8 Vital Creative Habits

Harvard Project Zero’s "8 Artist Habits of Mind"

It’s quite complex isn’t it? Living a creative life. Especially if we’re entrepreneurs into the bargain. There’s an awful lot to juggle. 

Sometimes we realise that we’ve been focussing on one aspect of our practice and neglecting everything else.

In fact our creative practice needs a mixture of 8 different components in order for us to be happy, healthy and productive artists.

In this first post about the 8 Habits of Creative Practice, we’ll take a look at what our current habit balance looks like and what might need improving.​

Habits for the 21st Century Creative

When I first came across the intriguing list* of creative habits above, I began to get just an inkling of how I might go about balancing all the different demands of my creative life. And, of course, I wanted to share this with you.

But the original list of habits was aimed at helping art teachers plan syllabuses emulating the processes of working artists.

All well and good. But a bit academically-written and hard to absorb.

So with all due respect to the original authors, I’ve gradually refined the descriptions - and even amplified the meanings a little - to make the whole thing a bit more digestible for our short 21st century attention spans!

I hope the resulting list is every bit as powerful a reminder as the original of the vital components of practice for those of us working in creative fields.

In the first part of this two-part series about the habits, I’m offering you a little exercise to figure out how regularly you currently engage in these habits.
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What Do YOUR Creative Habits Look Like?

Think about what each habit means to you and note down how often you regularly engage in it: 
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1. Develop Skills - never / rarely / quite often / very often
2. Follow Your Fascinations - never / rarely / quite often / very often
3. Visualise - never / rarely / quite often / very often
4. Express Yourself - never / rarely / quite often / very often
5. Observe - never / rarely / quite often / very often
6. Reflect and Evaluate - never / rarely / quite often / very often
7. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone - never / rarely / quite often / very often
8. Interact with your Creative Sphere - never / rarely / quite often / very often

What did your findings bring to light about areas you might want to develop in your creative practice? 

​*The original habit list is from the book Studio Thinking 2: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education by Lois Hetland, Ellen Winner, Shirley Veenema and Kimberly M. Sheridan.

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Want more of the 8 Habits?

• In the second part of this series we’ll look at how to use the 8 Habits to take 8 Mini Steps for Creative Growth.
• Get the eBook 8 Habit Plan for Creative Growth

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GET THE EBOOK!

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