From Cal Newport’s interview on the Rich Roll podcast (YouTube)
I wrote about that in the book that learning a lot about movies helped my writing.
Because if you study what makes movies great, that process is not intimidating because I’m not a director. So it’s just interesting. And oh, this is great. Look at these directors and they have this vision and you’re just being exposed to raw creative impulse.
I found that was helping me in my writing. I was getting inspired by what people were doing in this other art form. And then that was giving me ideas about taking risks in my writing.
Whereas if I was just directly studying writing, it’s harder because now it’s uncanny valley. You’re studying people who are kind of doing what you’re doing, but a little differently. All the stresses of your job as a writer kind of getting involved in it. So I found studying an unrelated creative art completely from a hobby perspective, re-energize the art I do for a living.
I’ve done something similar in the past few years in studying an unrelated creative art. I make my living in UX design, but consuming UX-related content outside of work starts to create an opening for the stress of work to leak through.
Instead, I lean toward game design content. It seems to be the right balance for me. A lot of creative principles are there and applicable to UX design. Sort of. At least to the abstraction of “Hey here’s the creative process we used to build software”. The connection between God of War level design and enterprise UI is sometimes thin, I admit.
Then I can learn from creatives and instead of thinking about work, I tend to think about games I grew up playing.
I’m also trying to just start watching more movies. Going to the theater has the modern bonus of being a place where you deliberately won’t use your phone for a few hours. (Unless you’re a monster.)
For my second viewing of “Dune: Part Two”, I did a solo trek to an SF Metreon 70mm IMAX showing. I did the same for Part One a few days after watching it on HBO with friends on a TV and then reading post after post on Reddit about how you have to see it in theaters.
BTW, Cal Newport’s book “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout” is out. Great so far and I’ll be sure to write some notes here.