5 Ways to Tend Your Creativity when the Season Changes

Mornings are crisp in the USA. The wind rattles leaves that are preparing to change color. The autumn sun shines brilliantly but with its heat is waning. At least these changes are all around Kansas and Missouri. Gardeners are pruning and weeding and preparing for winter. Walkers are wearing fall sweaters. Everywhere there are signs of the changing season. It may not be autumn in your area of the world, but you’re still experiencing a seasonal change in your weather. One thing you may not have thought about preparing for the seasonal changes is your creative life. When the weather changes, it’s also time to tend your creativity when the season changes.

Photograph of a field surrounded by trees turning from green to yellow, gold, and rust colors. It's autumn and time to tend your creativity for the season.

While a lot of creativity is instinctual and of the moment, you also need to be intentional if you aspire to more than a creative hobby. When the season changes is an excellent reminder to stop and look at the garden that is your creativity. Consider what needs pruning, what is thriving, and what needs extra sun or water for the next few months.

1. Review Your Year Plan

Did you make one? If not, no worries. Use the change in seasons to inspire you.

If you had a list of goals at the beginning of the year, review it. What have you accomplished?

With that in mind, how have your goals changed? What is it you want to spend your limited time, energy, and attention on during the next three months? What three activities will set you up for success?

2. List Goals for the Next Three Months

Your goals for the season can be new and completely unrelated to the plan you had at the beginning of the year.

What goals from your year plan will still move you toward your one big goal? What can you accomplish before the end of the year?

Are there goals that need to be pruned? Perhaps they need more time or you’ve changed your priorities. Be intentional about your choices. Tend your creativity and prepare for how the season affects you.

3. Consider How the Season Makes You Feel

Traditionally, Autumn is the time to prepare for a long winter. Consider how it makes you feel. Does it make you want to curl up with a warm blanket, sip hot cider, and read a book? Plan ways to recharge your energy: Light therapy, turn on music that gets your blood pumping, change up your exercise routine.

Or does the crisp air and beautiful autumn leaves recharge you? In that case, you may choose scented candles, candy corn snacks, and pumpkin flavored coffee to get you going. Maybe you’ll set up a workstation outside to enjoy the weather. Use the best of the season to energize you.

4. Change Your Morning and/or Evening Routine

Consider changing the time of day when you create. Do you create better when the sun is shining strong? Maybe instead of exercising before breakfast, you exercise at lunchtime. The one caveat is that what you tend your creativity and change what will allow you to be creative in this season.

5. Use Seasonal Activities to Inspire

Inspire your creativity with the change of season. Use fall excursions to inspire you: A walk in a wooded park or a visit to the pumpkin patch or an apple orchard. Make note of the colors, the smells, the feel of the wind, even the sounds. Use them in your creative activities.

Photograph of a basket spilling out ripe apples that are red and yellow. Just as orchards must be tended, so should you tend your creativity when the season changes.

Do you have a bucket list item that is related to the season? Make it happen. Keep a record—photographs, journaling, sketching, even a montage—whatever will call back your experience in all its sensory detail.

Create a seasonal sensory board. Use smells, colors, sounds, textures, fond memories, anything that means this season to you.

Change your room around to suit the season. This doesn’t mean decorate for the holidays necessarily. Scented candles or incense for the season. Change the lighting in your work area. Perhaps reposition your workspace closer to the window. Maybe get out a cozy sweater or change the flowers in the room. Maybe simply clean and declutter. Make way for the season to give fresh energy to your creativity.

When the Season Changes

We will tend our gardens, decorate our homes, prepare our vehicles, and make many other adjustments with the change of seasons. Yet many of us don’t think about adjusting our creative routines. Tend your creativity when the season changes and inspiration and productivity will flourish. For more tips on recharging your creativity, read “Five Secrets to Your Most Creative Self.”

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