Creative Quandary Clinic
What WhatsApp Voicenotes Can Provide
What it is
A lightweight way to provide and receive creative, emotional, or existential support, encouragement, and advice from people you admire, with an extremely minimal time commitment, through asynchronous voicenotes.
How did it go?
Great! Listen to this asynchronous podcast (formed of voicenotes) and listen to this synchronous podcast (recorded “live” though participants were all over the world), to hear the experiences of the participants in the first round.
How to do it
Ask 7 people for a time commitment of ~15 minutes per week, and agree a dedicated weekday — we chose Thursday — and a starting date.
Create a WhatsApp group and add those 7 people to it.
Randomize the list of the 8 names (including yours). You can do this by writing down names on paper and pulling them randomly (or use this). Then write down the week of the starting date and the first name on the randomized list, the next week and the second name, and so on.
Edit the WhatsApp group description and add the schedule.
Each week, on the designated weekday, the person whose name is on that day records a voicenote in which they ask a question, suggested length 5 minutes.
On that same day, each of the other 7 people in the group commits to respond to that question, suggested length 10 minutes, for a total of the 15 minute time commitment.
The description we used
Here’s the WhatsApp group description I wrote:
In this group, we will generate a random schedule (to be posted here) with one person per week providing a question or quandary for the group:
2023-11-30 Isabela
2023-12-07 Bryan
2023-12-14 Olga
2023-12-21 Catherine
2023-12-28 Cécile
2024-01-04 Rick
2024-01-11 Leigh
2024-01-18 Joachim
On your week, you can bring a question, quandary, something you're thinking about or pondering, creative, existential, practical, or anything else in your life, and record a (suggested) <5 minute framing question. If you have a preference, please consider being specific about whether you want (or don't want) advice, experience, reflection, suggestions, problem-solving, or anything else.
Then each other person in the group will commit to providing one <10 minute supportive response. There's no requirement to continue the discussion beyond that response or listen to all the other responses, but the person whose week it is will get several responses to their question. The conversation can of course optionally continue within the group.
After the first round (around 20 January) we can consider doing a call to decide how it went and see if/how to continue 😊 THANK YOU for participating.
Why I did it
In October of last year, I realized that even after more than a decade of organizing events, I was still missing creative cadence.
I live an active social life in London, I’m lucky enough to have creative friends throughout the world, and yet I lacked a routine source of creative energy. And I lacked a way to share hard-won experience from my past creative endeavours.
It’s not that I had no creative encouragement. I did, both from individual friends and from groups. The issue was just that it came quite intermittently. The next meetup might not be until next month, when I’m struggling with something right now. And with friends, I didn’t always have the emotional wherewithal to reach out and ask for support.
At the same time, I had many weekly meetings, and I found that Zoom meetings, however great the people and content, tended to drain me rather than invigorate me.
I spoke to a few of the aforementioned friends about this problem, and my interest in potentially solving the problem without adding yet another Zoom call to our calendars. Of the people who have been the sources of my most consistent creative conversations, few lived in London.
Alongside this need, I had wanted to try a more committed experiment with voicenotes. For the past few years I've gotten increasingly interested in voicenotes as a new medium (on which I plan to write a separate piece). This is because they provide tone, context, and a lack of interruptions that means people can go further than they might anticipate, in whatever path they start down.
FAQs
What if I don’t know seven people who would do this?
Ask one person and ask them to ask other people, and so on.
Can I do it with other numbers?
Yes. Let us know how it goes.
How did you enforce time limits on voicenotes?
We didn’t bother. If people went over or under it was fine.
Do I have to use WhatsApp?
You can also use Telegram, Signal, or any other platform that supports groups and voicenotes. Be aware that WhatsApp compresses audio beyond what I find to be good quality if you later decide to reuse the audio for some other purpose (like a podcast).
Isn’t it really a 75 minute time commitment?
Only if everyone listens to each other’s voicenotes, which of course is allowed and encouraged, but not required.
Can I avoid holding down the record button while doing this?
You can swipe up on the microphone button to record without holding the button down.
What if someone is late?
We didn’t have any late questions. When answers came late it was no big deal. People committed to at least try to record an answer on the same day the question was asked, and the best effort was good enough.
Can people respond to each other’s voicenotes?
We mostly didn’t, but if you do, let us know how it goes.
What have you been organizing for the past decade?
A book club since 2012; Through a Glass Darkly since 2018; Interintellect salons since 2020. Please join!
What if I have more questions?
Respond to this email and I’ll answer them! I’ll edit this post with any I receive.
Best,
Bryan
Absolutely loved this format. I will likely try it with my writing peers, thank you so much! :)