There’s a lot to think about when we begin a new project. What is the nature and scope of the work? Is it unique and original? Can it be accomplished in the allotted time frame? What is the allotted time frame? Do we have the proper materials to complete the work? How will this project be shaped? Can we fund it? Who will be the audience for this project? What is it about? What are we trying to say? What impact do we want to have on our audience? Is this a project that we should do? Is this a project that we should do now? Why do we want to do this project in the first place?

Having answered these initial questions, we begin work, only to find that there are still other questions: Does this part of the work go here or somewhere else. If we place that part here, how does it change the meaning and impact of the whole work? Would it better be left out? Should this element be expanded? If so, how much? What does that mean to the overall work?  Are we spending too much time on this part or that part? Are we still saying the same thing that we set out to say or has the message changed? Are we making progress at an appropriate rate? And so we begin to second-guess our choices and decisions.

As we question and second-guess, we may find that we are thinking so much that we are forgetting the feeling, emotional side of our project. We might even get so tied up in considering where this piece goes or whether that image is appropriate that we forget to allow ourselves to dream and create based on feeling and imagination. And whether we recognize the danger or not, once we begin to forget these things, we are overthinking, and risking being stuck.

If we get stuck in overthinking, there are two possible results: (1) the work we produce is stiff and overly self-conscious, overly intellectualized. It appears artificial and inauthentic. It’s more of a treatise than a work of art, not what we had intended at all. (2) The other possibility is that the work gets stalled. We overthink and second-guess to the point that we are immobilized. In our continued thinking, we have lost the art of the piece and are only concerned with technique and message.

This is not to say that no planning or thinking is necessary. We certainly need to know whether we are writing a short story, novella, of full-length novel. However, perhaps we would do better if at the beginning we answered basic questions, thought about the shape of the project, and then just jumped in and did—without thinking too much along the way. Many of the questions we ask ourselves as we create can be answered intuitively as we work. We might go further if we let our initial thinking set the path, then turned off the thinking and trusted our instincts, letting our imaginations out to play.

Regardless of what the creativity pundits say, most artists rely on inspiration for their impetus to work. That inspiration may come in the form of the traditional lightning bolt of creativity or simply a niggling idea. Whatever the form, artists rely on them to move them to create. And we all know that one idea can generate others, so that ideas can stack up, and we are forced to jot them down so we can keep working on the current project. But sometimes that doesn’t occur; sometimes inspiration doesn’t strike; ideas don’t happen.

There has been a lot of conjecture on the causes for lack of inspiration or “writer’s block” as it is sometimes called, and some psychologists have provided methods for overcoming it. We can look those up and try them out and they may or may not work, but when inspiration has left the building, we are at a total loss.

How long inspiration stays gone is also a mystery. It could take a brief overnight trip, or it could be gone a week, or a month, or even longer. No matter how long it’s gone, it will seem like forever, and we often do nothing—except bemoan the absence of inspiration. We seem to be helpless without our inspiration.

So when our muse goes on vacation what should we do? Well, we could go on vacation as well. Of course this works only for those of us who are independently wealthy. If we are working artists, we must keep producing, inspiration or not.

Exactly how do we do that? There are number of books dealing with artistic blockage. Some try to identify the sources of the problem or the places we are likely to “hit the wall.” Some are overly general and some overly specific. Many are aimed exclusively at writers, albeit of various genres. And while some have some interesting exercises, most come down to the same advice.

And that advice is that we go regularly to the theatre, studio, office—our place of work, and we pick up the brush or pen or pencil or chisel or keyboard or notebook or camera and we do the work—we essentially pretend that we are inspired, that our muse has not temporarily left us and we do the work. Yes, it may be uninspired, but unless we give into depression at the short-term loss, hardly anyone will know. They may realize that our work is not up to our usual standards, but then everyone has ups and downs. And the next day we do that again, and the day after, and the day after that if need be.

Essentially, we are performing a variant of “fake it ‘til you make it.” We crank out our work, knowing that it may not be our best, and the work moves forward, and we keep doing that until one day—and it may or may not be long in coming—a new idea appears, then another, then another. And finally our muse is back; our inspiration is again at work, and now we can really move forward with far less effort and do our best work yet. It’s just a matter of continuing to work while our muse is on vacation.

It hits us from every direction, and there’s no end in sight. Every time we do a search on Google, we get far more information than we asked for, not only in the hits, but in the accompanying ads. Interspersed in news articles and at the end of the article as well are enticements to click for more information that may or may not be related to the article we were reading. Unless we have premium music channels, there are periodic ads pushing information at us. “Free” streaming services hit us with unrelated information at unannounced intervals, breaking our train of thought about the show we were watching. Nearly every web site is supported by ads that demand our attention. And, of course, for those who still read newspapers and magazines, whether digital or physical, there are ads scattered among the articles that are supposed to attract our attention.

It’s more than we can keep up with, more than we can pay attention to: information overload!

But what can we do about it—besides stick our head in the sand and ignore all incoming information? Not a very practical solution since some of us need information to operate, and some of us want information because it enhances our lives and allows us to make informed political and business decisions. So there must be some way to manage what information gets to us.

The first step we can take to reduce out input of information is to limit our sources of information to those we trust. We all have a list of those, but probably don’t restrict ourselves to the list because it requires too much thought and a lot of hopping about. If that’s the case, it’s time for the next step: get a news reader (just Google “news reader” or “RSS reader”) and select one of those. This is used to aggregate our sources which can be done by source or subject or both. Once done, all we have to do is go to the news reader to find our already-limited information. Most are cumulative and will retain links until marked “read.”

The second step is to set aside a time to interact with our reader. This can be done in one of two ways: one is to scan the items in your reader and mark articles to be read later either by using the reader itself or by transferring the links to an app like pocket, which is designed to do the same thing. The other method is to scan and read the articles that seem interesting or appealing right then.  I recommend the second method, having found that unless there is a specific time set up to read those “later” articles, we are likely not to do it. They just sit in the “to be read later” app or folder forever. And in some cases the links eventually go bad as sites clean up old information and delete old articles.

The third step is to exercise some discipline as we read those articles. Skip the ads, Don’t take the click bait. Read the article and move on to the next one that looks interesting. Otherwise, the time spent with our reader will become as overwhelming as the mountain of information we’re trying to restrict.

And there is nothing to prevent us from having multiple topics in our readers, or if there is a desire for even more separation, having separate readers for separate subjects.

Time spent setting up some sort of information input management is time well spent, which, of course, leaves more time for other activities, like making art.