I’m going to give you the next series of creativity hacks from my new book Create: Tools from Seriously Talented People to Unleash Your Creative Life. Remember, these are tools that you can use to up your creative life. Be sure to follow along and tell your friends. We want to create a movement of people working towards increasing their creative abilities.
Today I want to talk to you about my good friend Keith Code. Keith Code is an amazingly creative person, and he’s known as the foremost teacher of motorcycle racing. He runs the California SuperBike School. At first, you may wonder “what does that have to do with creativity?” Well, Keith Code is an amazing person and a multi-talented creative in addition to being a great teacher. So I wanted to find out from him what some of his successful actions were as a creative.
Creativity Hack 1: Don’t Ignore Moments of Inspiration
This is one of the things he said in our interview. “You can’t ignore moments of clarity and inspiration. That’s the key. Those are the moments you have to grab. And they’re fleeting moments. When I do find myself involved with those moments, things open like a book.”
You know what that’s like. You have that moment of inspiration. Well, you’ve got to do something with it. I’ve told you about using your notebook and you should definitely write those things down. Those flashes that you have, that inspiration, whatever it is, but better yet use that as a propelling mechanism to go out and do that thing. So if you get this brilliant idea for a photograph, get off your butt and go take that photograph. Cameras sitting on your shelf are not taking photographs. You’re the one that’s going to press the shutter. You’re going to visualize something and get it going. So capture those fleeting moments and do something with them.
Creativity Hack 2: Put in the Seat Time
That leads to the second hack, and this is what he says. “You have to be willing to put in the seat time, time in the chair. If you’re writing something, you’ve gotta be willing to sit down and write when ‘I think I got an idea on something’ happens. In order to create, you have to be able to get it out of your head and put it down someplace on a screen or on paper. Or if you had something involving other materials, you’ve got to do something with it. You can’t find anything out unless you start to manipulate it.”
So that falls in with what I was just saying. You have to put it into action. So put the seat time. For motorcycle racer, that’s the guy sitting in their motorcycle seat. If you’re a writer, you’re sitting in the chair writing. A photographer should be out photographing or editing. A filmmaker needs to be out filming, etc. You put in time into your craft.
You need to have time in the seat to get good at your craft
We’re going to talk in a later episode about how to capture that time. Because most of us feel like we don’t have enough time. Well it turns out you do. You just need to invest it wisely. So putting in seat time, super important. We call that working your craft in the book.
Creativity Hack 3: Attention is Like Money
There is a third hack. Keith wrote this book about motorcycle racing and in it he had a section called what will it cost you? And he said, attention is like money. You just have a certain amount you can spend at any given moment. So if you imagine that you got $10 worth of attention and you’re trying to shoot a photograph and $9 of that attention is fixed on making sure you know how to use the camera, you’ve only got a buck left to use for your creative output. Bob Holmes has talked about that. That you need to know your camera so well that it doesn’t get in the way. And this is a really important creative point.
Bob Holmes explaining the importance of understanding your equipment
If you are so nervous when you’re driving that all your attention is focused on the speedometer or I shifting gears or whatever and you’re not looking at the cars around you, you’re probably going to get in a wreck. You’re certainly not going to have any fun.You don’t want to be so fixed and have your attention so stuck on your immediate surroundings that you can’t look out and enjoy what’s going on around you. So the answer to that is you’ve got to know your equipment so well that it becomes like second nature and just practice and practice and practice so that your attention is free. Then maybe you only have to spend $1 on your equipment in terms of attention. Do you follow me? And you got $9 left to spend on your creative output. That’s where you want to be.
And that’s when you look at a great artist. Just look at a Picasso, watch Steven Spielberg, or look at a great writer like John Steinbeck. They had mastered their craft to the point where they could put their attention on telling the story that they wanted to tell. For instance, in the case of Clint Eastwood, he’s so calm on the set that it’s usually only one or two takes. That’s because he understands his equipment. He understands actors and how to let them just be themselves. He gives them the space to act and he isn’t nitpicking and allows the performance to occur. That’s a guy who has a lot of attention to spend and that’s where you want to be as a creative.
Those are today’s hacks. I hope that you find these useful in putting your inspiration into action. Be sure to get out there and work your craft. We would love to hear from you about how you use these hacks to help you on your creative journey!