The unit of creative work

What does it mean to do creative work, when many of the parameters for the work are, by design, as yet undefined?

One useful approach is to timebox the work. Allow for around two and a half hours of dedicated work on The Thing. You’ll often need at least an hour just to activate enough of the necessary ingredients before you can start cooking.

When I’m making prints that means it takes a good hour for there to be ink on a large enough number of printable elements that allow for interesting combinations to emerge.

Then from that point on there’s another hour or so of energy and attention available in which the new thing may happen, the work can be teased to the surface.

Go on longer and mistakes of the kind you don’t want will start to happen, possibly ruining that piece that was quite good already.

A session is two and a half hours long, and that takes about three hours. Work through that first hour to activate the materials and ideas, then go with the flow for another hour or so. Then wrap up.

The unit of creative work is a session.