When early reviewers give you “notes” or other constructive feedback on your work-in-progress, they don’t typically just tell you what’s wrong. Often a reviewer will also tell you how they think you should fix the problem they identified. They tell you how they would fix it.

This is a vulnerable moment for the nascent creative seed that you have been cultivating. Critical feedback has the potential to blast the seed right out of the ground, disintegrate it, and scatter its torn fragments to the winds. To avoid this, you need an approach to receiving critical feedback.

So many artists are lonely. It’s a self-inflicted exile.

Composers struggle alone. Painters grapple at the canvas but end up grappling themselves. We feel like we have seized control, but control has seized us.

The story we make up about creative life is that it is cheapened when we have help. The critics will say that you’re not good enough to do it on your own.

As a creative person, you've likely had the experience of struggling with a thorny, immovable problem or puzzle: how to organize a painting, a piece of music, a piece of writing. How to kill off a character in your screenplay. What metaphor to use in your story. Which path to take on your next project. What your next project should even be.

And you’ve also likely experienced the futility of trying to force a solution. Of going to sleep hopeless and distraught, with a sense of despair.

Only to find that when you wake, the perfect answer to your question has been miraculously presented to you by your unconscious mind.

As a creator, you can win the creator’s daily struggle and increase your creative output by building a Creative Deep Work Routine.

What is a Creative Deep Work Routine?

The concept of Deep Work comes from Cal Newport, in his book Deep Work. Newport defines deep work as:

“Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capacities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”

Another morning and it’s there again. That Resistance. Those distractions. That hope of an easy way out, that avoidance. That wishful, irrational thought.

Maybe today I won’t have to work for my art.

Maybe I don’t have to seek out the Muse. To make any effort. ”Please, just let the Muse seize me,” we cry internally. Seize me from my bad habits. From my social feed, my Netflix account, my over-scheduled life. Rip me from my self doubt, my procrastination. Kicking and screaming, just save me from my own apathy.

From my own lack of preparation.

A couple years ago, Billy was just a ski instructor and recent college graduate who wanted to be a writer. After becoming interested in Holiday’s  books  (Obstacle Is the Way, Perennial Seller, and others), he sent Ryan an email thanking him for his work, and offered to help out on any projects Ryan might have for him. He sent the email and moved on with his life.

Then Ryan wrote back.

For creators, sometimes the hardest thing is just to start.

We plan, we prepare, we tidy up. Maybe I need to build a better chapter template for my book. Maybe I need to do more research. Maybe I need to go to the store to get different paints. Maybe I should search for a new sonic plugin that will really make this track sound great. I think if I could just tweak my desk setup, I could really get some good work done.

Some planning can help you fly further when doing your creative deep work. But too often, planning can be an excuse. It’s tangible, tractable, satisfying—and deadly to your creative production.