a bit nerdy, but hang with me because…

…There’s Gold In Them Thar Creativity Hills!

Here’s what I learned:

Your circadian rhythm is your body’s internal 24-hour clock regulated by a part of your brain that controls things like: hormone release, body temperature (as it changes throughout the day), and your sleep/wake cycle.

Your chronotype is the way your body expresses your circadian rhythm over the 24 hours of external clock time. It turns out that we have internal “clock genes” controlling how and when our circadian rhythm shows up.

Most of us already know our chronotype from the standard early morning or night owl characteristics.

But it turns out those two are the Basement Basics. There is soooo much more directly affecting your creativity!

From 1976—when Horne-Östberg established five-categories (Definitely Morning, Moderately Morning, Neither, Moderately Evening, and Definitely Evening) to the present, with Robert Stickgold’s research demonstrating how chronotypes affect your creative expression—you and I can pin down exactly what’s working, when, in our creative cycles.

That’s exactly what I did.

My five-week hiatus -> creative explosion was so deeply satisfying I wanted a way to recreate the process without going through surgery to get it!

I wanted a path that reverses a cultural that has pushed the productivity pill to where we now berate ourselves for not meditating enough, not resting enough, not taking enough care of ourselves.

I wanted to permanently unchain myself from our culture’s relentless conditioning that I’m falling behind if I don’t grab that next achievement, that next project, that next breakthrough.

I wanted an antidote for the productivity mandate worming its way into our creative psyches.

And for you, my artists, I wanted a workable path that could support your artistic creativity even when you stop producing your art—for any reason at all

Or, when you abandon your art deliberately as a way to enhance your creativity.

Seems a bit topsy-turvy, yes?

Next Time

I’m going to give you a peek behind the Ariane Creativity Curtain and show you exactly what I’m doing now—that I wasn’t before—and how that’s working out.

 

P.S. I’m curious – what happens in your creative practice when you consciously step away from the pressure to produce?  Share your experience in the comments. Whaaa? Comments? So early 2000s, but hey! Why the heck not?

P.P.S. If you want to work with me, here are three places to start.

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See my work with artists here: arianegoodwin.com

Jump into my pioneering work on the Inner Teen & Radical Creativity here: Substack