A Cycle of Study, Make, Play

Intro

It’s rare to be able to choose how you show up in the world. We are born into a world already made up with systems, norms, and conventions that prescribe how we must move through the world, organize our time, our bodies, and ourselves. So many of these systems go unnoticed, taken for granted, and, even if ever made aware, unchallenged as we try to simply navigate the world in ways that benefit us. Don’t stir the pot too much, one might think. And so we go on living our lives without possibly considering what alternative ways of living are available to us - ways that might be more conducive and more agreeable to us, more harmonious, more beneficial, more fruitful, happier, more productive. A way of living that allows us to feel more satisfied, reach our goals and potential, and live our truest, happiest days.

Through my own hard work, I’ve been gifted the opportunity to explore a new way of living in the world. This framework has two parts: One might be thought of vertically, in which I organize my day (and life more generally) into three main activities: study, make, and play. The other part is an reorganization of containers of conventional linear time, in which I’ve gotten rid of the concept of the “week”, and instead organize recurring chunks of days into four-day cycles, with three working days followed by a rest day. I’ve been running this program since January 1st, 2024, and I’ve already seen so many positive outcomes, along with the rub that comes from moving at your own rhythm against the dominant system of the world. In the next two paragraphs, I’ll explain a bit about these two parts, and then afterwards I’ll reflect a bit on this transition, how it has impacted by life thus far, and other musing on what it means to design a life setup that is more conducive to a desired way of moving through the world.

Study, Make, Play

The idea of Study, Make, Play is indebted to and borrowed from the writings of Annika Hansteen-Izora, who introduced me to their idea of “Dream, Learn, Create”. As I interpret Hansteen-Izora’s formulation, a fulfilling, creative life is made from first imagination, then studying the thing that you imagine and how to realize it, and then the act of creation. I love this formulation, but the ordering is different for me. Instead, I like to think of my creative process as beginning in study - learning about things and thinking about what could become possible (very similar to imagining and dreaming I guess, but firmly rooted in study first). Then I like to make. Make, make, make. I’ve written about making before, but essentially the idea is to just make as much as possible, to see as many variations on idea as you can, to get rid of bad ideas as quickly as you can so your good ideas can arrive, and to think through what your making by making and by examining things outside of your head and in reality. By that I mean, don’t be critical of ideas before you explore them and try them out in the real world. Making something, holding it in your hand, examining it as something that exists materially (however you want to interpret that) will give you deeper insights into what your doing that trying to examine ideas in the abstract. Finally, there is the act of play. After making, play with what you make. Bring it into the world, and experience how it resonates with yourself and others. This is where the fun and joy of creating lies. And this is where I see my work showing up in the world more and more. The acts of studying and making resulting in objects and experiences of play. The end result for me, whether it is performance or productions or sculptures or instruments or installations, is eventually something that is an creative expression from those proceeding activities.

This for me is the creative process that I subscribe to: study, make play. And I try to do each one of these things each and every work day, when I’m not resting. I dedicate one two-hour block of time for each day, so I can go deep and be undistracted. I also leave another two-hour block of time in my day to joy work, which can be anything I want, which might end up being more studying, making, and playing. This framework is how I organize my creative life, and how I intent for it to show up in a single day. But what about a series of days? How do I organize multiple days in order to sustain this practice and remain consistent? Let me introduce the idea of the cycle.

The Cycle

These days, when someone asks me what’s new, I tell them, “Well, I have something kind of unusual to share, so bare with me…..I’ve abolished weeks from my like.” It’s a strange sentence to say out loud, and I usually have to repeat it a few times because, understandably, its not a series of words many people hear, and the idea itself is not something that I’ve even come across myself. But the idea is simple enough to explain.

Essentially, I don’t organize my life and its temporality around weeks anymore. The concept of weekdays and weekends no longer apply to me. Even that alone is a curious frame to think about. I don’t have a five day “work week” anymore. I also don’t have weekends anymore. So how am I setting myself up now? I’ve organized my time into a cycle that contains three work days and one rest day. So now, I dedicate three days to work, which contains the morning dedicated to physical and mental health (fitness, nutrition, meditation, journaling, checking in on community/socializing), and then the rest of the day is dedicated to Study Make Play (SMP), finishing with a dedicated block of time for joy work. My rest day is an active rest day, where I intentionally sleep in, run my normal morning routine sans fitness, and engage in nourishing activities that bring joy, rest, relaxation. They should be reaffirming and offer a moment to reset. Activities include things like writing (like I’m doing right now, on my rest day), studying and practicing hobbies (Japanese, bass guitar), buying groceries and meal prep, and other low impact activities. The idea is not to work, and allow my brain to re-find equilibrium after bring stretched for three days. It also offers me a day to not produce, and instead to simply think, synthesize, and process all of the things I’ve done three days prior, and start to slowly anticipate and get excited for the three days ahead.

There are some observations to make about this system. One is that, technically speaking, I now work on average six work days a “week”. Depending on when/how you count, sometimes I work five days a week. But in general, I technically work more than I did before on the conventional five-weekday/two-weekend week system. In that sense I’m marginally more productive. And yet, I don’t feel any more burned out or overworked than I used to. In fact, I feel way more aligned and “in a flow” than I used to. I think this is due to the more frequent and consistent rest day. Instead of working five days in a row, and getting to the weekend with two days to do anything else but work, I would find myself exhausted and almost unable to do anything other than cram the weekend with all the things I couldn’t get to during the week, and/or just spend the weekend holed up at home, resting and lying in wait for the work week to resume. There is something about the more frequent rest days that break up the three days that feels to make the work less taxing on the mind and body. And I think knowing that a rest day is coming every three days makes the wait and anticipation that much easier to deal with, as opposed to a five day marathon of days that start to blur together. It’s a lot easier for me now to sit and focus on work for these concentrated three-day periods, and then be able to unapologetically let go for a day to properly rest and reset for the next set of work days.

Conclusion

As I’ve only been committed to this creative lifestyle and workflow for just about a month, I’m still learning its pros and cons, opportunities and challenges.

There are some possibly obvious challenges to this. One of which is that, 99% of people and systems in the world don’t operate in this way, and so there is sometimes friction with others when trying to align my system with theirs. Things like going out or staying up late with others can be a negotiation because my last work day of a cycle might not align with someone’s “weekend”. Having to explain to friends that I have to go home by 9pm to work on a Saturday can be a little awkward. And with close partners and family, being open and transparent about my setup is a necessary conversation to have. I no longer have “free days” or weekends to do recreational things in the same way most people would assume, so I also have to manage my own expectations of what I can do when living and being with others that I love and want to spend time with. It will always be a negotiation to exist with others. And of course, I have workdays where I don’t work due to laziness or sickness (”sick days”) and days where I work on my rest day due to deadlines, external obligations, or just plain desire. I think the takeaway is to have a firm understanding of where I am, what my intentions and desires are, and communicating them with others in a way that allows us to find common ground to live in harmony together.