How Creators Overcome Digital Temptations
Being a modern-day creative comes with its own pros and cons. Nowadays, most artists can produce songs, write their books, and paint a portrait using a variety of digital tools and software. The internet also provides endless artistic inspiration, whether a creative is watching guitar tutorials on YouTube, scrolling for color palettes on Pinterest, or examining endless digital galleries on Instagram.
Unfortunately, these same platforms are also rife with distractions and the temptation to multitask. It’s tempting to pull up a YouTube video in the background while writing a story. Alternatively, an artist looking for inspiration may find herself suddenly sucked down an Instagram rabbit hole, and her creative time is sucked away. So how can creatives fight distraction while crafting high-quality works of art?
Understanding Digital Distractions for Creators
Digital distractions are some of the most powerful agents in eroding concentration and focus. As time slips away, stress over looming deadlines sets in. The urge to procrastinate ramps up and it’s all too easy to re-enter the dopamine-satisfying loop of digital distraction once more across social media platforms.
It’s no surprise that high use of social media is also linked to depression, which makes sense for the artist: the natural desire to create is replaced with the urge to consume content. If you’re a creator struggling with digital distractions, here’s a few techniques you can use to get back into your creative flow.
Strategies for Managing Digital Distractions
Embrace Your Environment with Digital Detoxes
Consider taking time to fully digitally detox from your devices. Instead, follow in the footsteps of your creative forefathers and pull out a classic pen and paper. Scrawl lyrics on a notepad, sketch your designs in a small journal or outline your next written piece in a notebook.
Take it a step further, and use your physical environment to your advantage. Get your creative juices flowing in the local park, a library, or a cozy cafe. If you aren’t able to make the journey to these other spaces, try a mindful break on your balcony, patio, or a calm public space in your neighborhood.
When it’s time to get back to your usual artistic setting, take a look at your workspace to declutter the physical space. Keep it as distraction-free and tidy as possible, and set up your materials the night before so you’re ready to go! These screen-free hours and zones can help give you fresh perspectives and enhance your ability to focus for longer periods of time.
Setting Tech Boundaries
Many artists struggle to properly set boundaries with visual platforms, like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. It’s no secret that social media is designed to be addictive, so when you want to break away from those platforms, check out these articles to learn how to resist each platform’s specific pulls.
- This is How Instagram Keeps You Hooked
- Why Can’t I Stop Watching YouTube?
- How TikTok Keeps You Hooked and Perpetually Scrolling
Take Back Your Freedom
When you need to use your digital devices for your creative work, don’t leave yourself open to temptation. Incorporate digital wellness apps like Freedom to block distracting platforms.
Freedom allows you to limit your time on social media, news sites, online shops, or any site you desire by creating timed blocklists for spontaneous focus sessions or recurring schedules. The software works across all your digital devices, so you can block X and Facebook on your phone, tablet, and laptop simultaneously while you finish your latest project.
Freedom helps you set boundaries that match your rockflow rhythms. If you want to block off a certain site for an entire morning, that’s easily achievable. If you prefer 25-minute Pomodoro sessions, Freedom even has brain-stimulating soundtracks that sync up with the timed breaks
Building Positive Habits for Sustained Focus
When speaking with several of my artist and musician friends, they often wax poetic about the importance of creating to-do lists that outline the day’s intentions and staying on top of micro-habits. The new year is the perfect time to build new habits, whether you’d like to use your journal more often, embrace regular digital detoxes, or incorporate meditation or physical activity to improve focus.
Habits are formed by passing through a cycle of cue-routine-reward. A cue triggers your particular behavior, like the cue of a notification triggering you to pick up your phone, which over time, becomes the routine. Finally, you receive the reward, the satisfying result that encourages you to return to the routine. Picking up your phone may result in you seeing a new message from a friend, so in the future, the cue of the notification will encourage you to engage in the routine more often.
Unfortunately, this is how to form the habit of falling into digital distractions, so it’s up to the artist to create satisfying habits that you genuinely enjoy to keep digital distractions at bay. The popular book Atomic Habits by James Clear can be an artist’s best friend. Merill often discusses the importance of stacking tiny habit changes to create systems of slow, impactful change over time.
Here are a few examples of system changes that can improve your artistic flow.
- Habit Stacking: Connect a new habit with something you already do. If you have a habit of making morning coffee, use that time to review your creative to-do list. This naturally integrates new habits into your existing routine.
- Making Habits Attractive: Add an enjoyable reward to creative sessions. After finishing a painting session, treat yourself to a snack or a walk in a beautiful setting. Linking your artistic work to a satisfying outcome encourages consistency.
- Using the Two-Minute Rule: Start small to reduce resistance. If writing a whole chapter feels intimidating, commit to writing for just two minutes. Beginning the task is the hardest part, and you may find greater momentum to keep going.
- Tracking Progress: Keep a journal or app to track your daily creative outputs, like how much time you spend editing music. Visualizing progress reinforces positive behavior and motivates you to maintain the streak.
- Temptation Bundling: Pair a task you want to do (like watching a documentary) with one you need to do (like sketching or brainstorming). For example, you could only watch your favorite series while sketching.
- Breaking Down Goals into Systems: Instead of focusing on the end goal (like finishing an album), create a system of smaller milestones (like writing one song a week). Systems push you forward without the pressure of achieving perfection all at once.
Freedom can help you reinforce new habits through its scheduling capabilities. When you want to focus on your artistic practice in the afternoons, you can create a recurring one-hour daily schedule that blocks off all your usual digital temptations, instead leaving your time free to focus on your flow.
Tap Into Your Creative Focus
Overcoming digital temptations is never easy but it’s not impossible. Once you recognize the addictive nature of those platforms, you can understand how to form boundaries with your tech and turn to your physical environment for new inspiration and focus.
As you hack the cue-routine-reward cycle to form your own habits, let your artist intuition guide the new systems you build for yourself. Whether you choose to stack small useful habits, bundle your temptations, or build small systems, you can always utilize Freedom to help you create works of art or incredible content. Sooner or later, your creativity will reach new heights!
Written by Lorena Bally