The Creativity Guild Is Making Me Do Weird Things... and I Like It!

It’s a commitment device forcing me to become a more interesting person

The Creativity Guild is a community of creative explorers looking to reignite our creative sparks.  This is the place to reconnect with your creativity, start the projects you’ve always wanted to work on and be the person you’ve always wanted to be.

Subscribe for free below to join the revolution…and to get a free dose of creative inspiration delivered to your inbox every two weeks :)

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This Substack is transforming me into a different human. I’m doing things I would not have otherwise done because The Creativity Guild exists.

A few examples of things The Creativity Guild has made me do:

• Reach out to AJ Jacobs for an interview

• Paint penguins with my daughter

• Take a guitar lesson and have my first ever music jam in my friend Ulf’s garage, followed by my second ever music jam with my high school friends, Graham and Roger.

• Live in a van in Arizona for a week

• Makes drawings trying to tell the visual story of having wrist surgery because I could only use one hand.

• Take my first improv class in 25 years

• Take a seafood cooking class to overcome my lifelong loathing of anything that lives underwater

My friend Katy Milkman ( Milkman Delivers), who hosts the Choiceology podcast and wrote the book How To Change, introduced me to the term “Commitment Device.” 

“Commitment devices have 2 basic features. First, people voluntarily elect to use them. This means people must be self-aware enough about the gap between their current goals and their likely future behaviors to recognize the value of taking steps to limit their future choices and actions… Second, commitment devices associate consequences with people’s failures to achieve their goals.”

One example of a Commitment Device might be motivating yourself to follow through with a behavioural change by committing to give a sizeable financial donation to a politician whose views are abhorrent to you. It would be painful and embarrassing to do this, which makes it easier to continue with your new desired behaviour.

That’s kind of what having The Creativity Guild is for me. Geoff and I have committed to publishing something every two weeks or so. And there are now a lot of you signed up for this newsletter with some expectation that we are going to share writing that is worth your valuable time and attention. So there are stakes for us. 

So why am I treating The Creativity Guild like a Commitment Device? After all, no one is forcing Geoff and I to do this. It’s not our job.

It’s because we have both realized that it is all too easy to put creativity on the back burner and to prioritize the things we are forced to do and our actual jobs. Both of us have woken up at midlife, realizing:

• Many of our happiest experiences have been creative endeavours

• We have been ignoring new, personally satisfying creative endeavours for too long

• We have a desire to reconnect with our creativity at this stage of life

• If we don’t do it now, we might never do get to do it

So having this Substack as a Creativity Commitment Device is genuinely forcing us to undertake endeavours that we would not otherwise be taking. And even though the deadlines come too quickly and there is worry about whether each post is good enough for all of you, I love that we have forced ourselves out on a public ledge.

The jam session with Roger (drums) and Graham (guitar).

Just knowing that all of you are reading these posts adds higher stakes to the Commitment Device. I don’t want to be boring. I want to share ideas and experiences that will be helpful to you. And for me, doing unusual things and exposing myself to different experiences is what continues to generate the best insights. 

The existence of The Creativity Guild has become part of my decision making process - when an opportunity arises, I definitely think about whether or not it would make for a good story or a fun Guild post. If it’s weird and if it has the makings of a good story, I now push myself to say ‘YES!’ In many ways, I am now “weird hunting” and I am having a ton of fun doing it.

I’m a better person for embracing these weird experiments, too. I haven’t regretted it once. Every single time, I’m happy to be doing new things, creating new things, getting out of my comfort zone, and learning more about myself and about creativity in general. 

What I have come to realize is that there is great value in having a creative outlet with public accountability. If you’re exploring your creativity, you can learn and grow a lot by having a public commitment device and a large group of people expecting to hear from you.

The Guild is making my life more interesting because it changes my decision-making. And all of you reading and supporting it are holding Geoff and me accountable to being weird and exploring this space. So THANK YOU!

Creative Challenge

• Do you have a creative outlet that expands your horizons, forces you out of your comfort zone, and holds you accountable? 

• Are there desired creative behaviours that might be well-suited to some sort of Commitment Device? If so, what would a meaningful Commitment Device be for you?

Welcome to our weekly round up of Guild community members doing inspiring things.

Geoff’s cousin Shaindy Alexander is a child life specialist at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. She helps kids and their families navigate some of the most difficult challenges imaginable. She’s just co-written a book that explains organ donation to kids…from the POV of the deceased person who donated the organ. Awesome doesn’t even begin to sum up the work that Shaindy does.

Available now on Amazon in paperback and e-book.

Amazon Canada - Click here

Amazon USA - Click here

For podcasters the Ambie awards are kind of a big deal. Many large and established podcasting companies would love to get just one nomination. Friend of the Guild Pippa Johnstone’s bootstrapped indie podcast Expectant just got two. We know that awards aren’t everything, but also, how fricking cool is that!?!

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