Enhance Your Creativity Through "Noise" Reduction

Julia Cameron, the creativity guru and best-selling author of The Artist's Way has helped to promote the idea of reducing the stimulation you take in to improve your ability to create. As you reduce your input, you can increase your output. In her book, she recommends taking a reading fast for one week. In my current work, it was difficult for me to achieve a full week, but in the few days that I practiced it, I felt such a lightness and brightness. It felt great to clear my mind and reduce the number of words and media sources I was allowing to inundate me every day.

Shawn Achor, psychology and happiness research, also recommends a reduction in media input, or "noise". He suggests that gains are made even with a 5% reduction in noise. What would be 5%? Well if you take a 12-hour day, 5% of that day would be 36 minutes. You could shoot for ~40 minutes of reduced noise. Turn off the TV, close the laptop, silence your phone and do something else instead.

Some people are at a loss for what to do without media input given how we are constantly surrounded and distracted by it every day. Here are some ideas: dance, sing, draw, clean, mend, iron, walk, run, bike.

Accidental Delight - Facebook-Free Lifestyle

While my favorite exercise was the reading fast recommended by Julia Cameron, I have recently (accidentally) experimented with my own significant form of noise reduction. During the last round of privacy setting updates, I decided to leave Facebook and shut down my profile. I was dissatisfied with my inability to keep my photos private, but more importantly, I started finally realizing how I was not feeling happy or fulfilled during my time on that site. I would usually use the site to procrastinate other projects, and it ended up becoming a lengthy voyeuristic sojourn into the (filtered) lives of people I hadn't had contact with in years and years. And maybe hardly ever. I had quite a few "friends" from college that I had never even truly been friends with - and they were some of the most active profiles on my Newsfeed. So I had tons of information on these people that I had never even really known! Bizarre and unnecessary. So, I closed my profile and decided I needed some space.

It's been a good ride. Most of the time I don't think about it. However, today I had to finish a writing project and I didn't love it. I kept looking for excuses to procrastinate, but this was the first real project I had undertaken since I had closed my access to Facebook. I went on a website or two, but neither of those were nearly the timesuck of Facebook. I realized that my procrastination was far less drawn out and meandering being off of Facebook. Sure, it was tempting to go on and distract myself with stories on people's profiles, but I just didn't feel like having to go in and get my profile up and running again to gain that access. Excellent deterrant.

Do I feel less connected to the people I love? Nope, not at all. Once in a while a friend will say, "Hey, are you not on Facebook anymore? I tried to tag a photo of you..." At this point, I say, "nope" and ask to see said photo on their phone in that moment. We share the moment in-person and that feels even better in my opinion.

Is this a recommendation to get off of Facebook? Not at all. It's a good tool for many people - I simply found it was no longer what I wanted in my life. For now, Facebook-free works for me.

My main point is reduce the noise in your life - notice where you spend your time, both physically and virtually. If some of those places do not truly serve you (do not make you feel better or inspire you), then play with letting them go for a while. Enjoy a bit of mental clarity. :)