3 Simple Ways to Beat Creative Resistance

One of the hardest parts of being creative for me is the resistance that comes attached to every project. Not only is it always lurking, but there’s an abundance of it, and if you’re not careful it can destroy your sessions.

What we need as creators is a way to fight back against it – a toolbox to have at the ready when the beast inevitably rears its ugly head.

Over the years I’ve uncovered a whole bunch of methods and tricks to beat it back down into Hell, but today I’m going to share just three really simple approaches to push through it. These are, in my experience, the tactics that get the job done most of the time, whether you’re making music, writing, or doing anything creative.

Let’s jump in.

#1. Do something else (creative).

Yes, it sounds incredibly simple – and it is – but if you’ve heard this mentioned before it’s because it does work a lot of the time.

I put up a poll on Instagram yesterday asking whether or not everyone else has a second creative interest, something other than their main deal to pursue as a kind of side project. The answer was, in almost all cases, yes!

This is good. If you’ve got something to go to when you’re hitting all kinds of walls in your main project, you’re effectively giving resistance the finger by moving your creativity to somewhere it can’t get to you – at least not for a while. Resistance wants to take you out of the game, so if you’re still in it, you’re winning.

It might be that you have a second instrument to reach for, or you’re working on a novel in your spare time. Maybe you’re a professional sculptor on the side. These are all good and can often be the answer if you’re not getting anywhere with your main project, but you still feel like you want to creative.

You know that feeling? Like you know you’re still in it, but your project is kind of telling you you’re not? This is often the case for me. It can be incredibly frustrating, but having a second (or third, or whatever) creative pillow to fall back on can ease that pain. Nowadays, I jump from music to writing as soon as I’m feeling stuck.

If you don’t have a second creative interest – get one. Seriously, there’s no better way to stay connected to your creativity than to be doing it. You don’t even have to be good at it! Just pick something cool and start fucking around.

#2. Turn to shit.

I hope it’s obvious that I don’t mean this literally.

What I’m talking about here is essentially sidestepping the details of your project and just concentrating on getting as “big picture” as you possibly can with it. If you’re a producer, this might mean forgetting sound design and drum details (or even writing music at all) and just sketching out a really rough version of the skeleton of your track. As rough as you can go, really. You’ll know how to do this in your respective field.

In my experience, this is where you should allow yourself to make the broadest strokes the project will allow; I’m talking copy and pasting ideas, stick figure drawings, etc. This is what I mean by “turn to shit”. If this is what we’re doing, it’s allowed to be shit. We’re not amidst the details, we’re acting like impatient children and getting to the “end” of our project in whatever way we can.

This really fucks with resistance, because it usually arises when things get hard and makes you feel like your work sucks. So how do we combat that? Make it as easy as possible and allow it to suck. Resistance won’t know what to do. It’ll stand there for a second like a confused bully and then bail when it realises it’s got no friends.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that your project has to end up being shit. You just have to do it enough to get rid of the bully, and then you can get back to the details and polish your work up – with a fresh set of ideas that have arisen from your sketch, too!

#3. Have an exit plan.

This one is personal to you. I understand that what works for others won’t necessarily always work for you, so you need a personalised plan to escape the deadly grip of resistance.

What do I mean by this? It means that when resistance comes knocking, you’ve already boarded up your door and have your escape pod ready to go.

I would love to be able to say, “just walk away from the project for a bit and come back to it” but let me tell you why this doesn’t always work without any further thought: I find it unbelievably difficult to leave a project in a bad place. If you expect me to walk away from my work without being at least a little bit happy with it, you should also expect I’ll be in a bad mood for the rest of the day – or until I go back to the project.

What’s even worse is that if I leave a track in a bad place, I don’t want to go back to it. The idea that my track is a piece of shit is cemented into my brain – I don’t want to open that up the next time I sit at my computer. That is the very definition of resistance having complete control over you, even when you’re not actually doing the work.

Yes, taking breaks is extremely important. I don’t do it enough. I’m not saying don’t take them – in fact, I’m saying definitely do take them – but just have a plan that you can execute before you walk away.

My plan:

If I desperately need to walk away from my work, these are some quick approaches that allow me to do that without wanting to cry:

• If I’m creating a new idea, I need to at least have a loop down. Even if I’m just filling the gaps with saw waves or sines in place of finished bass sounds, I need to have a loop. If I don’t, I can pretty much guarantee that the project will never see the light of day again.

• If I’m mixing and it’s sounding like shit, I’ll take all the plugins off and quickly rebalance the mix before I walk away. This can be a five-minute balance – it doesn’t have to be amazing. It just has to at least sound halfway there before I bail. I do this because resistance usually appears for me during mixing when I’ve done too much and ruined the balance or the original feel of the track.

• If I’m doing sound design and I’m not getting anywhere, I’ll watch a tutorial and copy it exactly. This way, at the very least, I can walk away having made a sound. In these situations, I’ll usually try to find a sound to copy that sounds good when it’s repeated a lot. That way I can get an idea down with just the one bass and be kind of happy.

• If I’m in the writing stage of a track, pre-made FX, synths, basses, whatever, are my go-to. I can replace them later. Like creating a new idea, I need to leave my writing session with enough to come back to, and if someone else’s hard work needs to sit in my track for a bit to keep me going, so be it.

Of course, these approaches might not work for you. You know yourself better than anyone, so customise it to work for you. If you can easily walk away from something you’re unhappy with, you’re ahead of the game – my game, anyway. But if you can’t, and I don’t blame you if this is the case, then I suggest an exit plan to be put in place.

And that’s it!

Again, there are a million different ways to beat creative resistance, but just as I think it does in most areas of life, I find that the Pareto principle applies here; these three approaches are responsible for most of my victories against resistance.

Do you use these approaches? Or do you have your own personalised strategy for smashing through the bully’s bricks? I would love to hear about what works for you – please let me know in the comments below!

If you found these useful, you might like to check out my post, “These Music Productions Habits Fucked Me Over, Bigtime” to learn how to avoid some of music production traps that will slow you down on your creative journey.

Thanks for reading!