Repetition Is Not the Enemy of Creativity

by Justin Skycak on

Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.

When basic skills are not automatic, they just hijack every thought in your brain.

You might think you’re trying to be strategic, but really you’re still thinking about how all the pieces move.

It’s like trying to run basketball plays when you’re still looking down all the time at your dribbling, ‘cause if you don’t, you’ll lose the ball.

You gotta automate those basics, get really solid so that they don’t consume all of your thinking, so that you have the mental bandwidth to actually move beyond them.

‘Cause they’re so solid that you can start layering more advanced skills and strategies and modes of thought on top of it. And that’s why the grunt work matters.

Repetition is not the enemy of creativity. It is a compression process that frees up all your mental bandwidth for creativity.

That’s how you get the creativity.

If you master the basics until they become unconscious, then your brain finally has room to start operating at those higher levels.

∗     ∗     ∗

Further reading:


Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.