Chase Mac

Social Media Minimalism (How I Reclaimed My Mental Health & Creativity)

Chase Mac — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 01:29:32 +0000

Most of us have a toxic relationship with social media.

I know I did.

Our alarm goes off…
We start scrolling through the feeds.
We go to the bathroom…
We scroll through the feeds.
We eat breakfast…
We scroll through the feeds.
We try to focus at work…
We scroll through the feeds.
We get home from work…
We scroll through the feeds.
We lay down to sleep…
We scroll through the feeds.

This daily routine looks crazy on paper, yet this is how most of us live in today’s age.

It’s the sad evolution of modern society—A global addiction.

We were never supposed to live like this, and yet society has adopted this as “normal behavior.”

We justify sipping on the Kool-Aid because “everyone else is doing it.”

And so we scroll and scroll, and sip and sip.

And no one bats an eye.

In fact, the only time people raise an eyebrow these days is when you’re not on social media… when you’re not sipping on the “digital juice.”

Social Media has become a paradox…

It’s convinced us that if we’re not using it, we’re alienating ourselves from everyone and everything.

Yet, when we excessively use it, it has the opposite effect on us. We feel more disconnected than ever. More lonely. More depressed. More alienated.

And it’s not necessarily our fault…

When social media started hitting the scene in the early 2000s, these companies pitched to us a utopian future, where all of us are digitally connected through an authentic social network—a way for humans to connect to each other and stay up to date through the pixels.

But the last 15 years have shown us their true intentions.

“There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users:’ illegal drugs and software.” – Edward Tufte

If an app is “free to use”, it only means one thing: that we (the users) are the product.

These apps have been intelligently designed to consume our attention, feed off our dopamine, and keep us addicted to their platforms for the sake of their advertisements.

We are their assets because we consume their ads.

They’ve taken advantage of our minds and monetized our attention.

My Experience With Social Media

There’s been two ways I’ve used social media in my life.

I’ve used it for personal accounts, which is the way the majority of people use it (for staying updated with family, friends, and other interests).

And I’ve used it for business accounts (for having a place to post my creative work online).

Both of these ‘use cases’ have led to a negative impact on my mental health.

How Social Media Affects My Mental Health

“The more time you spend online, the more your life is cataclysmic.” – Cal Newport

We’ve all heard of the negative side effects of using social media.

And to be honest, I think the people who say it has no effect on them are just in denial. Their objection is always that they have the “willpower” to not get addicted…

But it has nothing to do with willpower–It has everything to do with dopamine. And we will never win the fight against a tech that has been designed to take advantage of this addictive chemical in our minds.

I’ve tried willpower. I’ve tried discipline. It doesn’t work when you’re climbing a slippery slope.

I’ve never been immune to any of the negative side effects.

In the past, it’s destroyed my focus, made me feel lonelier, affected my attention, isolated me, and trapped me in cycles of comparison.

Unfortunately, these are all heavy hitters to the mind, but the one that has affected me the most is comparison.

There’s that famous quote, “comparison is a thief of joy,” but I think it goes much deeper than that.

Comparison leads to a life not fully lived.

It paralyzes us…

And robs us of all things authentic to our way of being.

It makes us believe that everyone and everything is better than what we currently are and have.

Wherever we are in life, “other people” on these apps appear to always have it better than us.

How Social Media Affects My Creativity

“Sometimes you have to go offline to get your creativity back online.” – Chase Mac

I’ve always been a creative at heart and drawn to sharing my work online.

However, excessive social media use has impacted my creativity in similar ways as using it for my personal accounts, but with additional consequences.

The comparison trap is still there. It’s no longer just about personal matters, but about comparing my creative work to what other people have created.

I burn out quickly because I constantly feel the pressure to post my work in order to satisfy the apps fast-paced algorithms.

At times, I’ve developed an unhealthy habit of obsessively checking the “likes” on my posts.

And I catch myself feeling the need to create my work based around trending topics, instead of staying authentic to my craft.

What To Do About Social Media

There’s a reason we feel mentally and physically worse when we’re glued to our screens. Humans aren’t wired to live in a purely digital world—we’re wired to live in the natural one. The real one.

Not the matrix that social media has trapped us in.

Our creativity and mental health are our most valuable resources. By reducing our use of social media, we protect the currency that matters the most to us.

Without creativity, humans would still be stuck in the caves, and without proper mental health, we would never get off the couches that we’ve built outside of the caves.

The reality is, whether we like it or not, the modern world has evolved to use social media. And it’s here to stay.

So we’re left with three choices:

Continue using it in an unhealthy way
Abandon it altogether
Learn to use it in a healthy way

I stopped using my personal social media accounts around 5 years ago, so that shows you my opinion on that. For me, the cons outweighed the pros every time I calculated them.

I can’t begin to tell you how much better life got because of this.

My life—especially my creative life—has become more simple, less distracted, and more focused.

However, when it comes to my creative work, like being a digital writer and content creator, I was in a dilemma because I needed to bring social media back in my life.

As I discussed in my last article, social media is the lifeline of my one-person creative business. So avoiding it altogether would compromise my entire business.

Sometimes the decision isn’t whether or not TO USE social media, but more so about HOW WELL we can use it. – Chase Mac

Unfortunately, when it comes to my creative work, social media is a “necessary evil”—one that I’ve learned to be very careful with or I’ll constantly fall victim to its negative side effects.

I’ve tried countless approaches to managing my social media use in a heathier way. Some have helped and others have not.

But through these experiments, I eventually developed my own philosophy around how to use it effectively in the most healthy way when it came to my creativity.

My Social Media Philosophy

I like to think of “social media apps” as falling into two distinct categories:

1) Scroll Media Apps

Think of these as the apps you mainly “scroll on.”

Like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, etc.

These apps are like treadmills—they’re designed to keep you moving (scrolling) on the feed. You scroll endlessly in an addictive loop via their feed-based algorithms.

2) Search Media Apps

Think of these as the apps you mainly “search on.”

Like YouTube, Reddit, and even Google (for articles/blogs), etc.

These apps are like libraries. You go there with intention, looking for (searching for) something you want via its search-based algorithm.

Scroll Media Apps vs Search Media Apps

I’ve noticed a significant difference in my mental health while using Scroll Media Apps compared to Search Media Apps.

The majority of my mental health issues have stemmed from using Scroll Media Apps.

In my experience, these platforms are the most damaging to our minds.

They’re engineered to keep you glued to the screen, in more destructive ways than Search Media Apps.

It’s why it has the nickname “doomscrolling” because it feeds you endless streams of addictive short-form content.

On the other hand, we naturally use Search Media Apps to find content we’re looking for, rather than scroll through content.

Now I’m not saying that these apps don’t have an addictive nature to their designs as well. They do. But from my experience, I find it’s much easier to avoid the pitfalls of them compared to Scroll Media Apps.

Search Media Apps allow you to engage with content on your own terms, instead of being spoon-fed whatever the “algorithm” wants to show you to keep you hooked. It’s a healthier way to engage with content because you’re in control.

You search, you choose, and you consume what interests you. Not what something feeds you.

My Creative Work Philosophy

If you’re a creative, and posting your work online to reach an audience, the contrast between Scroll Media Apps and Search Media Apps becomes even more critical.

Scroll Media Apps are the worst place to share your art.

Why?

Because they give your creative work a death sentence. After 48 hours on these apps, your posts essentially die—getting lost in the flood of new posts on the feed-based algorithm.

In other words, no one is searching to find older posts on Scroll Media Apps (like Instagram or TikTok) because they weren’t designed for “searching,” they were designed for “feeding.”

But it’s much different on Search Media Apps because they let your creative work live forever.

Your YouTube video, Reddit post, or blog article can be found years later when someone searches for the right keywords on these platforms, allowing your content to continue reaching people long after you’ve moved on to your next creative project.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t enjoy creating content (like this article) for it to be buried in a few days. I want my work to leave a lasting impact on the platform it’s published to.

This is how creative work should live online—timeless, discoverable, free from expiration dates. Don’t let the urgency of Scroll Media Apps algorithms convince you that your art has a shelf life. It doesn’t and never should.

Stay intentional, protect your mental health, and choose platforms that support, rather than exploit, your creativity.

Become a Social Media Minimalist

Cal Newport coined the term “Digital Minimalism” for reducing our use of daily digital tools (smart phones, computers, email, social media, etc), but I’ve expanded off his philosophy in order to zoom in on what I call “Social Media Minimalism.”

We should all become social media minimalists in an era where social media has overrun everyone’s life.

Focus your online time on a few optimized activities (on the right platforms) and be okay missing out on the rest.

“We are not wired to be constantly wired.”–Cal Newport

As someone who teaches creatives to become content creators, here’s my #1 advice:

Consume ideas and create artistic output on Search Media Apps and avoid Scroll Media Apps as much as you can.

Now, with this said, before fine-tuning my social media philosophy, I gained a combined audience of 150,000 followers on Instagram and Facebook.

As mentioned above, I technically categorize these two platforms as “Scroll Media Apps” but since I already had a decent following, I knew it wouldn’t be a smart business move to ditch them entirely (although I want to).

Because I can confidently say, If I didn’t have a following already on these apps, I would have ditched them just like I have with X, Threads, and TikTok.

So my “work around” is limiting my use of Facebook and Instagram to nearly zero without actually deleting my business accounts.

Meaning, I literally only log into the Meta Business Suite (never the apps themselves) to schedule out all my posts for the week on both Instagram and Facebook, then I sign off.

I don’t have ANY social media apps on my phone (the scroll media apps and search media apps) and never will. This is a mandatory rule of mine and it helps me avoid 90% of the mental health pitfalls of them.

Here Are My Rules for Social Media Minimalism

Be Selective of Your Social Media Platforms
Ask yourself: Which apps add value to your life, and which one’s feed an addiction? Self-honesty is key. Remove the ones that affect you negatively.
Make Your Smartphone a “Boring Phone”
Delete all social media apps from your phone. ALL of them. Only use your phone for calls, texts, emails, and Google searches. This alone will have the most impact on your mental health. If you still MUST use social media, only use the website versions on a computer. They are much less addicting.
Use a YouTube Chrome Extension
For many people, including myself, YouTube’s website can be just as addictive and harmful. I use two Chrome Extension called ‘Minimal YouTube Homepage’ and ‘YouTube Enhancer’ that blocks the sidebar and all recommended videos to avoid its addictive feed. This keeps your use of YouTube much more healthy by having to search for what you want to watch.
Be Intentional with Content Consumption
Don’t be a mindless content consumer. Search for content (on Search Media Apps) and never scroll for it (on Scroll Media Apps). This keeps your content consumption more intentional. You’ll also find the content to be much richer on “Search Media Apps.”
If You’re an Artist, Create Away from Screens
I do everything in my power to stay away from digital screens when creating art. This helps preserves my creativity, as well as keeps me focused and away from digital addictions. And to take things even further with this rule, I even stick to paper books and print out physical blog articles to read and inspire new ideas for my art.

That’s all I wanted to share in this article. Hope these tips help you.

Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter if you haven’t already, and reach out if you have any questions. I’ll see you on the next one.

Keep creating, my friends.

-Chase Mac

The post Social Media Minimalism (How I Reclaimed My Mental Health & Creativity) first appeared on Chase Mac.

Stop Feeling Lost in Life: Turn Your Creativity into Purpose

Chase Mac — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 00:09:41 +0000

We’re told by society that by the age of 18, you should know what you want to do for the rest of your life.

And if you fail to do so…

You’ll fail as an adult.

You’ll financially struggle.

And you’ll be left behind.

That’s exactly how I felt after high school and throughout my 20s.

As I watched my friends graduate from college, start their careers, and be excited about their futures, I felt more lost than ever.

None of the traditional career paths seemed right for me.

I couldn’t see myself doing any of them for the next 30 years.

So, I ended up doing nothing.

I stayed stagnant.

I was one of those kids who didn’t go to college, who didn’t leave his hometown, and was stuck floating between dead-end jobs.

But I learned to fill the career-less pit in my stomach by leaning into my creative side.

It gave me a sense of purpose in a way.

A craft to focus on.

A distraction from the pressures of life.

So I would make little films with my friends on the weekends. Shoot random photos across town. Create unique social media brands. And think about different creative business ideas.

I loved the feeling of creating something out of nothing, of losing myself in the creative act.

But there was also another layer to my personality that didn’t feel so great: the inability to stick with something.

The lack of follow-through.

Even though I was very creative, my curiosity would often derail my efforts.

I would start a new venture, pour all my energy into it, and get pretty good results. But then, after a while, I would get bored, burn out on the idea, and move on.

It wouldn’t be long before a new shiny interest pulled my curiosity back in.

So I would pour all my energy into it, get pretty good results, and then, just like all the other ventures, I would get bored, burnout, and move on.

This was the vicious cycle I was stuck in throughout my 20s.

It even made me feel ashamed after a while.

Saying things to my family and friends like, “Don’t worry, this new venture is the one. This is the one I’m going to stick to and make a career out of.”

But deep down, they knew, and even I knew, that it was unlikely given my track record.

I knew they thought that whatever new idea I was obsessing over at the time was just another “thing” Chase was into at the moment.

There was no one else to blame but me.

I was the problem.

I was the one who couldn’t stick to something when it seemed like everyone else could.

I became a “jack of all trades, but a master of none.”

Discovering My Personality Type (and possibly yours too)

Until a few years ago, I always thought there was something wrong with me because of my “interest-hopping behavior.”

But it wasn’t true.

What I didn’t understand was that I had a unique personality type, rather than a personality flaw.

I was simply just lacking the self-awareness of it.

Through randomly coming across it on Google, I discovered that I was a “Multi-Passionate Creative.”

Which is defined as a person with many creative pursuits who often develops diverse skills across multiple domains due to their curious exploration.

They’re easily spotted by their interest-hopping habits.

Sound familiar? It did for me. Maybe it does for you too?

This personality type isn’t new. In the past, we’ve also been called ‘Renaissance People,’ ‘Polymaths,’ ‘Multipotentialites,’ and even ‘Scanners.’

We’re creative generalists who have no “one true calling” like industry specialists do (for example: doctors, accountants, lawyers, corporate workers, etc).

Looking back at my 20s, it’s blatantly obvious:

I was a…

wedding videographer
video editor
junk removal business owner
Amazon FBA seller
ancient philosophy content creator
real estate agent
online health coach
video game YouTuber
web designer
digital marketer
and a creative director at a start-up

I was trying to find a purpose with my creativity. So I was trying out all things creative, hoping to find myself through it all.

And this brings me to an important note: Being a Multi-Passionate Creative can also be destructive if you’re not careful.

The truth is, modern society isn’t kind to our personality types.

We appear to be lost souls among the current industries—being job floaters instead of career specialists.

Looking Back at the Renaissance Period

Modern society doesn’t value creatives like they used to in the past.

The last time era when Multi-Passionate Creatives were appreciated was 400 years ago, during the Renaissance Period.

Artistic minds like Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo were looked up to, and their various creative skills were greatly valued by the public.

They were painters, writers, sculptors, engineers, scientists and more.

In their times, having multiple talents across different creative domains was actually considered an ideal personality type to have.

Nowadays, it’s a different story.

Modern Society vs Multi-Passionate Creatives

As the modern working world has evolved over the last 400 years, Multi-Passionate Creatives have been squeezed out of the industries.

Society now only values the industry specialists (those who specialize in a single field) over the creative generalists (those with multiple creative skills).

Even our educational system is built around training the youth to pick a single career path. Anything else is considered “the wrong way.”

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being a specialist. Their careers are very important in our communities.

The problem is that society has dragged one group of individuals down (the creatives) to only focus on rising up the others (the specialists).

This leaves us Multi-Passionate Creatives in an uncomfortable position in life.

We often become starving artists and struggling creatives.

And just to get by and live decently, we are forced to settle for a specialist career which lacks creative fulfillment to us.

A Shift in Modern Society (The Digital Age)

Luckily, the creative world has seemed to balance itself.

Multi-Passionate Creatives can thrive once again.

It’s only been possible since the last 15 years when the internet matured and social media was born, creating what is now called the “Creator Economy.”

This new digital landscape has allowed creatives to have the capability to create art in various forms around their creative interests and share it with the world online.

The digital age is now the greatest time period to be alive as a Multi-Passionate Creative.

What I initially thought was a negative in my personality, I now view as my biggest positive.

Because in the digital age, it’s better to have multiple skills than to be specialized in just one.

Going back to the quote I used earlier, most people aren’t aware of the full version of it:

“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”

This reflects the strength of our personalities in the digital age.

The internet and social media is the perfect environment for Multi-Passionate Creatives to succeed.

We can now thrive as curious creatives, by building what I like to call a “one-person creator business” that integrates all our passions into one brand.

Instead of abandoning our creativity, we can now carve out a unique career that will leave us endlessly fulfilled.

The One-Person Creator Business

“Don’t follow an interest into poverty. Solving the difficult financial side of the [creative] business interest has to be the foundation of it.” – Cal Newport

Don’t overthink the word “business” here. Every creative who has ever made art for a living did so through the business of monetizing their skills.

If the term “business” feels off-putting, think of yourself instead as a creative or artist behind a “personal brand” that represents your work.

With a personal brand:

YOU are the brand.
YOU are the business.

And to succeed, you need to be the creative marketer behind your personal brand.

This is where social media comes into play.

Art doesn’t sell itself. Artists who become KNOWN sell their art. Growing your personal brand on social media is how you’ll get there.

No business sells its products or services without focusing on the marketing behind its brand.

Any business that thinks it’s not in the business of marketing is a business that fails.

In a one-person creator business, you are marketing YOU as the creative artist, not just your artwork.

The reality is, we live in a capitalistic society and need income to live comfortably. As a creative aiming to earn a living through your creativity, it starts with marketing yourself.

Fortunately, the internet has made this easier than ever before. By growing a fan base on social media, this audience becomes the support behind your work.

And there is nothing wrong with wanting to earn money through your creative efforts.

People will want to support you as the creator behind your work.

It’s a win-win relationship as long as you keep adding value to them in the form of inspiration, influence, and helpful resources (I’ll go into more depth on this in other articles).

For now, simply focus on growing an audience around your creative interests with your personal brand.

People rarely love artwork for the art itself; we’re more fascinated by the human behind the artwork. The human side of art makes it even more inspiring.

We buy books from authors we relate to.
We watch movies from directors we like.
We enjoy YouTube videos from creators we follow.

(This is also why I believe AI won’t affect art in the long run as much as people think. My next article is about this topic.)

You must learn to be comfortable as the human being behind your work. It’s the best way to grow an authentic audience that truly cares about what YOU make.

This is the path to creative success.

Why Multi-passionate Creatives are the Best Entrepreneurs

Successful entrepreneurship demands creativity.

Anyone who denies this is most likely not a successful one.

As a Multi-Passionate Creative, you bring a lot of unique skills to the table, making us strong entrepreneurs.

Here’s a few to be confident in:

Idea synthesis

The ability to combine different creative domains into something entirely new at the intersections.

Passionate Work Ethic

We’re passionate about the things that interest us. We follow our curiosity to a level of obsession, making hard work seem more like a creative flow.

Self-directed learning

Since we’re passionate about our interests, we love learning about them more than the average person would. We can take in information quickly and become highly proficient at what we want to accomplish with it.

Rapid skill acquisition

We’re used to diving into so many new domains that we acquire knowledge in them very efficiently. We’re used to being beginners a lot, which means we’re used to learning anything quickly.

Creative Adaptability

We’re naturals at adapting our various skills to match whatever is needed for a given creative project or pursuit.

Used to wearing many hats

We’re used to exploring and learning new things often, which means we hardly have to rely on outside help to achieve what we want creatively.

Creative Leadership

People are inspired by other people’s enthusiasm and passion towards their craft, making us strong leaders in our creative domains.

5 Steps to Launch your One-Person Creator Business

First and for most:

Believe in yourself.
Believe in your creativity.

You don’t have to be a struggling creative anymore. You don’t have to be a starving artist.

You deserve more.
You deserve success.

Important note:

In the steps below, I talk about personal branding.

Your ‘personal brand’s name should simply be ‘your name.’

This goes for your website domain AND your social media handles.

The last thing you want to do is pigeon hole yourself into a niche like “Mindfulness with John.”

Instead, brand yourself under your name so that you can be fluid when your interests change.

“John” might be into meditation and mindfulness now, but what happens to his brand when he gets interested in “computer science?” He’ll have to rebrand everything…

Keep it future-proof by keeping it your name.

Trust me on this one, I learned it the hard way.

Now, let’s begin.

Step 1: Develop your Personal Brand Mission

Open up a word document or a notepad and write out your brand’s mission.

What are you trying to accomplish with it?

Here are some starter questions to answer:

What is your WHY for doing this?
What domains or niches do you want to be in?
What kind of content do you want to make?
Who is your target audience?
How can you help your audience?
Are there any milestones or goals you want to hit?

Add any other questions you feel are necessary.

Keep its length confined to one page.

When done, I recommend printing it out and keeping it close by, or even tacking it to the wall.

If you ever start losing your way, you can quickly read through it to it to get back on target.

Step 2: Create a Personal Website

A personal website is the home-base of your brand, art, and services.

There are many options out there, but I personally use WordPress + Elementor.

Simpler ones to use are Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify.

Don’t get held up on this part. Do which ever one is best for your needs.

Google them and look up videos on how to build one. There are plenty of free videos that will show you every step.

By building a personal website, your creative business will feel more real. It’ll also be the place to sell your art and services (more on this later).

Step 3: Create your social media channels

Social Media is how you will grow your audience of like-minded fans.

It is a non-negotiable part of the process.

Social Media is how you get your work seen by others.

Trust your creative skills as a Multi-Passionate Creative. Our personalities make the best content creators.

It’s important not to overwhelm yourself on this step.

I recommend starting with one platform.

This focuses you more on your craft, rather than on your online presence being dispersed to multiple channels.

Just pick one and create an account.

It can be YouTube, or Twitter, or Instagram…

They all work.

Choosing one doesn’t matter so much.

Creating consistent content on them is what matters most.

It’s how you’ll grow your brands’ social reach.

Step 4: Grow Your Personal Brand

Now for the hardest part. There’s no sugar coating it here. You need to put in the work to grow your brands’ social reach.

This is the step where most people fail.

This is where most give up.

Anything worth achieving requires hard work.

If it wasn’t hard, everyone would be successful.

You need eyes on your work.

Building a website is useless without visitors.

Creating a social media account is useless without followers.

Creating products or services is useless without buyers.

You need to grow an audience of like-minded, creative people that will want to buy from you.

There’s nothing “salesy” about this either. Never put pressure on your followers to buy from you. If you hate pushy sales, guess what? They’ll hate it too.

Do the amount that feels authentic to you.

Be balanced with it.

Every so often, you can talk about your products and services.

You should also put the links to them in the bio of your social media accounts.

As your brand grows, your income grows.

Step 5: Monetize your Personal Brand

How you make money is up to you as the creator behind your creativity.

And let me be clear: There is nothing wrong with earning money through your art.

You need money to survive in the modern world. That’s just how it is.

So keep this in mind: If what you craft is truly adding value to other people’s lives, in any shape or form, then you should be paid for it. Period.

Believe in that.

Here’s a few listed strategies:

Physical Products: Create physical products of your art to sell (canvas art, books, pottery, etc)
Digital Courses: Create digital courses to teach others the craft that you know best.
Educational Workshops: Create hands-on workshops to teach the craft that you know best.
Mentoring/coaching: This can be 1-on-1 or group coaching.
Affiliate Marketing: Promote your favorite products and get paid when someone used the link.
Sponsorships: When you grow big enough, you can get deals from your favorite brands through sponsorships.
Paid per views: For example, YouTube pays creators for the views they gain on their videos.
Paid Community: The platform “Skool” offers creators a way to start a paid community.

Similar to what I mentioned about the social media accounts, don’t overwhelm yourself here.

Don’t start with multiple. Focus on just one until you learn to make money with it.

Then you can always add more to your offers later on.

Here’s the process in a nutshell:

Create a personal brand mission
Create a Personal Website
Create social media accounts
Create valuable content to grow an audience of fans
Sell products and or services (to those that want them)

And most importantly: Everyone knows when a creator is being money hungry. Don’t fall victim to greed. It kills most good ideas and leaves the creators out to dry.

I’ll be going into more in-depth details on how to build a One Person Creator Business in the next articles.

Keep creating, my friends.

– Chase Mac

The post Stop Feeling Lost in Life: Turn Your Creativity into Purpose first appeared on Chase Mac.

The Zettelkasten: A Cure for Creative Minds

Chase Mac — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:10:13 +0000

My family knows me as an “idea guy” but in the past, they knew me better as a “no execution guy.”

As a creative personality type, I had loads of ideas. Good ones here and there, bad ones often, and sometimes even great ones.

But ideas are useless without the execution of them. They’re missing a critical step between the ideation and the action.

And that step is called organization.

As a creative, you need structure and clarity of your ideas to craft anything of artistic value. Ideas without organization become nothingness. Black holes. A gooey residue left in the mind to dissolve into the abyss.

I was too familiar with this. Doing nothing with my creative ideas. And shrugging them off to family and friends with “convincing” excuses.

Cal Newport, a renowned productivity author, not only teaches the importance of focused deep work but also “organizational productivity.”

But the path that leads to organized productivity needs to start with organized ideas. Because without organization, the execution of ideas often becomes too daunting of a task.

The key is to have structure from start to finish.

Consider the fact that you could be just one executed idea away from changing your entire life.

If you organize your creative ideas now, they’ll work harder for you in the future. The big ideas will become more obvious and the execution of them becomes more clear.

As a creative, drowning in my unstructured thinking, I realized something. If I don’t have a system to organize my thoughts, none of them would ever become more than just that… fleeting thoughts.

In other words, ideas without organization are ideas without a living future.

The Suffocation of Ideas

Your creative ideas deserve a chance to sprout. To live. To breathe.

As creatives, we’re addicted to consuming art, whether it’s in the form of books, movies, paintings, or music. When we experience the work of other artists, we’re infused with the same energy that inspired them. It’s how we’re all connected as creatives. We’re all cut from the same cloth. Inspiring each other and obsessing over our next creative idea to become something more than just a thought.

The human mind is the most powerful tool on earth. It’s what separates us from the animals. But it comes with its own caveats…

On one end of the spectrum, it can be an incredible creativity machine. On the other end, it can destroy your mental health.

For me, and what I know now, my hyperactive mind was the culprit for my debilitating insomnia for 10 years.

The place where my ideas came from was also the most detrimental place to keep them stored.

This viscous cycle of hyperactive thinking ironically gave me a false sense of hope for my ideas. That if I thought about them long and hard enough, somehow they would materialize into a creative direction all on their own. Instead, they left me restless and anxious, as if I was being suffocated from my own thinking.

We all know that proper rest is critical for the overall health of the mind, yet there I was, tossing and turning at 3 am, lost in thought. Lost in stress. Trying to solve a complicated puzzle in my head.

The root problem of my insomnia was stemming from how I process my thoughts, or more so the lack of my thought processing. Not the act of thinking itself. But the act of overthinking my ideas too often, without a proper ritual of releasing them. This is determinedly for creatives. It’s a blockade between the artist and the maker.

If the root problem of my hyperactive thinking and insomnia was lacking a system to process my creative ideas, then the solution became obvious: I needed to find a method to capture my daily thoughts instead of obsessively thinking about them day and night.

Empty the Mind to Free Creativity

As I went down a rabbit hole of research, I landed in an area of note taking systems called Personal Knowledge Management (or PKM for short). Some of these PKM systems are even referred to as a “Second Brain” because of their powerful functionality for creative deep thinkers.

Don’t let these names confuse you though, they’re just fancy titles for a ‘note taking system.’ At their core, that is all they are.

We often compare the human mind to a computer, but it fails at the most important aspect of one. The ability to neatly organize files into folders.

This is where a “Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)” system comes into play. It does exactly what the name suggests: It’s a system to store, organize, and manage our personal knowledge and ideas.

The mind is an impressive, yet vulnerable, organic thinking machine. It’s three pounds of fatty tissue, with neurons communicating through electro-chemical signals all day long.

As incredible as that sounds, it’s also the playground for chronic hyperactive thinking for creatives. These dopamine-seeking thoughts can easily consume your cognitive attention, depleting your mental peace, and affecting your sleep and overall well-being.

The Power of Writing (for Creatives)

Creatives are deep thinkers, and deep thinkers have unique insights and perspectives about the way they view the world around them. Because of this, I believe every creative should also have a ritual for writing.

I’m not saying you have to choose ‘writing’ as your preferred art form like me. Maybe yours is music, or filmmaking, or acting, or (fill in the blank here). But what I am saying is that the practice of writing is a powerful tool that most creatives should to tap into and take advantage of. Perhaps your futures greatest art depends on it. The act of writing your thoughts down surfaces the richest artistic ideas that are currently locked away in the crevasses of your mind, begging for your discovery and attention.

No matter what art form you choose, writing your thoughts down will lead to an outcome of better crafted art. You are a creator, and art flows out of the deepest facets of the mind. Maybe no one truly knows where the art begins and the creator ends. Sometimes it’s as if you’re just the vessel between the creative energy and the artistic craft that flows through you. Either way, the mind is the gateway to arts creation.

We hear about the benefits of journaling everywhere. It’s a powerful method for releasing what’s locked inside your mind. Journaling is just a simple method of pouring out your thoughts onto blank pages. Even though most people focus on the therapeutic aspect of it, for creatives, it’s a powerful practice for unclogging your creative ideas and clearing up the mental capacity for more creative thinking to take place.

A PKM system takes this concept to the next level. Allowing you to not only write down and organize your thoughts into a powerful filing system, but will also surface profound discoveries that you wouldn’t have pieced together without it.

Having a consistent writing ritual like this will become the vehicle for your greatest artistic accomplishments. It creates a bridge between creative discoveries and actionable awareness.

Do you need to be a good writer to use the specific PKM system that I’m about to share? Not at all. Writing is just the external transfer of thinking. If you can take notes, then you can already write well enough.

There’s a constant dialogue happening inside your head. I’m not talking about the egoic mind here, I’m talking about the creative consciousness that lives far deeper than the ego. It’s where us creatives tap into the creative flow. The energy that puts us into a trance when crafting our work. As creatives who want to make art for a living, it’s crucial we learn how to lean into this energy any time we feel it coming on. Writing connects you to the creative conscious energy that’s begging for your craftmanship to take it somewhere new.

I love reading ancient philosophy, but I’m well aware that no record of their teachings would exist today if the philosophers chose to never write down their insights. They had ideas floating around in their head that they felt were worth analyzing. If they never chose to write them down and reflect on them, the world would have been robbed from some of the greatest philosophical and psychological breakthroughs.

Or consider therapy. Why does it work for so many people? It’s a way for them to vent their deepest thoughts. Often times even surprising themselves with what flows out. Even the act of speaking your thoughts out loud to a therapist helps people gain clarity, relieving stress and anxiety, and, guess what… even sleep.

If journaling and speaking about your thoughts out loud is therapeutic because of the mental release of them, it only means that the opposite, keeping thoughts caged in, is anti-therapeutic. Anti-creative. You’re keeping the lid of your mind sealed, pressure cooking your ideas into a thick, useless sludge. For creatives, that’s a catastrophic state of being. It’s the anti-state of creative flow.

This is why the benefits of PKM are so potent for creatives. It’s a system to not only let you vent your creative thoughts, but to also evaluate them on a deeper, methodical level.

And, if your art form of choice happens to be writing, like it is for me, then having a system like this will be one of your most powerful resources.

By writing down your ideas daily, you will naturally become better at the art of writing. I’ve witnessed this myself. I wrote mostly gibberish the first few months. Maybe I still do, but I can tell you it was definitely worse. I struggled to transfer my thoughts clearly to paper. Then I noticed over time, my thinking and writing became sharper. Practice and effort will always lead to improvement. One can’t exist without the other improving.

And many people overthink what writing is at its core. The influential writing teacher, William Zinssler, says it best, “writing is [simply] thinking on paper.” That’s all it is.

Maybe you’re not looking to become a writer. That’s perfectly okay too. Then let’s look at the impact of written communication through history and how far humanity has gotten because of it. Written words are how we share stories, messages, and lessons with each other. It’s the reason higher education exists. How religions were documented. And how laws and governments are formed. Written communication is how we advanced as a civilization. Most people underestimate the true value of writing.

And it goes in all directions…

Would any of your favorite books, movies, or songs exist without writing? They were crafted through written chapters, screenplays, and lyrics.

Would any of your favorite brands, products, and softwares exist without writing? They were crafted through written business plans, scripts, and documents.

This is why I believe that if you’re a creative, writing should be at the core foundation of your creative workflow. You might have something to share with the world, or you might not. Regardless, you’ll never find out if you don’t start writing your ideas down in the first place.

The Fall of My Google Drive

Before learning more about PKM systems, I was previously using my Google Drive as a half-baked solution to store my ideas. But as time passed, and the folders filled up, its functionality became unproductive.

This is because Google Drive was designed to be a cloud storage software, rather than a robust PKM software.

I thought making Google Docs for all my ideas was enough, but those ideas were left to die within the cloud. I never read them again. Never searched for them. Never reflected on them. They were forgotten about the second they were typed up.

My Google Drive became overwhelmed with topical lists of ideas. These bloated documents and folders lacked structured and reflective search-ability. My Google Drive turned into a digital “brain-dump journal” rather than an organizational system. I was extracting the chaos of ideas from my mind and uploading them into another form of chaos on the cloud.

Even though brain-dumping your thoughts is beneficial on a therapeutic level, as creatives, we’re after more than just that. We’re after organizing our unique insights and perspectives in order to craft something of artistic value from it later. Something meaningful. Something worth sharing with the world.

I didn’t just need a system for idea extraction; I also needed a system for idea discovery.

I wanted a way to find all the big creative ideas I had between the mediocre ones. An organizational system that would ping my attention when something worth the investment of my creativity would surface. And my Google Drive wasn’t cutting it.

The Art of Idea Organization

While observing the routines of some of history’s most successful creatives, The New York Times Columnist, David Brooks, came to this conclusion: The most successful creative minds are the ones who can not only think like an artist but also work like accountants.

In other words, creativity as an artist is not enough in the long run of creative success. You have to systemize your routines around creativity to make a worthy impact on the world, over and over again. No artist wants to be a one-hit-wonder. We love losing ourselves in the making of art, and we often crave to want to do it for a living. We’ll never be able to make a sustainable career out of it if we don’t have consistent rituals, routines, and systems in our workflow.

David Books’ discovery about creative successes is at the core of what I’m saying in this article.

It’s exactly how we need to operate in order to succeed in our creative endeavors. We’re up against a rock and a hard place as artist. We can either succeed with our creative skills, or submit to the monotony of a “traditional” career that we’ll likely dread every day.

Just like professional accountants rely on software tools like Microsoft Excel to manage their data, creatives need to rely on organizational tools, like a PKM system, to manage their creative ideas.

And don’t be afraid of structure and routine as a creative. The friction between the two is a common misconception. We often think we need complete separation from order to flow out our best ‘creative output,’ but in reality we NEED structure and routine in order to consistently craft our best work.

Now there are different variations of PKM methods out there, but the specific one I recommend the most is the very one I write in EVERY SINGLE DAY to run my digital writing business.

It’s called a Zettelkasten.

The Zettelkasten

A Zettelkasten is a PKM method that was invented by German scholar, Niklas Luhmann in the 1950’s.

The word ‘zettelkasten’ is German and simply translates to “notebox” in English.

So it’s just that, a notebox where you store your ideas.

But where the magic happens is how you organize the notes within this “notebox.”

Luhmann was a prolific writer in his times, and published over 50 books and hundreds of academic articles, which is a massive amount for a single person to accomplish in their professional career. It’s a rare achievement.

Whenever asked about how he could produce so many writing projects, he would always give credit to his very own methodical note taking system (the Zettelkasten), as being the sole reason behind his impressive writing accomplishments.

Now, of course, since Luhmann was writing in the 1950s, he only used an analog version of a Zettelkasten, meaning paper-based notes, but most people these days use a digital version, including myself, since we have the benefit of computer technology.

I would like to imagine that if Luhmann were still alive today, he would use a digital version of his Zettelkasten, but in some online communities that opinion is controversial since there are still advocates of the original analog version.

Note taking softwares like Obisidian or Roam Research do a great job at digitizing the system by having the important functionality of linking between notes (If you’re curious, I use Obisidian for mine).

My Zettelkasten experience is a bit unorthodox, as I actually started out using a digital version, then converted to an analog version to try out Luhmann’s exact process, but I eventually opted to go back to digital since it made the most sense with my workflow and on-the-go writing practices.

Even though I experienced several benefits from using the analog version, the convenience of digital out-weighed them in the long run.

So what makes a Zettelkasten so special compared to other PKM methods?

Its concept revolves around notes being organized into a unique filling system compared to other methodologies.

For example, a popular PKM system that several writers use, like authors Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene, is called a “Commonplace Book.”

With this method, you simply file your notes under topical categories. So if you wrote a note within the topic of “Self-Improvement,” you would file that note in the category section or folder labeled “Self-Improvement.” Pretty standard stuff.

Even though I’m an advocate for simplicity, in rare cases, like Personal Knowledge Management for creative work, the most basic of methods are not always superior.

For me, the “Commonplace Book” method reminds me of how I was previously using my Google Drive, which, as you know, didn’t work for how my mind wanted to naturally gather ideas together.

This is where the strength and, in my opinion, superiority of a Zettelkasten system shines.

To outside viewers, it often seems like a complicated PKM system, but its foundation is quite simple.

Here’s the gist of it:

If digital-based, you write your ideas down in a software like Obsidian or, if analog-based, you write them down on index cards.

Luhmann himself used a note card similar in size to a 4×6 index card.

The reason I bring this up is that this specific index card size forces you to write a note that can only fit onto the physical real estate of it.

This is more important than you think. A Zettelkasten’s note should never be too long. It should only have ONE atomic idea on it. Meaning small in size, like a single thought, or a quote, or factual piece of information.

Having a note with a page-length of content is the exact opposite of what you want in a Zettelkasten. It’s one of the benefits of using the analog version. You’re confined to the physical writing space of the index card. If your idea doesn’t fit on it, then it’s an indicator that you need to conceptualize the idea more precisely.

It forces you to master the art of writing by stripping complex ideas down into their simplest yet most impactful form. Packing them into a potent piece of written knowledge.

But since I use a digital Zettalkasten, and I can technically make the length of a note as long as I want via the digital document (where there is no end to the notes real estate), I still force myself to visually imagine that I’m writing the note on a 4×6 index card to keep them as atomic as possible. This has helped me a lot.

Many of my notes are even one sentence long, to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

Once you have notes with atomic ideas written on them, the next step is to organize them by placing each note near other notes that are contextually related to each other. This is very different from organizing notes based on topical categories like you would in the ‘commonplace book’ method like mentioned to earlier.

In other words, if the concept of a new notes idea relates to another note already filed in your Zettelkasten, then you’ll file this new note right next to the related one to keep their ideas linked together forever.

The analog version uses physical index card filing boxes to do this in, but in a digital Zettelkasten, like mine using the application Obsidian, I’m simply linking the notes together within software functionality to keep them digitally connected within the system.

This filing methodology changed everything for me. It organizes my creative ideas in a way that’s similar to how the mind naturally thinks. Because we don’t think of ideas based on topics, we think of them based on conceptual relations. While reading a paragraph in a book, it might remind you of “this idea” which then reminds you of “that idea” and so on…

That’s the magic of a Zettelkasten. The notes inside it are organized based on the relationships between ideas, rather than the topics and categories of them.

To show you how amazing it is, imagine you wrote a note about ‘productivity’ as creative, then the next week you wrote a different note about the ‘mental health’ benefits of doing creative activities.

In a topical-based system, like a Commonplace Book, you would have these two notes in separate sections. One under the “productivity category” and the other under the “Mental Health” category. But a Zettelkasten is different. Your note about mental health might end up right next to your productivity note if you felt that there’s an interesting connection between the two ideas and felt it was worth keeping them together.

Now imagine doing this as your Zettelkasten grows from 50 notes to 50,000. While sifting through your “note box” to inspire your next creative project, you would stumble across incredible connections and unique insights between ideas that you would have never discovered without a relation-based filing system like the one it offers.

Slow Down to Create More

A Zettelkasten might seem more time-consuming than other “traditional” note taking systems and, the truth is, it is. But that’s also the beauty of it. The act of making good art often stems from the slow digestion and inspiration of big ideas. So the “time-consuming” aspect of a Zettelkasten is also responsible for the creative genius of it. It’s how the inventor, Niklas Luhmann, was able to write so many profound books and articles from his Zettelkasten, even though he spent the majority of his time processing and organizing notes into it.

Within your Zettelkasten, sections of your notes will begin to sprout up, reaching for the light. Waiting patiently for your attention to craft them into something more. Maybe those ideas will become a book, or a screenplay, or a song. Your Zettelkasten is the bridge between your ideas and the execution of them. Allowing you, as the creator, to see more clearly where you need to focus your creative efforts.

Chris Aldrich, a popular Zettelkasten blogger, put it best; “A zettelkasten isn’t simply the aggregation repository many use it for – it’s a rumination device, a serendipity engine, a creativity accelerator.”

And from my experience, using one can even put you in a creative trance that’s hard to describe. Perhaps the closest thing to it is feeling like a mad scientist working in his laboratory, dissecting ideas, reflecting on the data, and discovering new breakthroughs.

To wrap things up, here’s the Zettelkasten method in a nutshell:

1) Think, research, and read about your creative interests to inspire ideas
2) Write these ideas down into atomic notes
3) Organize and file them next to relating notes
4) Review your notes periodically to discover unique connections between them
5) Use these discoveries to craft your art (in whatever form you prefer)
6) Then repeat

And remember, in the end, a Zettelkasten’s purpose isn’t to be a note-collection system. Its purpose is to be an output-creation system.

Don’t just be a collector. Be a creator.

So with that said, write, write and write. And then when you think you’re done, write some more.

You might surprise yourself how much you enjoy the writing process. You might just be the next great creative who has something important to share with the world.

Believe in that.

Keep writing your ideas down, my friends.

May thy keyboard chip and shatter.

-Chase Mac

The post The Zettelkasten: A Cure for Creative Minds first appeared on Chase Mac.

Should Direct Quotes Go In Your Zettelkasten?

Chase Mac — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 02:23:33 +0000

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The post Should Direct Quotes Go In Your Zettelkasten? first appeared on Chase Mac.

How a Hybrid System is Superior for Productivity

Chase Mac — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 01:43:37 +0000

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