If You Want to Create Better Stuff, You Probably Need More of This
It was board game night at the Brison household, and I was about to flip a table over 3 cardboard coins.
We were playing 7 Wonders, a game which I would only recommend if numbers, fantasy, and statistics appeal to you. (Luckily my family falls right into that vein).
The problem was, I was flat broke and busted. When my wife and brother were buying up everything, I’d sit there, impotent and unable to do anything.
After a while, Dad turned to me and said:
“You know, money isn’t everything. But it sure does help to have some.”
What you don’t know about my dad is he’s a sort of Christian Confucious, likely to drop bombs like this out of nowhere.
He’s right, you know – money isn’t everything.
Margin is everything.
When don’t have much money (or any money), you have no room for margin. Everything has to go perfectly.
But when you’ve got a little cushion in the bank, you get to breathe a little more deeply. You can handle imperfection.
This concept applies to your daily life as well.
Creating space between you and life will give you more of a lift than any amount of dough.
If you want to be an artist, a photographer, a writer, but don’t plan for any of those things to happen, who are you kidding? Your dreams will just wash away.
On the other hand, if you create a little silence, if you build a little buffer, if you carve out a cave for you to create, the Muse comes out to play.
Margin supplies two major benefits for the Creative:
Ideas
Let me ask you something – when was the last time you had a great idea when you were staring at a computer screen? I thought so.
Ideas are life for the Creative, and they don’t come without at least a little bit of margin. It’s hard to put together a puzzle on a moving train.
Giving yourself time away from “busy-ness” can help spawn new ideas. You might get bored whenever you click that power switch, but boredom can be an ally. When the brain has some down time, it’s freed up to think about high-level things.
Peace
The best thing about more margin is it brings peace. Not only because you have more time to do what you want to do, but because you have time to do nothing. And doing nothing is very important. Probably as important as doing something, actually.
Whether it’s saying no to a few things or simply waking up earlier, margin is essential to the creative. New thought comes both in the chaos and and in the dead space.
Just be sure you’re making room for both.
