When Creating Becomes a Chore

This is based on a conversation I had with my mentor. He brought to light how a certain content we work on as a team has become stale. It felt like we were making it for the sake of it and not because we enjoyed it. Not because we loved creating it. Not because we were excited to share a story.

And that is a very possible pit to fall into as a creative.

Creating for others? For algorithms?
Since social media boomed in the last two decades, people were given so much more space to share what they create. A space to share, to learn, to laugh, to collaborate.

While doing all of that, something else also silently happens in the process. If what you’re creating isn’t getting the engagement it requires, if the numbers aren’t going up, if your metric graph isn’t consistently going upwards—”then maybe your content isn’t good enough and here’s a tutorial on why you are getting it wrong and what you should be doing instead”.

A month later the strategy changes again because people’s engagement behaviour keeps changing with time. While wanting your channel or page to grow is a good thing, and something to be taken seriously, it is also equally important to keep enjoying what you love creating. But somewhere down the line, the love of making it slowly fades. The slow death of joy in the process. It becomes a chore. Wanting the validation of co-creators or audience has taken the pedestal over creating for the love of it. What has creation come down to?

Going stale

Once it becomes a chore, is it possible to create something that’s of good quality? Quality tends to become compromised in the process of wanting to deliver for the sake of it. This tends to create a performance rather than creating to enjoy or share what you love. While all the biblical knowledge on ‘how to create content to get more subscribers’ might surely help, they frustrate the creative process.

As a creative of any kind, it is the process of how you make something that makes it
enjoyable and worthwhile. The epiphany you have when the idea strikes. The boom of
endless ideas flowing through you about how to put it out there. The way you write the script. How you design it. How you edit it. The angle you choose to convey what you want to say— you know how it is when you have that epiphany.

Getting back to Eden

One line from that conversation stayed with me: ‘If you don’t like it, don’t put it out there.’

That had me thinking if I were an audience and went through what I made and didn’t like it then what’s the point?
So the team got together and revised the creative process. And ultimately loved what came out of it. It was noticeable that there were more parts of us in it now. It was more ‘us’.

I thought about Genesis. That moment of creation where God steps back and says, ‘It was good.’ I experienced that. The work was good, and I knew it.
So how do you get back to Eden of creating?
I don’t have a cookie cutter solution to this other than the simple fact that if you don’t like it, if you don’t enjoy the process of creating it, then don’t create it.

Create and put your work out there if it is accompanied by the touch of your voice, your passion, your perspective, your epiphany. Allow your string of thoughts to shape it. As long as there is genuinely a piece of you subtly integrated into what you create, I’m sure it’s something worth sharing and being proud of. And as you do that, maybe numbers and algorithms will not matter as much. Maybe people will start flocking to your work because they can sense the soul behind it. Maybe that’s better than any strategy needed to gain more traction. And most definitely worth it.

Happy Creating!