By Leo Babauta
This month I invite you to work on creativity and discipline in one habit in what I’m calling the Create Daily Challenge.
It’s about practicing the discipline of creating space to create something. Every day. The challenge is to create space to create daily.
Who has time to create something every day? You do, absolutely. We’ll work on that in Week 1 of the challenge.
What can we create? Anything you like:
- Write a book
- Journal
- Create videos
- Sketch or paint
- Create an online comic
- Play music
- Create an app
- Create an online business
- Create a real-world business
- Create a movement or non-profit organization
- Map out a plan for your life, for a retreat, for a project
You are limited only by your creativity!
Basically, we’re creating space for creating anything. Please note that I’ll have special instructions each week for creatives & entrepreneurs.
This challenge is made up of two elements:
- Practice the discipline of creating space to create, and holding that space instead of filling it with busywork or distraction.
- Practice the discipline of staying in the space to do your work of creating, even when you want to run to do something else.
These are related discipline practices, but both important elements for us to work on.
How the Challenge Works
Here’s how the challenge works – you set aside time to create each day, and report weekly (or daily if you like) on how it goes.
- Week 1: Just create the space. In the first week, you simply need to create 5-10 minutes to create. Then be in that space and do nothing but create or sit there thinking. The work here is creating the space to create, and then to enter into it without putting it off.
- Week 2: Open up while you’re in the space. We’ll continue with just 5-10 minutes (at a minimum – you can keep going if you feel like it), but we’ll practice opening up to creating while we’re here. You might have difficulty creating even while you’re in the space – opening up is likely to help.
- Week 3: Expand the space & your creative practice. We’ll expand our creative space to 15-20 minutes (or more), and also work on practices to expand how we create.
- Week 4: Play in your space, finding joy in the creating. This week is about bringing fun to the creative space.
Can you commit to creating each day? Join the challenge by joining my Sea Change Program (free for 7 days, then $15/month after that).
In Sea Change, you get:
- Articles for the challenge each week
- A community of people on Slack to hold you accountable (including a challenge channel and small teams you can join)
- A live video webinar with me
- A huge library of content for changing any habit
It’s a powerful way to start creating transformation.