{"id":54261,"date":"2022-04-25T06:00:36","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T10:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=54261"},"modified":"2022-04-24T18:07:04","modified_gmt":"2022-04-24T22:07:04","slug":"the-creativity-gradient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=54261","title":{"rendered":"The Creativity Gradient"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent a lot of the last two weeks thinking about creativity and motivation. As my health<\/a> has deteriorated, my behavior has shifted from high-creativity tasks to low-creativity ones.<\/p>\n

Below are some example behaviors. At the top of the list are the high-creativity tasks that require lots of mental power, and at the bottom are uncreative pursuits for when I’m operating in Zombie Mode.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Programming.<\/li>\n
  2. Writing about programming.<\/li>\n
  3. Writing about something else complex: Industry trends<\/a>, project management<\/a>, worldbuilding<\/a>, studio management<\/a>, and so on.<\/li>\n
  4. Writing about personal stuff that doesn’t require any research.<\/li>\n
  5. Writing rants about stuff that grinds my gears.<\/li>\n
  6. Reading articles about the gaming industry and technology.<\/li>\n
  7. Playing a new or challenging game.<\/li>\n
  8. Playing a familiar game.<\/li>\n
  9. Watching a new movie that requires me to pay attention to follow the action.<\/li>\n
  10. Playing Minecraft or one of my other “comfort food” games.<\/li>\n
  11. Watching a dumb movie that doesn’t ask much of you, or offer much in return.<\/li>\n
  12. Watching a familiar movie or show that I already enjoy.<\/li>\n
  13. Watching short-formLess than 15 minutes?<\/span> YouTube video essays.<\/li>\n
  14. Watching 5-minute skits, memes, gags, highlight reels, and other content that doesn’t require any thought or context.<\/li>\n
  15. Scrolling Reddit.<\/li>\n
  16. Scrolling Reddit and skipping everything that takes more than 5 seconds to digest.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’m used to spending most of my week in the top 8, pumping out #content and consuming articles that will later become grist for the mill. But over the last few weeks I notice that I’ve been spending more and more time in the bottom half of the list. The article you’re reading now marks the first time in days that I’ve escaped the bottom 3.<\/p>\n

    I’m not suffering or anything. I’m probably doing great, all things considered. But I really do miss that constant surge of creative energy.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’ve spent a lot of the last two weeks thinking about creativity and motivation. As my health has deteriorated, my behavior has shifted from high-creativity tasks to low-creativity ones. Below are some example behaviors. At the top of the list are the high-creativity tasks that require lots of mental power, and at the bottom are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54261"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54265,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54261\/revisions\/54265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}