Emmy and AACTA award-winning producer turned executive coach Ellenor Cox shares invaluable insights into the four key daily habits of high-performing creatives that focus on creativity, contribution, connection and character.
One of my best friends is a highly successful television writer. There’s a shorthand to our check-ins when one of us mentions that it’s a ‘chopping wood, fetching water’ kind of day. We even have emojis on speed dial for this exchange.
What we’re telling each other is that today may lack the glam and glitz we once imagined our creative careers would be full of, but by stoically applying ourselves to mundane tasks, we’re building the foundations and reinforcing the habits that incrementally lead to our successes.
As a coach to many successful creatives in our industry, I’m always looking for patterns of behaviour or habits that produce high-performance results. I’ve discovered a few key commonalities in how these high-performing creatives design their days, which leads to them experiencing outstanding outcomes.
What’s encouraging is that these habits cost no money and take little time once integrated into our routines.
Clarity and vision
‘If you can dream it, you can do it’ – Walt Disney
The number one rule is to have a vision for your life. You need to know where you’re going and what you want to feel, sense, experience, give, contribute, or be. Notice I didn’t say ‘do’ or ‘have’ – this isn’t what people talk about on their deathbed, yet so much of our focus as a sector seems to be on the doing and having.
Rather than starting your day considering everything you need to do that day, consider how you’d like to feel at the end of the day. Once you have clarity on that, you can focus on matching activities that would generate or help us feel these particular feelings or experience these types of emotions.
More than any others I work with, creative people want to feel like they’ve created or contributed to something and, significantly, that they’ve connected with others. These are the ingredients for the secret sauce to our creative lives and the unique aspects of our creative DNA that we need to tend to and nurture daily.
So start your day intentionally, focusing on how you will show up in these three key areas. Ideally, work on doing so as early as possible to amp up your emotional dial of motivation and productivity.
It may be as simple as a few heartfelt comments on colleagues’ social media feeds, a private message of encouragement to a workmate, or a dedicated hour away from notifications to power through some writing or chip away at that upcoming submission or proposal.
Notice how invigorated these activities will make you feel and enable you to charge into the afternoon hours when our willpower often starts to wane.
A great way to keep the focus on your purpose and vision is to focus on just one person who could benefit from your work and efforts – not millions, not even a group of people, just one person. To find this person who will give meaning and purpose to your work, ask yourself, ‘Who needs my A game?’
Considering this question, you look beyond your individual performance or feelings and connect with a reason to be your best for others. This stokes the necessity of being your best to help others, which allows us to hit high performance faster and stay there longer.
Necessity through identity
‘I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want’ – Stanley Kubrick
This brings me to the concept of character – the fourth C in the pillars of creative high performance.
Another critical question to ask yourself at the start of every day is, ‘Who do I need to be today to bring my A game?’ When I ask my highly successful creative clients why they work so hard or how they can stay so focused, they inevitably answer with something like, ‘It’s just who I am’.
Whatever your creative goals are, you must form your identity and character around them and then reverse-engineer the steps to achieve your outcome. You do this by embodying these character traits into your daily routines.
Sometimes, this may involve the perceived tedious acts of ‘chopping wood and fetching water’, but what you’re actually doing with these activities is being consistent, persistent, dedicated and resilient. You may have determined these character traits will enable you to reach your goals, and by enacting them, you’re strengthening them into unconscious and non-negotiable habits.
So when you’re feeling unmotivated to work, you can remind yourself that the unsavoury tasks sitting before you are a requirement. Say to yourself, ‘This is who I am. This is what I do’. You’ll notice that when we cultivate a strong identity around our work processes, we can push through any form of procrastination and self-doubt.
The power of intention
‘Drama is life with the dull bits cut out’ – Alfred Hitchcock
One final common habit I’ve noticed is that these high-performing creatives know they can generate whatever feelings they want in any situation.
Rather than taking the emotions that land on them and carrying them around all day, burdened with ruminating on the past or worrying about the future, they are consciously fully aware and engaged in the present moment before them.
One of the easiest ways to develop this level of mindfulness is to practise moving from ‘tension to intention’ at every transitioning moment of your day.
For example, imagine you’ve just got off the phone from a tense conversation and are running late for a production meeting. Most of us enter the room on auto-pilot, unaware that we’re still caught up in the emotions of the previous encounter.
Another path that takes no more than 10 seconds to achieve is available to us.
Before entering the room, take a moment to release the tension in your face, neck, and shoulders. A super quick way to do this is to imagine your eyes are smiling; your tongue is relaxed against your bottom palette, your shoulders are lead balloons, and an imaginary string is pulling the crown of your head upwards – try it right now and see the stress dissolve instantly from your body.
Now, set an intention for the feeling you want to bring to the following situation and how you want to feel about yourself. Ask yourself, ‘What is the primary feeling I want to bring to this situation?’
Ideally, if you’ve already created some intentionality around how you want your day to unfold, then the answer will be instant, and your emotional regulation and awareness will be crystal clear.
These habits and tips can easily be integrated into your daily routines with just a little foresight and focus. However, the results you’ll start to notice will be significant and far-reaching.
The life of a creative pursuit requires an inordinate amount of courage and tenacity, but the journey can be made more joyous, compassionate, and easy by choosing to embody some of these concepts.
So next time you realise that you have a ‘chopping wood, fetching water’ kind of day, perhaps all that needs to happen is a quick reframe and some key questions for yourself about how you’re really going to show up.
Ellenor offers a range of free resources to the screen sector at www.ellenorcox.com. These include individual and team coaching, consultancy, and workshop facilitation.