Category: Default (page 10 of 21)

I once lost an entire Wednesday to a lamp. The bulb was too yellow, the shade sat slightly crooked, and I’d convinced myself that a sleeker, more expensive light source would crack something open inside me. I drove to a store, bought a matte-black floor lamp that cost more than my first car, angled it at exactly forty-five degrees, sat down, and produced eleven words in two hours. The lamp was flawless. The output was trash.

This is the quiet, nagging lie that stalks anyone who makes things: the belief that a properly arranged room will delete all friction from the creative process. It’s a seductive thought because it’s easier to shop for shelving than to stare down a blank page. The myth of the perfect creative workspace isn’t really about desks and light bulbs. It’s about the hope that we can sidestep the hard, messy work of making something by first achieving a state of external order.

The Fantasy We’re Sold

Scroll any social feed for thirty seconds and you’ll bump into it: a sun-washed room with a reclaimed wood desk, a ceramic mug placed just so, a MacBook tilted like it’s posing for a portrait. A fiddle-leaf fig in the corner with zero brown spots. An open leather-bound notebook, a fountain pen resting nearby. The caption might mention “morning pages” or “deep work.” What it’s really saying is: If your space looked like this, you’d finally finish that thing.

I’ve chased that image more times than I want to count. I’ve bought the notebooks with thick, creamy paper. I’ve rearranged my desk to face a window, then away from the window, then sideways to the window because I read somewhere that indirect light reduces eye strain. Each time, a genuine wave of optimism washed over me, like I’d cracked a math problem. The room looked gorgeous. And still, the work sat there waiting, completely indifferent to my new pencil cup.

The fantasy sticks because it externalizes a deeply internal fight. If we can point to a physical flaw—bad light, a cluttered surface, a chair that isn’t quite ergonomic—we can fool ourselves into thinking that fixing the object will fix the output. It’s procrastination dressed up as productivity. I’m not wasting time; I’m preparing the soil. The catch is, the soil can always use a little more preparation.

The Actual Environments That Produced Great Work

History doesn’t back up the idea that creativity demands a curated backdrop. Roald Dahl wrote in a grubby shed with an armchair, a sleeping bag draped over his legs, and an electric heater keeping the chill at bay. He balanced a board across his lap and wrote by hand with yellow Ticonderoga pencils. Nothing about that shed would land on a design blog. It was cramped, dusty, and entirely functional.

Jane Austen wrote in the middle of a bustling household, usually in the sitting room with family members coming and going, conversations buzzing around her. She didn’t have a door to close. She didn’t even have a room of her own the way Virginia Woolf would later describe. She had a small walnut table and the ability to focus through noise.

What these examples hint at isn’t that we should romanticize discomfort, but that the link between environment and output is a lot looser than we pretend. The essential ingredient was never the shed or the sitting room. It was just the decision to start, and then to keep going.

What We’re Really Avoiding

Strip away the aesthetic worries and what’s often left is a quiet fear of not being good enough. A messy desk takes ten minutes to clean. A messy first draft can’t be tidied up that way. The physical space becomes a handy stand-in for the psychological space. I’ve noticed my urge to reorganize my office spikes exactly when I’m up against a piece of writing that scares me. The moment I sense I might not be able to pull something off, I suddenly develop a burning interest in cable management.

This avoidance has a sneaky side effect: it raises the stakes. After you’ve spent three hours color-coding your bookshelf, you feel crushing pressure to produce something worthy of that bookshelf. The workspace turns into a stage, and you, the performer, are terrified of flubbing your lines. The perfect desk is a judge, not a friend.

There’s also a whiff of identity performance. A creative workspace, especially one posted online, can become a way of saying, Look, I am a serious person who makes serious things. But the work itself is the only credential that counts. Nobody ever finished a great novel and thought, “Yes, but did you see the author’s monitor riser?”

The Utility of a Good-Enough Space

None of this is an argument for working in a dumpster. Physical comfort matters. A chair that doesn’t wreck your back is a legitimate investment. A screen that doesn’t flicker is a kindness to your eyes. But there’s a canyon between functional and fetishized. The gap between “I need a flat surface” and “I need a live-edge walnut slab with hairpin legs” is where the myth sets up camp.

I’ve done some of my best work at a folding table in a rental apartment that smelled faintly of the previous tenant’s curry. The lighting was overhead fluorescent, the kind that makes everyone look like they’re being interrogated. But I was deep in a project that grabbed me, and the room vanished. That’s the real test of a workspace: does it disappear when the work starts? If it does, it’s good enough. If it constantly tugs at your attention—if you’re always noticing the glare on the monitor or the wobble in the desk leg—fix it fast and move on.

The danger is treating the workspace as its own hobby. There’s a whole industry feeding on this: desk setup tours, “what’s on my desk” videos, productivity tool reviews. Consuming that stuff can feel like work, but it’s consumption, not creation. It’s watching someone else’s highlight reel while your own blank page sits there waiting.

Building a Workspace That Actually Helps

After years of trial and error, I’ve settled on a few principles that have nothing to do with looks. First, remove obvious friction. If you have to shift a stack of mail every time you sit down, deal with the mail. If your chair squeaks, oil it or swap it out. These aren’t creative decisions; they’re maintenance tasks. Treat them that way.

Second, keep the tools you actually use within arm’s reach, and stash everything else out of sight. I have a drawer of art supplies I haven’t touched since 2019. They don’t need to sit on my desk reminding me of my abandoned sketching ambitions. A workspace is not a museum of your past interests.

Third, lower the barrier to starting. For me, that means leaving my notebook open to the next blank page and my pen uncapped. It’s a tiny thing, but it removes one small obstacle. The less ceremony required to begin, the more likely I am to do it.

Fourth, accept that no arrangement will make the work easy. There is no lamp, no chair, no background music playlist that will write the sentence for you. The work is the work. The space is just the container. A gorgeous container can hold garbage, and a dented old bucket can hold gold.

Letting Go of the Pinterest Board

I still catch myself. A few weeks ago, I found myself browsing standing desk converters at midnight. My current desk is fine. It’s a perfectly adequate height. I don’t have back pain. But I’d read an article claiming standing boosts creative thinking, and I was off. I had the item in my cart before I stopped and asked myself the only question that ever matters: Will this help me make the thing, or will it help me avoid making the thing?

The answer was obvious. I closed the tab. The next morning, I sat at my fine, adequate-height desk and wrote for two hours. The work wasn’t brilliant, but it existed by lunchtime. That’s the whole game: existence over elegance.

There’s a kind of grief in letting go of the perfect workspace fantasy, because it means accepting full responsibility. If the environment isn’t to blame, then the only variable left is you. That’s a heavy thing to sit with at 9 a.m. over a cup of coffee. But it’s also freeing. You can stop waiting for the conditions to be right. They will never be right. They will only ever be what they are.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a messy workspace really affect creativity?

It can, but not how most people think. A cluttered space can create low-level cognitive drag, which might make it tougher to focus. But the fix is a quick tidy-up, not a full design makeover. The bigger risk is using “mess” as an excuse to stall the actual work. If you can function in the space, the mess probably isn’t your real problem.

What’s the one thing every creative workspace actually needs?

A reliable tool for catching ideas and a chair that doesn’t hurt. Beyond that, it’s all negotiable. Some people need silence; others need noise. Some need a view; others find it distracting. The only universal requirement is that the space doesn’t actively stop you from working. Everything else is personal preference dressed up as necessity.

How do I stop obsessing over my workspace and just start working?

Set a timer for ten minutes and begin before you’re ready. The physical act of starting—typing a terrible sentence, sketching a lopsided circle—cracks the spell of preparation. Once the work exists, however imperfectly, the workspace fades into the background. It’s not a magic trick, but it’s close. The hardest part is always the first few minutes; after that, momentum takes over.

Is it worth investing money in a home office setup?

Yes, to a point. Spend what you need to be physically comfortable and to knock down genuine obstacles. A good chair is worth it. A second monitor might be worth it if it saves you time. But be honest about whether a purchase is fixing a real problem or just feeding the fantasy. If you can’t clearly say how the item will improve your output, it’s probably decor, not infrastructure.

The perfect creative workspace does not exist. It never has. What exists is a person, a chair, and the stubborn willingness to make something out of nothing. The rest is just set dressing.

I used to stare at a blank page like it was a personal insult. Sketching, for me, had always been about the outcome. I wanted the finished piece—the polished portrait, the tidy still life, the something I could eventually frame and maybe, in a moment of delusion, sell. But that mindset made every pencil stroke feel like a commitment. And I don’t know about you, but my commitments and I have a shaky history.

So I stopped trying to make “art.” I started making a mess. And it changed everything about how I approach a sketchbook.

The Problem With Having a Vision

For years, my process looked like this: I’d get a flash of inspiration, usually at 11 p.m. when I should have been sleeping. I’d imagine the final drawing in vivid detail—the shading, the composition, the emotional weight. Then I’d sit down with my sketchbook, sharpen a pencil to a surgical point, and immediately realize I had no idea how to get from this white rectangle to that mental masterpiece. The gap was so wide I could feel a breeze coming through it.

I’d draw a line. Erase it. Draw another. Erase that too. After twenty minutes, the page looked like a crime scene and I’d close the book, defeated. I was so attached to the finished image in my head that I couldn’t tolerate the ugly, fumbling middle stage.

This is a common trap. When you fixate on the destination, you rob yourself of the only part that’s actually real: the doing. I wasn’t sketching—I was judging. And my inner critic has the patience of a toddler. A really loud, opinionated toddler with a megaphone.

The Accidental Experiment

The shift happened by accident, as most good shifts do. I was stuck in a waiting room with nothing but a cheap pen and the back of an envelope. No eraser, no plan, no hope of a framable result. The pen was a ballpoint that glooped ink in irregular blobs, and the envelope had a pre-printed return address that I had to work around. It was, objectively, a terrible setup. The best kind.

I started drawing the crumpled tissue on the side table. Then the edge of the receptionist’s desk. Then my own shoe, which looked like a defeated potato. There was no goal. No pressure. The lines were wobbly, the proportions were off, and the ink smeared when I rested my hand on it. I didn’t care. I was just… occupied. And when they called my name, I looked at the envelope and felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: satisfaction. Not because it was good, but because it was done.

That evening, I bought a sketchbook with paper so cheap it would buckle under a drop of water. I told myself this book was not for finished pieces. It was for the visual equivalent of humming off-key. You know, the kind of humming you do when you think nobody’s listening and you’re not even sure it’s a real song.

Rules for Unplanned Sketching (That I Immediately Broke)

I tried to set some ground rules, because I’m a person who likes structure even when I’m rebelling against it. The rules were simple:

• No erasing. If I made a mark, it stayed. Corrections would happen through layering, not deletion.
• No pre-drawn frameworks. No light pencil grids, no measuring proportions with my thumb. Just start.
• Time limit. Each sketch got ten minutes max. If I wasn’t done, too bad. Move on.

I broke the time limit on day two when I got absorbed in the way a lamp cast shadows on my desk. But breaking rules is the point. The rules were just training wheels to get me moving. They were there to be outgrown, like a pair of pants you loved in college but really shouldn’t wear in public anymore.

The Pen as a Commitment Device

Switching to pen was the single most effective change. Pencil invites endless second-guessing. Pen says, “You’ve made your choice. Live with it.” At first, this felt terrifying. Then it felt liberating. A crooked line in pen isn’t a mistake—it’s the line. You work with it. You turn it into something else. You learn that mistakes are just unexpected directions. Sometimes they’re even better directions than the one you planned.

I started carrying a fine-tip marker everywhere. The permanence forced me to slow down just enough—not to be careful, but to be present. I couldn’t zone out and auto-draw. I had to look at what was in front of me and commit to a mark. That’s a kind of mindfulness I hadn’t found in meditation apps, which I always quit after two days anyway because sitting still makes my knee bounce like I’m trying to power a generator.

Sketching the Mundane

Without a finished piece in mind, I had to find subjects wherever I was. And mostly, I was in boring places. My kitchen. A bus stop. The corner of my living room where the paint is peeling. These aren’t glamorous subjects. But sketching them without the pressure of making them “art” turned them into something else entirely: records of attention. Little receipts that said, “I was here, and I actually looked.”

I drew my coffee mug so many times that I started to notice things about it. The way the handle attached with a slight asymmetry. The chip on the rim that I’d never consciously registered. The mug became more interesting the more I drew it, not less. Unplanned sketching taught me that subject matter is almost irrelevant. The act of looking is the whole game. The mug wasn’t any more special than it was before—I just finally paid attention to it for longer than it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

What I Learned About Failure

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about sketching without a plan: most of the sketches are bad. Objectively. A stranger flipping through my sketchbook would probably assume it belonged to a moderately talented eighth grader. But that’s not the point anymore. The point is that each bad sketch is a deposit in a bank account I didn’t know I had. A weird, clumsy, wonderful bank account that pays interest in tiny improvements you don’t notice until months later.

I’ve filled three sketchbooks in the past year. The first one is genuinely embarrassing. Like, flip-through-it-and-cringe embarrassing. The second one has moments. A page here, a drawing there that doesn’t make me wince. The third one—the one I’m working on now—has pages I actually like. Not because I got more talented, but because I got less precious. I stopped trying to protect each drawing from failure and started letting them be what they were: exercises. Warm-ups. Brain dumps. The visual equivalent of clearing your throat.

The Joy of the Ugly Page

There’s a particular freedom in creating something you know you’ll never show anyone. I have a page that’s just thirty attempts at drawing my own left hand. Most of them look like spiders having a seizure. Not cute spiders. Spiders that are having a really bad day. But the thirty-first one—the one I drew while half-watching a documentary about mushrooms—actually looks like a hand. It’s not a great hand. It’s a hand that has seen things. It’s got character. But it’s my hand, and I drew it without thinking, and that feels like a small miracle. The kind of miracle you don’t mention at parties because it’s too small to explain.

Unplanned sketching turns the sketchbook into a playground instead of a gallery. You’re not curating. You’re not performing. You’re just… playing. And play, it turns out, is how you actually get better at things. Somewhere along the way to adulthood, most of us forget that. We think improvement has to look serious. It doesn’t. It looks like a grown adult drawing a bad pigeon and grinning about it.

How This Spilled Into Everything Else

I didn’t expect a drawing habit to change how I approach other parts of my life, but it has. I’m less afraid of starting things I might not finish. I’m more willing to write a terrible first draft, cook a mediocre meal, have a conversation that goes nowhere. The pressure to produce something impressive has quieted down. It’s still there—it’s a stubborn little gremlin—but it’s not running the show anymore.

There’s a direct line between sketching a lopsided lamp and sending an email you’re nervous about. Both require you to accept that the outcome might not match the vision. Both require you to do it anyway. Both involve that stomach-drop moment right before you commit, and then the surprising lightness on the other side. You survive the bad lamp. You survive the awkward email. And eventually, you stop believing the world will end if something isn’t perfect.

I’ve also become more observant. When you spend time drawing the way light hits a windowsill, you start noticing light everywhere. You notice shadows on sidewalks, reflections in puddles, the weird way a ceiling fan distorts when you look at it from below. The world gets more textured when you’re in the habit of drawing it. It’s like someone slowly turned up the resolution on everything. I’m not saying I’m some enlightened observer now—I still walk into doorframes regularly—but I see more than I used to.

Practical Tips for Starting (Without a Plan)

If you want to try this, here’s what I’d recommend—keeping in mind that I’m just some person with a blog, not a drawing instructor. Take this with as many grains of salt as you need.

• Get a sketchbook you don’t respect. Nothing fancy. A cheap spiral-bound notebook works perfectly. If the paper is too nice, you’ll feel pressure to make nice drawings. You want paper that practically dares you to mess it up.
• Use a pen. Ballpoint, gel, marker—anything permanent. The inability to erase is the whole point. It’s the difference between having a safety net and realizing you don’t need one.
• Set a timer for five minutes. Draw whatever’s in front of you. When the timer goes off, stop. Turn the page. Do it again if you want, or don’t. No one’s keeping score.
• Draw the same thing repeatedly. Your coffee cup. Your foot. The view from your window. Repetition removes the pressure of choosing a subject and lets you focus on seeing. You’d be amazed how much you can learn from a foot.
• Date the pages. Not for posterity, but so you can flip back months later and see evidence of your own progress. It’s motivating in a quiet way. Like finding a note from your past self that says, “See? You stuck with something.”

The most important thing is to lower the stakes until they’re practically underground. If a sketch turns out badly, it cost you five minutes and one sheet of cheap paper. That’s a bargain for what you gain. You’ve spent more time scrolling through social media and gotten far less out of it. At least a bad sketch is yours.

The Sketch That Taught Me Everything

About three months into this practice, I was sitting in a park, drawing a pigeon. It was a deeply unimpressive pigeon. The kind of pigeon that looks like it’s made of old dishrags. I wasn’t trying to capture its soul or anything. I was just watching the way its head bobbed and trying to get the shape of its body down before it moved. A kid walked by, looked at my sketchbook, and said, “That’s a pigeon.” He didn’t say it was a good pigeon. Just that it was identifiable as a pigeon. And honestly? That felt like a win. I wanted to frame the moment. I didn’t, because that would be weird, but I wanted to.

That’s the lesson, I think. The goal isn’t to make something beautiful. The goal is to make something recognizable—to yourself, if no one else. To look at a page and think, Yeah, that’s what I saw. That’s where I was. That’s the moment I was in. It doesn’t have to impress anyone. It just has to be true to those five minutes. And if it happens to be a pigeon that looks like it’s been through a washing machine, well, that’s a pretty honest pigeon.

I still don’t plan my sketches. I don’t know what I’m going to draw when I open my sketchbook tonight. Maybe the lamp again. Maybe my hand. Maybe the pigeon, if it comes back. The not-knowing is the best part. It’s the one area of my life where I’ve stopped trying to control the outcome, and it’s genuinely freeing. Five minutes, a pen, and whatever’s in front of me. That’s the whole practice. That’s it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need any drawing experience to start unplanned sketching?

Not at all. In fact, having less experience can be an advantage because you have fewer expectations about what your sketches “should” look like. The whole point is to draw without worrying about skill level. A five-minute sketch of your shoe is accessible to anyone who can hold a pen. If you can write a grocery list, you can do this. Seriously.

What if I hate every sketch I make?

That’s normal, especially at first. I hated most of my early sketches. The trick is to separate your judgment from the act of drawing. Think of it like journaling—you wouldn’t judge your diary entries for being poorly written. The value is in the process, not the product. And over time, you’ll hate them less. Or you’ll develop a fondness for how bad they are. Either way, you win.

How do I find subjects when I’m not inspired?

Don’t wait for inspiration. Just look around the room and draw the first thing you see. A light switch. A crumpled napkin. Your own knee. The subject doesn’t matter. What matters is the act of looking and translating what you see onto the page. Mundane objects often become fascinating when you study them closely. There’s a whole universe in a crumpled napkin. I’m only slightly exaggerating.

Isn’t planning important for improving as an artist?

Planning has its place, but unplanned sketching builds a different set of skills: observation, confidence, and the ability to improvise. Many artists keep sketchbooks specifically for unstructured practice. It complements more deliberate work rather than replacing it. For me, it was the missing piece that made all my drawing feel less rigid. Think of it as stretching before a run. You don’t have to, but everything feels better when you do.

So that’s where I am now. A person with a stack of messy sketchbooks, a drawer full of pens, and a weird affection for pigeons. If you’ve been stuck staring at a blank page, try letting go of the finished piece. Draw something stupid. Draw it badly. Draw it again. You might be surprised by what happens when you stop aiming for the gallery and start aiming for the moment. The gallery was never the point. The moment was always the point. I just forgot that for about a decade.

How I Accidentally Sucked All the Joy Out of Making Stuff

Last Tuesday, I stared at a blank Procreate canvas for 43 minutes. Not because I was meditating on infinite possibilities, but because I’d just watched a 19-year-old on Instagram paint a photorealistic owl in 90 seconds with a stylus she probably sharpens on her own cheekbones. My first thought: Why bother? My second thought: I should just sell my iPad and buy a very sad sandwich.

That’s when I realized comparison isn’t just a bad habit. It’s a creative guillotine. It doesn’t whisper “you could be better.” It shouts “you’re already irrelevant” while you’re still holding the pencil. And the worst part? Nobody talks about how fast it works. Not years. Not months. Minutes. You can go from “I have a fun idea” to “I am a talentless garbage fire” faster than your phone can load another person’s highlight reel.

So let’s talk about why comparison destroys creative joy faster than anything else—and what to do when your brain turns into a scoreboard you never asked to play on.

The Trap Looks Like Ambition (But Smells Like Despair)

Here’s the trick comparison plays on you: it disguises itself as motivation. You follow artists, writers, photographers, people who make sourdough that looks like stained glass. You tell yourself it’s “inspiration.” You’re just “studying the greats.” But then you notice your jaw is tight. Your chest feels like someone parked a Prius on it. You haven’t made anything in three weeks because everything you start already feels like a failure before it exists.

That’s not ambition. Ambition says “I want to grow.” Comparison says “I want to be them, right now, without doing the embarrassing messy middle part.” Ambition makes you curious. Comparison makes you tired. If your “inspiration” folder makes you feel worse every time you open it, that’s not a mood board. That’s a digital folder of reasons you’ve already lost.

And creative joy? It can’t survive in a room where everything you make gets immediately held up against someone else’s finished product. Joy needs a little ignorance. A little delusion. A little “I have no idea if this is good and I don’t care yet.” Comparison yanks that away instantly.

The Algorithm Is a Joy-Eating Monster (And You’re Feeding It)

Social media didn’t invent comparison. Humans have been side-eyeing each other’s cave paintings since the Paleolithic. But what social media did was weaponize it. It turned comparison into a constant, low-grade fever. You can’t just see one person’s work and move on. You see a curated feed of everyone’s best work, all day, edited to look effortless, posted at exactly the right time to make you feel like a slow-motion disaster.

The algorithm knows this. It knows that envy increases engagement. It serves you the 25-year-old who just sold her screenplay. The ceramicist whose mugs look like they were thrown by a calm forest spirit. The guy who wrote a novel in his car during lunch breaks. And your brain—your poor, exhausted, well-meaning brain—turns all of that into evidence. Evidence that you’re behind. Evidence that your pace is wrong. Evidence that everyone else got a secret manual you didn’t.

Here’s what the algorithm doesn’t show you: that screenwriter’s 47 deleted drafts. The ceramicist’s garage full of lopsided bowls that weep glaze. The novelist’s decade of not writing because he was scared. It only shows the shiny end result, and your brain fills in the blank with “they’re just more talented.” Which is the fastest way to talk yourself out of ever making anything again.

Comparison Moves at the Speed of a Panic Attack

Most things that kill creativity work slowly. Burnout takes months. Creative block can creep in over weeks. But comparison? It’s instant. You see one post, one photo, one perfectly-lit video of someone’s “morning routine” that somehow includes painting a mural and baking croissants before 7 a.m., and your entire sense of creative self-worth can collapse like a cheap tent in a windstorm.

I’ve timed it. I can go from “I’m excited to write today” to “I should delete my entire website and become a person who just quietly collects rocks” in under 90 seconds. The trigger can be something absurdly small. A font choice. Someone’s clean desk. A caption that says “just a little something I threw together” under a project that clearly required a team of twelve and a small grant.

That speed is what makes it so dangerous. You don’t have time to reason with yourself. The emotional hijacking happens before the rational part of your brain can even clear its throat. And once you’re in that state, making anything feels physically impossible. Your hands work, but your spirit has already clocked out and is Googling “jobs that require no self-expression.”

The “Only One Winner” Lie

Deep underneath all this comparison is a belief so old and stupid it should have a museum exhibit: the idea that creativity is a zero-sum game. That if someone else succeeds, your chances shrink. That there’s a finite amount of attention, approval, book deals, gallery spots, or nice comments from strangers. So every time you see someone doing well, your subconscious does a grim little calculation and concludes you’re now slightly more doomed.

This is nonsense. It’s also incredibly hard to unlearn because we were raised on a diet of competition. Grades, rankings, “best in show.” But creativity doesn’t work like a pie. Someone else’s success doesn’t take a slice away from yours. Actually, it often expands the whole thing. When a writer you admire publishes a great book, more people read. When a painter gets a show, more people look at art. The audience grows. The appetite grows. But comparison whispers the opposite, and if you listen long enough, you start hoarding your ideas like a dragon who’s also deeply depressed.

GaryVee once said something that stuck with me, despite his aggressive enthusiasm: “You’re comparing your behind-the-scenes to everyone else’s highlight reel.” It’s true, but I’d take it further. You’re comparing your messy, unfinished, honest process to a finished product that has been filtered, edited, captioned, and posted at a strategic time by someone who might also be crying in their car right now. You just don’t get to see that part.

What Comparison Actually Steals (Besides Your Sanity)

It steals your voice. That’s the biggest loss. When you’re constantly measuring yourself against others, you stop making what you actually want to make. You start making what you think will get the same response. You chase aesthetics, metrics, vibes. You write like someone else. You paint like someone else. You post like someone else. And then one day you look at your own work and feel nothing, because it’s not yours anymore. It’s a collage of other people’s approval.

It also steals time. The hours spent scrolling, spiraling, feeling unworthy—that’s time you could have spent making something terrible but true. And terrible-but-true is always better than polished-but-borrowed. Always. Joyce Carol Oates said, “The great enemy of creativity is the pram of self-consciousness.” Comparison is the engine of self-consciousness. It makes you watch yourself from the outside, judging every brushstroke before it lands.

And joy? Forget it. Joy requires presence. Comparison yanks you out of the moment and into a hypothetical competition you never agreed to join. You can’t feel playful when you’re mentally calculating someone else’s follower count.

Things That Actually Help (That Aren’t Just “Stop Comparing”)

I hate advice that says “just stop comparing yourself.” Oh, brilliant. Thank you. I’ll simply rewire my entire limbic system by lunch. What’s more useful is building tiny practices that make comparison harder to sustain.

1. Create one ugly thing on purpose every week. Call it “intentional garbage.” Write a terrible poem. Draw a face that looks like a melted candle. Record a song that makes your cat leave the room. The goal isn’t quality. The goal is to remind your brain that making things is allowed to be stupid and fun and pointless. Comparison thrives on seriousness. Humor starves it.

2. Curate your feed like you’re on a strict emotional diet. Unfollow anyone who consistently makes you feel inadequate. Not because they’re bad. Because your mental health matters more than their content. Follow people who share process, mistakes, half-finished things. Follow people who make you think “oh, me too” instead of “oh, I could never.”

3. Keep a “proof of life” folder. Screenshot nice comments. Save emails from people who liked something you made. Take photos of work you’re proud of. When the comparison spiral starts, open that folder. It’s not about ego. It’s about evidence that your work has value outside the algorithm’s opinion.

4. Set a timer for 20 minutes and make something without looking at a reference. No Pinterest. No Instagram. No “inspiration.” Just you and whatever comes out. It will probably be bad. That’s the point. You’re rebuilding the muscle of trusting your own instincts instead of outsourcing them to someone else’s grid.

These aren’t magic fixes. Some days comparison will still body-slam you before breakfast. But over time, these practices build a little fence around your creative joy. A fence with gaps, sure. But enough to keep out the loudest, meanest voices.

Making Peace with Your Own Mediocre Tuesday

Here’s a radical idea: what if your work doesn’t have to be better than anyone else’s? What if it just has to be yours? I know that sounds like a pillow embroidery, but stick with me. The most interesting artists, writers, and creators I’ve ever met are not the ones with the most technical skill. They’re the ones who are unmistakably themselves. Their work has fingerprints. It has weirdness. It has choices that make you think “I wouldn’t have done that, and that’s exactly why it’s good.”

Comparison wants you to be interchangeable. A smoother version of what already exists. But the whole point of making things is to add something that only you could add. Your specific brand of messy. Your particular obsessions. Your weird color choices. Your sense of humor that maybe only four people get. That’s the stuff that lasts. That’s the stuff that builds a body of work you can stand behind without flinching.

I’m not saying I’ve mastered this. Last week I almost deleted this entire blog because someone else had a nicer font. A font. But I’m getting better at catching it. At saying “oh, there’s that feeling again” instead of “I guess I’m a fraud and should live in the woods.” That’s progress. Not fast progress. Not Instagrammable progress. But real.

The Joy Is in the Doing (I Know, I Know, But Hear Me Out)

It’s a cliché because it’s true: the reason we started making things in the first place was rarely to impress strangers. It was because it felt good. Because it was fun to build a story, smear paint, capture a moment, bake something that smelled like butter and hope. Somewhere along the way, we handed that joy over to an imaginary panel of judges who live in our phones. We can take it back. Not all at once. But inch by inch, choice by choice.

Next time you feel the comparison spiral starting, ask yourself: What would I make if no one was watching? If there were no likes, no metrics, no “similar accounts” suggestions? Then go make that. Even for ten minutes. Even badly. Especially badly. That’s where the joy lives. Not in being the best. In being the only you in the room.

And if you need to mute the 19-year-old owl painter for a while, I support you. She’ll be fine. She’s probably off sharpening her cheekbones anyway.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does comparison feel so much worse for creative people?

Because creative work is personal. It’s not a spreadsheet. It’s something you made from scratch, out of your own brain, and when you compare it to someone else’s, it feels like a direct evaluation of your worth, not just your output. That’s why it stings so much more than, say, comparing your commute time to a coworker’s. The stakes feel existential.

How do I look at other people’s work without feeling terrible?

Try shifting from “comparison mode” to “curiosity mode.” Instead of asking “is this better than mine?” ask “what can I learn from this?” or “what’s one choice they made that I find interesting?” Treat it like a museum visit, not a competition. And if that doesn’t work, limit your exposure. Seriously. Protect your peace.

Is it normal to feel like giving up entirely after seeing someone else’s success?

Completely normal. It’s also a lie your brain is telling you. The feeling is real, but the conclusion—that you should quit—is not. Give yourself a break. Step away. Do something unrelated to creating. The feeling will pass, and you’ll come back with a clearer head. Probably still a little bruised, but still capable of making things that matter.

Can comparison ever be useful?

In very small doses, and only if it stays analytical. Seeing how someone solved a technical problem or structured a story can be educational. But the moment it turns into “I’ll never be that good,” it’s no longer useful. The line is thin, and most of us cross it without noticing. Best to treat comparison like a spice: a tiny pinch, rarely, and only when the dish really needs it.

Big wins get all the press, but they’re flashy and unreliable—like a confetti cannon with a 50% misfire rate. The real emotional scaffolding of a decent week is built on small finishes. I’m talking about gluing the handle back on the mug you’ve been side-eyeing for two months. Finally deleting the 19 blurry photos of your cat from your phone. Actually folding the laundry instead of living out of the basket like a feral raccoon who pays rent.

What Even Counts as Small?

I used to think a finished thing needed witnesses. An audience. At minimum, a witness—someone to nod and say, “Nice work on that spreadsheet, Jordan.” But the stuff that genuinely resets my brain is almost invisible. Replacing the batteries in the smoke detector before it starts chirping at 3 a.m. Sharpening all the pencils in the junk drawer. Ordering the refill for the soap dispenser before it’s just a sad, airy wheeze.

These are not achievements you put in a holiday letter. “Thrilled to announce I’ve finally scraped the sticker residue off the glass jar I’ve been pretending to reuse since March.” But the relief is real. It’s a tiny exhale the house makes. Or maybe I make. Hard to tell the difference some days.

The To-Do List Is a Liar

I keep a to-do list, like any responsible adult who enjoys writing things down just to ignore them. It’s usually full of monsters: “Figure out retirement,” “Clean garage,” “Become someone who meditates.” These items sit there for weeks, getting stale and judgmental. The trick I’ve learned—and I hate that it’s a trick and not just a natural state of being—is to bury a couple of gimmes in there. “Water the plant.” “Reply to that one email with just the word ‘Thanks.’”

Crossing off a gimme gives me a tiny dopamine hit, and sometimes that’s enough momentum to chip at something medium. But the real lesson isn’t about productivity hacking. It’s that the small thing often was the real thing. Watering the plant means the plant doesn’t die. That’s not nothing. The plant has no LinkedIn to endorse me, but it’s still photosynthesizing because of my tiny choice. That’s a quiet miracle, and I get to take partial credit.

Pride in the Utterly Mundane

Last Tuesday I repaired a loose screw on a cabinet door. The screw had been loose for, I’m estimating, the entire duration of the current administration. Every time I opened the cabinet, the knob wobbled and I thought, “I should fix that,” and then I didn’t. Finally, I took the screwdriver from the drawer—the one I had also recently organized, let the record show—and tightened it. Four seconds. Maybe five. The knob is now solid. Every time I open that cabinet now, I feel a brief, ridiculous swell of competence. I am a person who fixes things. That’s my brand now. Jordan Kwinn: Screw Tightener.

It’s not that I think tightening a screw is a metaphor for life. I’m not that insufferable. It’s more that I’m realizing most of life is a series of loose screws, and the people who seem the most functional are just the ones who own a screwdriver and actually use it before the whole cabinet falls off the hinges.

The Myth of the Big Block of Time

I used to wait for a free Saturday to tackle small tasks. I’d mentally stack them up: organize spice rack, sew button back on coat, clean the weird gunk from the bathroom fan. Then Saturday would come and I’d spend it doomscrolling or napping because my brain had turned the whole list into a monolithic chore boulder. The boulder was too heavy, so I did nothing. Sunday night, I’d feel like failure-flavored pudding.

Now I try to just do one thing while I’m waiting for coffee. That’s it. The coffee brews in about four minutes. That’s enough time to empty the dishwasher or wipe down one bathroom mirror. I don’t need a block. I need a gap. The gap is always there. I just used to fill it with staring at the wall and contemplating my general inadequacy. Now I fill it with tiny wins. The wall-staring still happens, but now it’s a reward, not a symptom.

Small Finishes Are Antidotes to Big Overwhelm

The world is on fire in too many ways to list without needing a drink. I can’t fix any of it. I can donate, I can vote, I can show up, but I can’t finish it. That unfinishedness is a low-grade hum of anxiety that never turns off. Small finishes are the noise-canceling headphones. Not perfect, but they help. When I scrub the kitchen sink until it shines, the world outside does not improve, but the sink does. One thing is demonstrably better because I existed in that room. That’s not a philosophy; it’s just a fact with some mild endorphins attached.

This isn’t about toxic productivity. I’m not suggesting you monetize your sock drawer reorganization or turn your mending pile into a side hustle. Please, no. It’s more that finishing something small is a form of self-respect that doesn’t require an audience or a paycheck. It’s you saying to yourself, “I see that loose thread, and I am a person who cuts it off instead of letting it unravel the whole sweater.” It’s a tiny assertion of order in a world that’s mostly entropy and push notifications.

What I’ve Actually Finished Lately

In the spirit of full disclosure, here’s a partial list of small wins from the past two weeks, in no particular order:

• Finally threw away the dead batteries I’d been storing in a little “to recycle” bag that was really just a tiny guilt museum.
• Replaced the shower curtain liner before it became a science experiment.
• Untangled the necklace chain that had been a tiny chrome tumbleweed on my dresser since my birthday. (My birthday was five months ago.)
• Emptied the vacuum canister and marveled at the sheer volume of dust and hair one human and one cat can generate. (It was a lot. I said “oh my god” out loud to no one.)
• Wiped down the light switches in the hallway. They were gross. Now they are not gross.

None of these tasks took more than ten minutes. Most took under three. The cumulative effect, though, is that my house feels slightly less like it’s judging me. Or maybe I’m judging myself less. Either way, it’s a better vibe.

The Cat as Unwitting Zen Master

The cat doesn’t care about any of this. She finishes things constantly: finishes her kibble, finishes a nap, finishes staring at a patch of wall for reasons only she understands. She doesn’t congratulate herself. She just moves on to the next thing. I’m trying to learn from her, minus the hairballs. Finish a thing. Exist in the moment after. Don’t immediately start a new list. Just sit there and notice that the thing is done. The handle is glued. The email is sent. The batteries are no longer a future problem. That pause is part of it. That’s the satisfaction. The quiet part.

FAQ

What if I don’t feel any satisfaction from small tasks?

That’s fair. Sometimes the satisfaction isn’t a rush; it’s just an absence of annoyance. The loose doorknob no longer irritates you. That’s a net gain, even if it doesn’t feel like a party. Pay attention to the irritation disappearing. That’s the feeling. It’s quiet. Some people need to actually say out loud, “I did that,” to register it. Try it. The cat might judge you, but the cat judges everything.

How do you stop a small task from spiraling into a huge project?

I set a timer or a boundary. “I’m going to organize one shelf of the pantry, not the whole thing.” If I open the cabinet and suddenly want to repaint the interior, I remind myself that’s a different day’s problem. The goal is a finish, not a remodel. Also, I’ve learned that if I start pulling everything out, I’ll get overwhelmed and abandon it. So now I just do the one shelf. The other shelves will have their day, or they won’t. Either is okay.

Is this just procrastination from bigger goals?

Sometimes, yes. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t alphabetized my spice rack to avoid writing something hard. But the distinction is awareness. If I’m using small tasks to dodge something genuinely important, I try to notice and at least do the important thing for ten minutes first. Then I can reward myself with a tiny fix. The key is not to let the small finishes become a hiding place. They’re maintenance, not a career. Life is mostly maintenance anyway, if we’re being honest.

The Quiet Part

At the end of it all—the tightened screw, the wiped switch plate, the glued handle—there’s a moment where I just stand there. Nobody claps. No notification pings. The earth does not shift. But something in my chest unclenches by about 5%. That’s the stuff. That’s the quiet satisfaction of finishing something small. It’s not going to change my life, but it might change my Tuesday. And Tuesday is where I live most of the time.

There’s a notebook on my desk that I’ve been filling for the past eight months. Plain black Moleskine. The kind you grab at any bookstore. Its pages wear coffee rings like faded tattoos, and the spine is starting to crack. I’ve never shown it to anyone. Probably never will. That’s not some dramatic vow—it’s just the point.

I started keeping this notebook after a particularly loud Tuesday. You know the type: back-to-back meetings, a phone buzzing with notifications, the low hum of a world that wants your attention in seventeen different directions. I came home, sank into the couch, and my brain felt like a browser with thirty-seven tabs open and music playing from one you can’t locate. So I grabbed a notebook I’d bought months earlier and never touched. I wrote one sentence: “I don’t know what I’m doing with this.”

That was it. No grand plan. No bullet journal system. No intention of turning those pages into something public or productive. And that’s exactly why it worked.

The Tyranny of Performative Journaling

Somewhere along the way, journaling became another thing to optimize. You see it all over social media—beautifully curated spreads, color-coded habit trackers, gratitude prompts, and morning pages that look like they belong in a design magazine. There’s a whole industry built on the quiet assumption that your private thoughts should be presentable. That they should lead somewhere. That you should be able to look back in six months and see growth and progress and maybe even harvest some content for a newsletter.

I fell into that trap for years. I’d buy a nice journal, write in it for three days with careful penmanship, then abandon it because it didn’t look right or I didn’t have anything profound to say. The pressure to make it meaningful made it meaningless. Every entry felt like it was being graded by an imaginary audience. Even in the privacy of my own apartment, I was performing.

So I stopped. I gave myself permission to write garbage. Genuine, unsalvageable garbage. Half-formed thoughts. Complaints about the weather. Lists of what I’d eaten that day. Sentences that trail off mid-thought because I got distracted by a pigeon outside my window. The notebook became a landfill for mental clutter, and that’s exactly what I needed.

Writing Without a Destination

The strange thing is, once I removed the pressure of an audience, I started writing more honestly. Not in a dramatic, confessional way—more like I was finally having a conversation with myself where I didn’t have to be clever or consistent. Some days I’ll write a single line: “Tired and annoyed at everything, no reason.” Other days I’ll fill three pages trying to untangle a vague anxiety I can’t quite name.

There’s a particular freedom in knowing that nobody will ever read these words. Not because they’re secret, but because they’re unfinished. They’re the verbal equivalent of a half-eaten sandwich. No one needs to see that. The point isn’t the product; it’s the process of getting the thoughts out of my head and onto something physical.

I’ve noticed that my best ideas—the ones that actually turn into something worthwhile—tend to show up in the margins of this notebook, usually after three pages of complaining about my upstairs neighbor or wondering why I can’t keep a houseplant alive. It’s like the garbage writing clears a path. The pressure valve releases, and suddenly there’s room for something real.

The Physical Act Matters

I’ve tried digital journaling. I have a folder of abandoned text files to prove it. But there’s something about the physical act of writing by hand that changes how I think. It’s slower. I can’t backspace or edit or rearrange sentences. Once the ink is on the page, it stays there, ugly and honest. That permanence forces me to keep moving forward instead of obsessing over every word.

Plus, handwriting engages a different part of the brain. Studies suggest it can improve memory and cognitive processing in ways typing doesn’t. But honestly, I don’t think about the science while I’m doing it. I just know that when I’m scribbling by hand, my thoughts feel less filtered. The messiness of my handwriting matches the messiness of my thinking, and that feels right.

What’s Actually in the Notebook

If someone did read my notebook—which, again, they won’t—they’d be profoundly disappointed. Here’s a representative sample from a random Tuesday in March:

“Forgot to buy toothpaste again. How many times can one person forget toothpaste? The cashier at CVS definitely recognizes me by now. Maybe I should just order it online and set up a subscription like a functional adult. Also, I think I’m mildly allergic to something in this apartment but I can’t figure out what. Dust? The new laundry detergent? Existential dread?”

That’s it. That’s the profound insight. No epiphanies about the nature of consciousness. No poetic reflections on love or loss. Just a man annoyed about toothpaste and suspicious of his laundry detergent. And yet, writing that down actually made me feel better. I acknowledged the minor frustrations, laughed at myself a little, and moved on.

The Unexpected Side Effect

Here’s something I didn’t anticipate: keeping a private notebook has made me a better listener. When you regularly dump your own mental noise onto a page, you have less of it rattling around during conversations. I’m not sitting there half-listening while mentally composing my next clever response. I’ve already gotten the chatter out. The notebook absorbs all that static, leaving me more present when I’m actually with people.

It’s also made me slightly less insufferable. I have a tendency to process things out loud, which means I used to subject friends and family to every half-formed thought that crossed my mind. Now, a lot of that processing happens in the notebook first. By the time I talk to someone, I’ve already sifted through the noise and figured out what I actually think. The people in my life have probably benefited from this arrangement without even knowing it.

The Notebook as a Sanity Tool

I’ve come to think of the notebook as a kind of external hard drive for my brain. It stores all the useless data—the worries, the to-do list items I’m not ready to act on, the random observations that don’t belong anywhere else. Offloading that stuff onto paper frees up mental bandwidth for things that actually matter.

There’s a parallel here to something I learned about productivity years ago: the idea that your brain is for having ideas, not holding them. When you try to keep everything in your head, you end up in a constant state of low-grade stress, your mind subconsciously rehearsing all the things you’re afraid you’ll forget. Writing them down—even the stupid things, especially the stupid things—tells your brain it can let go. The thought is captured. It’s safe. You don’t have to keep spinning it around.

My notebook serves that function, but without the pressure of a productivity system. It’s not a bullet journal. It’s not a planner. It’s just a place where thoughts go to be forgotten. And that forgetting is the whole point.

Why I’ll Never Read It Again

Some people journal so they can look back later and see how they’ve changed. I get that. But for me, the value is entirely in the moment of writing. Once the words are on the page, they’ve served their purpose. I have zero desire to revisit my March complaints about toothpaste. That version of me was tired and cranky, and he doesn’t need to be remembered.

When this notebook is full, I’ll probably toss it in a drawer and start a new one. Maybe someday, years from now, I’ll stumble across it and flip through a few pages. I’ll cringe at my own handwriting and marvel at how much headspace I gave to things that ultimately didn’t matter. Then I’ll put it back and forget about it again. That feels right.

There’s something liberating about creating something with no audience and no legacy. In a world where everything we do can be documented, shared, and scrutinized, keeping a notebook that nobody will ever read is a small act of defiance. It’s a reminder that not everything has to be productive or meaningful or even coherent. Some things can just be for you, in the moment, and then disappear.

And if you’re thinking about starting your own unreadable notebook, here’s my advice: buy the cheapest one you can find. Something too nice will make you feel like you need to write something worthy of it. Get a spiral-bound notebook from the drugstore. Use a pen that’s running out of ink. Write the date at the top of the page and then just start. Write “I don’t know what I’m doing” if that’s all you’ve got. It’s a perfectly good place to begin.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if someone finds and reads my notebook?

I worried about this at first. Then I realized that if someone reads my private notebook without permission, the embarrassment is on them, not me. They’re the one who chose to invade someone’s privacy and then had to read three paragraphs about forgotten toothpaste. Honestly, they deserve whatever disappointment they feel. If you’re really concerned, keep it in an unremarkable spot—nobody’s breaking into your nightstand drawer looking for literary gold.

How often do you write in your notebook?

There’s no schedule. Some weeks I’ll write every day, sometimes twice a day. Other times I’ll go two weeks without touching it. I don’t force it. The notebook is a tool for when my brain feels cluttered, not another obligation to feel guilty about ignoring. If I start treating it like a chore, it loses the whole point.

Isn’t this just journaling with extra steps?

Kind of, but the distinction matters to me. Traditional journaling often comes with an implicit expectation that you’re recording your life for posterity or personal growth. This is more like a mental trash can. I’m not documenting my life; I’m just clearing out the noise so I can think more clearly. The difference is subtle but significant—it’s about function over form, and process over product.

Do you ever go back and read old entries?

Almost never. I’ve flipped back a page or two while looking for a blank page, and I usually just cringe and move on. The entries aren’t meant to be revisited. They’re a snapshot of a mental state that no longer exists, and I’m fine leaving it in the past. If I wanted a record of my life, I’d write something intended for that purpose. This notebook is for the moments I want to let go of.