I call this hitting the Creative Snooze Button. (Don’t you love how I can go from slamming the Think Outside The Box cliché to trying desperately to create my own in a few short blog postings? Luckily people have very short memories. See the U.S. Elections as a prime example.)
Have you ever stayed up too late, but wanted to get up the next day to exercise? I bet when the morning came, and the birds started chirping, and the alarm clock went off you decided to hit the snooze button. Why? Because you could put it off. You could squeeze in another 10 minutes of rest. And then another. And another. A serial snoozer.

We do that with creating too. It’s so much easier to sleep than it is to motivate yourself to get up and get fit, just like it’s so much easier to consume instead of create. I could surf the internet for days, catching interesting little tid-bits here and there to talk about, jumping down endless rabbit holes. I could watch another movie. Or a podcast. Or listen to music. Or play video-games. Or **gasp** channel surf on the tel-e-vision (remember that old machine?).

But it’s hard to create. Consumption is passive. Creation is active. Sleeping is passive, Exercise is active. Which is better for you? Well, we need to do both. If you stop sleeping, you will actually go mad. If you stop consuming, you will have nothing to think about or react to. It’s about balance.

And it’s not about will-power. Will might help you, but it’s not going to get you there. Resolve helps. Passion helps. But the best way to stop hitting the Creative Snooze Button is to work on developing a routine. Once you have a routine in place, you will look forward to your creative time. You will get addicted to it.

In the coming days, I’ll write about ways you can integrate a powerful creative routine into your life. Some of this is still in beta, so if you’re in the mood to be a creative lab rat for a few months, I’ll tell you when to start looking for the cheese.

With all these accomplishments under his chair, and all this celebrity, people still jump to his defence. I get mixed reactions to this little iPod parody I cooked up. “That’s soooo mean,” or “You’re going to hell,” are two of the most common reactions.

In 1997 The Onion, a satirical newspaper, ran a story with the headline Stephen Hawking Builds Robotic Exoskeleton. According to the Wikipedia, Hawking wrote The Onion, cursing them for exposing his evil plans for world domination.

Ha.

I think Hawking can take it. What I really should worry about is getting sued by Apple!