321. Creativity and discipline are closely linked

A few days ago, I read an interview with Petah Coyne, a contemporary American sculptor and installation artist based in New York. She has been called the queen of mixed media and is best known for her large and small-scale hanging sculptures and floor installations. 

She is renowned for creating complex, larger-than-life sculptural environments from unconventional materials. Coyne's sculptures and photographs have been featured in numerous solo museum exhibitions.

Her work with innovative and diverse materials spans from organic and ephemeral elements, such as dead fish, mud, sticks, hay, hair, black sand, specially formulated and patented wax, satin ribbons, and silk flowers, to more recent materials, including velvet, taxidermy, and cast-wax statuary. 

Coyne lives in Manhattan and commutes six days a week to her studio in the New York area. She constantly seeks the most efficient work schedule, driven by the labor-intensive nature of her sculptures and her disciplined upbringing. 

She says: “I come from a military and Catholic background; it's a double whammy. But from such a rigid background, I learned to value efficiency and understood that being well-organized allows you to accomplish a great deal.”

Her work schedule caught my attention.

A strict disciplinarian, she wakes up at 4:30 a.m. and spends half an hour checking email. At 5:00, she begins preparing for work while listening to an audiobook. She enjoys audiobooks and continues this habit throughout much of her workday, often finishing two or three audiobooks each week. 

By 6:00 a.m., she's out the door, driving from her SoHo apartment to her studio, arriving in time to have breakfast as the sun rises. At 7:00 a.m., she enters her private studio and starts working. She usually has two works in progress in her studio at any given time.

Creative work is a very lonely pursuit, and ultimately it boils down to you and your own train of thought. No one can make you sit down to work but you. 

Creativity and discipline are closely related. Creative discipline distinguishes between merely wishing to be creative and actually creating.

Many of the world's most creative individuals have been surprisingly disciplined in their creative routines. I read somewhere that when he’s writing a new novel, Haruki Murakami wakes up at 4:00 am every day, writes for 4-5 hours, then goes for a run or swims.

I think discipline for a creative individual means strict, punishing routines. It's about creating a dependable system that shifts the focus from waiting for inspiration to acting on steady, achievable habits.