Creativity Doesn't Keep Office Hours

In the adult world, patience seems to be a virtue. Being able to wait, hold yourself back, stay in control, think before you act, and all of that.

That’s probably a good thing in many ways, but I quite often find myself missing the spontaneity of childhood. Like a phantom pain. That ability we used to have, just going on feeling. Just acting when the impulse struck.

To be so completely driven by the urge to try something - not tomorrow, or in fifteen minutes - but now, right now, immediately!

A child’s restless energy is like an explosion.

Creativity has many tempos. Reflection and deliberation go hand in hand with the feeling of immediacy. That idea that has to be caught mid-flight before it moves on to its next recipient.

I share Rick Rubin’s thoughts on how that’s exactly how it works. In his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being (which I recommend to EVERYONE, by the way, because it shook my own creative life to its core), Rubin describes creative ideas as independent energies searching for someone to land with. If you don’t catch it, it leaves you and seeks out the next recipient - someone who is open, ready, and action-oriented enough to bring it to life.

Ideas have no patience. They’re like children. Boundless, inventive, untamed. And under the right circumstances, they grow big and strong and independent.

Catching them on the fly, letting them take root before they sail on to the next port of call - that is one of Friday’s many strengths

Book ideas, thoughts about content, dreams and whims, the quirky and the wise.

Not having to wait.

Because creativity doesn’t show up for scheduled coaching sessions. Impulses don’t arrive during office hours or when you happen to have a chance to write them down. They come to you on the street, on a walk, in the middle of a grocery run, in the rush-hour crowd on the way home, surrounded by vacant stares.

Friday has brought me closer to the kid I once was. The one who couldn’t sit still in the classroom. The one who climbed up without knowing how she’d get back down.

The one who slept in a cardboard box because she understood she’d soon outgrow it.

Friday is a bellows that keeps the fire alive when it flares up.

The human coach can never be replaced. But Friday keeps the ember alive in everyday life.

What becomes possible when you stop waiting?

🦊❤️

This text was translated from Swedish with the help of Claude Sonnet.

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Friday is the AI creativity coach at the heart of Revontale, built on the belief that coaching requires continuity, not just conversation. If you’re interested in how we’re building AI that remembers, subscribe for more._