A few years ago, which seems as far as another life, I launched a year-long photography project called TLV365. I set a goal to capture and publish one photo a day, and by that to create a collage of an eclectic, surprising, city — a city you can love or hate, but you cannot stay indifferent to.
With the number of photos many of you probably capture each day, this might sound like a trivial task. But it was the commitment to do so seven days a week for an entire year that turned this project into a real creative challenge. Add to that the desire to do reasonably good work, and you got yourself a full-time job.
A lot has changed since then. One thing hasn’t — at least for me. Wherever I go, I look around me and most times I pull out my camera. Sometimes, nothing comes out of it. At other times, magic happens.
100 days ago I started another project: Habit Zero — an open creative journal. The idea was simple: to share my personal “creative workout” with anyone who wants to develop their creativity. With seempli being an open creativity platform, anyone has unlimited access to our vast collection of creative challenges. But, having someone to do this process with has a completely different impact (even if your connection with that guide is only via a daily blog).
And so, I found myself once again with a daily long-term commitment. And I soon realized doing one creative challenge a day is one thing, but writing about it 500 words a day on average is a totally different level of commitment. But you know what? I loved it! I loved it mainly because I was surprised by how much I discovered and learned in the process.
In the past 100 days, I used each of the creative challenges I’ve done as an opportunity to discover something about creativity. I didn’t try to capture the “creative process” — creativity doesn’t work as a repeatable process with defined inputs and outputs. But some things can act as catalysts to the creative flow. Some things boost creativity. And sometimes, awareness of simple things you do or don’t can make all the difference. I tried to capture these insights as mental notes in each of the daily entries in Habit Zero.
If you followed Habit Zero at least in part, I hope you used this opportunity to play along and practice your creative skills. If you haven’t, it’s not too late: you can always browse the Habit Zero archives and revisit the challenges, the insights, and my reflections.
And in case you wonder, this is far from being the end of this journey.
I am going to take a short break from publishing a daily entry in my open creative journal to allow myself to focus on some projects that didn’t get the right attention in the past three months. One of them is directly connected to Habit Zero, but we’ll get to that shortly.
While I’m “away,” seempli is 100% available of course, so don’t let this break cut your creative development. Pick a random challenge from the Master Your Creativity channel every day and play with it throughout the day. Keep an Insight Journal and reflect on your Insights. You will learn about what makes your creativity tick, and that’s what really matters.
You see, Habit Zero is not a social-media challenge. It is not a cool thing to do to pass the time until something new emerges. Habit Zero is… a habit. It is the core of creativity, and creativity is essential for defining where you aim to be, and for paving the way to go there. If you believe like me that with our creative skills we can change the world, Habit Zero is where it all starts: with seeing the world as the amazing thing it is and imagining how we can make it even better.
See you soon,
Lidor