How to Support Your Creative Goals with a Buddy, Even If You’re Introverted

By the time the doorbell rings, I’ve assembled the apple crisp in the pan, the kitchen table is cleared and cleaned, and the radiator sends up cozy waves of warmth. My friend Annabel and I are trying something new today. We’re using each other’s company to forward our creative dreams.

Kitchen door closed, lamps on, apple crisp in the oven, and Annabel and I review the agenda we’d decided to conduct as an experiment in being present for each other. We’ll start with a timed session during which we’ll each tackle the most odious tasks currently looming over us, doing this as a way to free up some energy. The apple crisp will be our reward. Then we’ll switch to creative endeavors.

As it turns out, we both bring bookkeeping backlogs to the kitchen table as our odious tasks. Ugh. We agree to set the timer for one hour, no more, and lapse into our own worlds to focus and get to work. After weeks of putting off the tedious yet necessary work of processing receipts and invoices, actually digging in and getting it done immediately brings a sense of relief.

Sitting across from each other at the wood-topped table and studiously, quietly, intently, responsibly taking care of tasks I’d previously avoided feels so different from brow-beating myself in order to get the dreaded stuff done on my own. With the apple crisp bubbling away in the oven, slowly filling the room with scents of sweet fruit and cardamom, I make meaningful progress with my bookkeeping and my body begins to release tensions I’ve ignored so long they’d become habit. Inspired, and with a few minutes to spare on the timer, I retreat to another room to make a difficult administrative call I’ve delayed long enough.

By the end of our hour, Annabel and I realize we’re onto something. “I’ve never enjoyed bookkeeping so much,” she says with a laugh, and I agree. It’s not the bookkeeping we enjoy. It’s settling into a pleasant environment with an encouraging companion, making progress with minimal pain on a procrastinated task, and knowing we’ll do something creative in less than an hour.

We clear the table again and break for apple crisp and vanilla yogurt while we chat to share what we aim to do on our creative projects. I’m writing a novel and want to zero in on character development, so I’ll write in my journal for a while. Annabel will dig into creating marketing materials for her art studio. We don’t set a timer for this phase. We’ll just go until one of us is ready to stop, or until night falls and dinnertimes with our respective families take precedence.

The hug we share at the end of that afternoon tightens with gratitude on both sides. I wave goodbye filled with a bright desire to help my friend make her dreams come true. And I feel the same support from her.

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That first creative support meeting with Annabel took place years ago when I lived in Germany. We met a bunch more times after that, right up until I moved back to the United States. Now, over the past few months, Annabel and I have started up again, this time by Zoom.

Other friends and I have similar arrangements, because I’m addicted to this method of building and deepening friendships while fostering creative growth together, using companionship to clear more and more space and energy for our best and most creative joys.

This is such a simple formula: witness each other’s challenges and dreams in real time. Our challenges thus lose their fearsome abilities to sap our energy, our dreams gain momentum, and our friendship deepens. Imagine the powerful life this equation inevitably creates over time.

If you want to try this for yourself, here are a few suggestions for pulling it all together:

Invite Your Buddy – Who is your ideal buddy for this? Consider the qualities you want in a challenge/creativity support friend. Is there someone you know who might be a buddy like this? Would you be willing to do an experiment to find out? You could invite them over and try doing something like what I’ve outlined in this article, see how it goes, then make it more regular if it worked, or try it with someone else if it didn’t. There’s no limit on how many friends you can buddy-up with like this. Actively searching for the right buddies brings them into view.

Come Together in Real Time – As an introvert and a highly sensitive person, I don’t flower while being observed, and I might not lapse into creative flow with someone else in the room. That’s fine. I choose creative support companions who are introverted enough to join me in a state of focused, uninterrupted silence. If we meet on Zoom, I mute and turn off the video. Do whatever you need to do in order to focus in the presence of someone else. Maybe that’s heading to separate rooms for an hour, then coming back to check in with each other. Explore to figure out what works for you so you can have both creative focus and companionship for a while, sometimes.

Use a Focus Timer – If meeting on Zoom, my buddy and I both set timers, so we know when to unmute and turn on the video. I like to set a timer for one hour for the ugh sessions. If we’re meeting in person, we may or may not set a timer for the creative portion.

The Ugh – What is the most dreaded item on your task list? How much of that task could you do in an hour? Biting off a little chunk of a monolithic project you’re not looking forward to can still make a positive difference in your energy, and your creativity needs all the positive space you can free up for it.

The Reward – What reward would entice you to slog through an hour of earnest attention and focus on your most challenging task? For me and Annabel, it was a baked dessert. I consider the reward phase a way to slough off the ugh and transition into the pleasure of creativity. This can be a good time to share with each other about your big creative goals and to zero in on what you’ll do now to move in that direction.

The Creativity – Yeah. The good stuff: the actual doing of what you most want to do as a creative being. Go all in to create what you most want to create, to be who you most want to be.

Heed Your Boundaries – If you try this with someone and it doesn’t work for you, move on. There’s nothing to gain by forcing yourself into an alliance that drains you rather than feeding you.

Do these creative buddy sessions a few times and a shift at a deeper level occurs. Your pile of challenges diminish. Your creative dreams gain momentum. Even for introverts, the right collaboration taps into a synergistic energy you can use to power whatever you want.

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Grace Kerina is the author of Personal Boundaries for Highly Sensitive People and other resources for quiet people. She has more than twenty years of experience helping writers and other creators find their true voices. Get her free ebook 7 Liberating Life Hacks for Highly Sensitive People when you subscribe to her newsletter. She also writes novels as Alice Archer.