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Please note: this article contains affiliate links for the book discussed within, called The Artist’s Way.
Life gets busy, and work can be energy-draining.
If you don’t take time for yourself to renew your creative inspiration, your productivity is likely to go south.
I know this because SEO content writing, like any other job, has its stressful moments. Before I knew to take time to rejuvenate, I spent way too much time staring at my screen without doing anything productive.
One way to spike creativity, reduce wasted time, and be your best self is to go on weekly artist dates.
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What Is an Artist Date?
An artist date gives you time once a week to do something creative or inspiring. Artist date ideas are what I’d call “self-assigned fun tasks.”
They help you relax — and have fun while doing so. When you go on an artist date, you’re taking yourself on a playdate to renew your mind and creative energy. Play is about more than fun — it propels you to self-discovery, good health habits, and encourages creativity.
Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist and researcher, dives deeper into the importance of play during his TED talk:
The idea for artist dates comes from The Artist’s Way, a book by Julia Cameron. This helpful guide details a 12-week plan to recover your inner artist tendencies and manufacture creativity on a regular basis.
Why Artist Date Ideas Are Essential for Creatives
Writer’s block can be a major problem for freelance writers. To stay on top of my blocks, I treat myself to weekly artist dates.
Make a list of artist date ideas to rejuvenate your creative side. And make sure you commit to the time you’ll use to treat yourself. The best artist date ideas make you feel artistic, inspired, and creative on a weekly basis.
Self-care is essential — as essential as taking your car to the filling station when you’re running low on fuel or servicing your machines when you need them to function better. If you add a creative edge when you take breaks, you not only unwind but generate inspiration.
It is more common for people to fuel their cars than their creative selves. But any machine, including your brain, will experience a productivity decrease when running on empty.
Going on artist dates is a higher level of self-care because they empower you to tap into your inner creativity while reconnecting with yourself.
How to Plan Artist Dates
Managing projects, doing research, and producing work leaves little time for creative exploration. But you can make it happen with a little forethought.
Make sure you plan ahead by following these steps:
- Make a list of artist date ideas.
- Each month, choose a few ideas from your list that sound fun.
- Schedule artist dates for specific times on your calendar.
- Tell your friends and family that you have time blocked off on these dates.
- Write a rough breakdown of each artist date idea in a journal.
- Find an accountability buddy to share your progress with after every artist date.
Note that artist dates are solo quests. As a result, you can choose to do whatever activity you feel like without considering anyone else’s feelings but your own.
Here’s a list of 46 weekly artist date ideas to inspire you.
46 Creative Artist Date Ideas
Tours & Adventures
- Visit a place you were fond of as a child. This could be your childhood home, a wildlife sanctuary, or an amusement park
- Poke around in a neighboring city you’ve never been to.
- Go to the beach. Sit and listen to the waves, or pick up pretty sea stones and shells.
- Visit a new restaurant, and try a dish you’ve never tasted before.
- Go to a movie by yourself.
- Take a solo-walk in a forest. Take pictures of trees or other forms of nature that inspire you.
- Enjoy a Bill Gates think week retreat in the woods, away from the Internet.
- Attend estate sales in your neighborhood.
- Go on a bike riding adventure.
- Find a historical building and spend time imagining what happened there with each detail you come across.
- Explore a niche museum and learn about something new.
- Go to the library and check out some interesting materials that you wouldn’t normally consume.
- Visit an international or specialty grocery store with a $10 budget to see what you can buy.
- Walk around a college campus. Photograph the fascinating things you find.
- Go to your favorite coffee shop, order, and drink coffee by yourself. Fully take in your surroundings.
- Go berry picking.
- Pay a visit to a Buddhist or Hindu temple.
- Go to a swap meet or flea market and shop for interesting or useful items.
- Visit an art museum to see enchanting artworks by amazing artists. Sketch pieces you like or write about them in a journal.
Just-For-Fun Activities
- Spend a late afternoon window shopping. Go to stores without your wallet and browse through their collections.
- Get a coloring book and colored pencils. Turn on some soothing music and color.
- Or start a mandala.
- Try on different outfits and take some selfies.
- Learn a new language. Try Duolingo Duolingo for free.
- Hand-pick pretty flowers and press them in a heavy book.
- Create a playlist of upbeat music or your favorite genre, and have a solo dance party. Better yet, open your mind with some music you normally wouldn’t listen to.
- Make a digital photo book of your previous travels or a dream board of destinations you’d love to visit.
Lockdown/At-Home Artist Date Ideas
- Watch a movie you wouldn’t ordinarily watch. It could be horror, romance, action, or a just-plain-weird film.
- Practice mindfulness. Start with short meditations or consider a meditation app.
- Cook a special dish for the first time.
- Look through old photo albums.
- Do your own at-home paint and sip .
- Learn how to do something new by watching YouTube videos. Teach yourself how to make a kite, change a headlight, or fix a lock.
- Revisit your childhood playroom or a toy set you loved as a child. Give yourself over to the feelings of nostalgia.
- Tear out random pages of old newspapers or magazines and create blackout poems.
- Spend time gaining knowledge on TED and The School of Life.
- Go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and learn about something that excites you.
- Look through recipe books and plan an exciting meal.
Out-of-the-Ordinary Artist Date Ideas
- Write seven anonymous love letters and distribute them randomly around your city.
- Tour a local farmer’s market, and indulge in the view, sounds, and scents.
- Learn a new form of physical movement — a new dance move, yoga, Krav maga, or exercise trend.
- Go to a clothing store and pick three outfits that are not your style. Try them on, even if you think you would never, ever wear them.
- Visit the place of worship for a religion you don’t belong to. It could be a church, temple, or mosque. Learn about their customs and beliefs beforehand.
- Go to a coffee shop and spend a couple of hours listening and jotting down interesting conversations. Use your notes to create a short story, poem, or song lyrics.
- Get a big jigsaw puzzle and solve it.
- Learn origami basics.
- Go to a graveyard to spend time thinking about life and death.
Final thoughts: 46 Weekly Artist Date Ideas to Bring Your Creativity to Life
Artist dates can help you discover or recover who you are and what you’re capable of doing.
As an entrepreneur — artist, writer, designer, or small business owner — life can get stressful without time for play. After rebranding and transitioning to an agency model, my artist dates have kept me creatively refreshed.
There are no rules — just to go on weekly artist dates and spend time discovering your creative side. Don’t forget to write down any artist date ideas that spring up along the way.
What would you add to my list of artist date ideas? Share your thoughts in the comments.
