Creativity on Autopilot: How Practice Unlocks Your Art

Here’s the short version of a story I recently read in Business Secrets from the Bible by Rabbi Daniel Lapin and Susan Lapin: You are moving to a new location for work. You already know the area is dangerous, so you prepare by buying a book on martial arts. The book is full of chapters teaching you how to fend off an attacker.

You pack it in your luggage, board the plane, and arrive at your new home. But before you even check in, a mugger approaches. You cannot say, Hold up. I know there's a chapter about this, but I haven’t had the chance to read it yet.

Creativity and the Power of Repetition

My takeaway always has to do with creativity. My mission is to inspire others to do their art.

After hearing this story, I immediately saw the connection between preparedness, repetition, and reacting automatically.

Because, you see, that is the essence an artist/creative/maker needs—to practice their art to such an extent that they can move without thinking.

This is probably obvious in many genres of art.

I remember when I was first learning to sew. Every step, every movement required my full attention. Eventually, after many mistakes, but much practice, it became effortless.

I no longer had to devote my full attention to the cutting, pinning, stitching, pressing. I could carry on in-depth conversations while my hands, arms, shoulders, and eyes went about the task of assembling a garment or a pillow or a window treatment.

Mastery Becomes Second Nature

The same is true for the creative, artist, maker.

The oil painter learns the feel of their paints. They can tell when the brush is getting too dry. They know how to add the shadows, the depth. Colors, composition—all become second nature.

The chef also—once they have mastered knife skills, sautéing, making the five basic sauces. What was once laborious, they can now achieve automatically.

Repetition Builds Muscle Memory

How can you benefit from this? Repetition is certainly the key. Doing the thing over and over again builds muscle memory.

When I sit down at my keyboard, I no longer have to think where the letters are. I learned that when I was in tenth grade in Mr. Rocheleau's class. My fingers know the home keys. I can write effortlessly without thinking, without even having to spell out most words—they just flow from my fingertips.

When you are endeavoring to take up a new craft, a new art form, it is necessary for you to devote your full attention.

Depending on how long you can spend and how often you can revisit the craft, you will become proficient.

Repetition is key.

Building a Routine for Productivity

But what about moving past attaining the skills? What about the other aspects of art-making? One common shared problem that many creatives face is productivity—or the lack thereof. They want to make more art, but they have other obligations, other barriers, excuses, as well as legitimate and viable reasons.

Perhaps a solution is to build in the regularity of the practice. Habit stacking is very successful in terms of helping anyone remember to do something.

For example, last October, after we had adopted three cats, two of them required medication. It was my task to give Dulcinea her meds every morning. It was easy for me to remember because when I took down my bottle of vitamins, I would also take down my kitty cat’s pills, grind them up, blend with water, and suck up the contents in a syringe. One thing depended upon the other. Taking my vitamins coupled very nicely with giving her the medication that she desperately needed.

Making Art a Daily Habit

If you want to be more productive and more regular in your art-making, can you stack your creative sessions with another daily activity?

It is true that many creative endeavors—whether it's painting, sewing, writing—these are things that take quite a bit of time.

But can you chunk out those tasks?

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Can you divide the process into smaller steps?

When I'm sewing, and if I am following a pattern, one step is to cut out the tissue.

Another step is to lay out the fabric. And a third step is to pin the tissue pattern onto the fabric and cut it out. Depending on the complexity of the garment, each step might take 15 to 20 minutes.

If I decide that every day when I come home from work and I hang up my coat and my purse and take off my shoes, that I will also spend 20 minutes on constructing this new outfit, before long, the thing is going to be finished.

If you are writing a novel, you would do well to visit and sit down at your desk, open your laptop, and spend 20 minutes.

The key is figuring out a way to repeat the process on a schedule.

Very soon, this routine will become automatic.

Very soon, you will not be able to imagine not doing your art.

Trigger Your Creativity with Environmental Cues

To make art more regularly, attach your creative sessions to something you already do. If you sew, break the process into small steps. If I commit to spending 20 minutes on a sewing project right after hanging up my coat every day when I get home, that outfit will be finished before long.

Writers can commit to 20-minute sessions after morning coffee or before bed. Soon, it will feel strange not to engage in your art.

Here’s how to start:

• Choose a project.
• Pick a time when you know you’ll have access to your tools.
• Set up reminders. A sticky note by your coat hook, a note on your mirror, a visual cue in your space.
• Let repetition do the work.

Before long, just like the displaced traveler in Rabbi Lapin’s story, you won’t need to pause, look up instructions, or ask a mentor. Instead, you will develop an automatic, instinctive response and do your art!