Archive for 'creativity basics'
The importance of dreamtime in your creative routine
Posted on August 6, 2008, by dazzer67, under creative exercises, creativity basics, inspiration, preparation.
One of the dangers of living in a highly productive, creative environment is that we can easily neglect one of the most important parts. If you suffer from burn out, or times of creative drought, one of the possible causes is that you have neglected your dreamtime.
Finding time to dream is important. We’re not talking about sleep here either. This is primarily the time to down creative tools and let your mind wander. And this isn’t about sitting down with a blank piece of paper, planning the next stage of your creative master plan. Dreamtime is about space and connection, perhaps even a little spiritual. But it needs to be taken seriously and this is where many of us fail. We don’t see it as important, we squeeze it from our schedule (if it was ever there) and then wonder why we are becoming less effective creatives.
So what exactly is dreamtime? Well first and foremost it needs to be an integral part of a creative lifestyle, we’re not talking huge amounts of time, we’re not even talking every day. But it should be seen as something regular. Dreamtime isn’t wasting or dead time, it is essential for your creative life.
Dreamtime isn’t the same for everybody either, what works for one may not work for the other. Here are a few ideas and thoughts that may be of use to you. They are not structured and I’m sure you can find variations on the theme. This is all about scheduling the time and then finding what works for you:
- walk barefoot in the damp grass while breathing in the air
- watch a film in a foreign language, without the subtitles on
- read a religious book, from another belief system to your own
- listen to music from a musical genre that is not your preferred
- go for a walk or journey without your capture device
- cook a meal with no predefined recipe
These are only vague ideas, but you should be getting some thoughts of your own by now. For now, it is time to dream…
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Top five creativity habits for you to implement
Posted on July 30, 2008, by dazzer67, under creativity basics, quick tips.
Habit forming can be a positive influence on your creativity. Once formed the habits will have a long-lasting effect on you. Just as ‘bad habits’ eat away at us and have negative effects, ‘good habits’ are the opposite. Take one habit at a time, keep at it for up to 28 days, and then you’ll find that the habit is formed. It will become part of you; a creative habit to fuel your ideas.
- Meditate - Take five minutes each day to clear your mind of everything, or as much as you can. Keep it simple, a basic breathing exercise… in through the nose out through the mouth. Perhaps with a simple image in your mind, the sea, a mountain, a cloud. This will help build up your sense of self. And when you know your ’self’, you’ll be closer to the creative genius that you are.
- Read - This does not mean books only, but that is as good a place as any to start. The habit is to set aside time and space each day to read. To see the input of other ideas as important as your own. In the busyness of trying to be creative it is easy to forget about feeding ourselves.
- Create waste - This is all about not being afraid to have a go. It is about giving yourself permission to create rubbish, to make a mess, to do something that may well be thrown away. If you have an idea, just a glimmer, pull out a piece of paper, or any other medium you use, and get on with it. It doesn’t need to be perfect, in fact it shouldn’t. This will get you into the habit of capturing ideas and letting them develop in a quick and easy way. Then you can either choose to create the final piece or, throw it away.
- Journal - This can be done in a variety of ways from simple notepads to online scrapbooks. The habit is similar to meditation, in that you are focusing on self. However, as opposed to clearing your mind by thinking of nothing, here you clear your mind by writing, drawing or sticking all the thoughts and ideas, fears and worries, hopes and dreams into your journal. It has the added benefit of being a constant source of inspiration as you reread what you have added.
- Doodle - Have you any idea how much ‘dead’ time you have… stuck in meetings, on hold whilst making a call or crashed out watching that very interesting documentary on inner city gangs? Utilise that time by doodling. Keep a small, cheap blank pad and pencil handy when your having these ‘down times’ and simply doodle away. The shapes you doodle may make connections, they may spark creativity and then… off you go. Of course you should always have a capture device nearby but I’m talking here about non-premeditated ideas, doodling is doodling not drawing.
There are a lot more creative habits that you could take on, if you have any ideas to add, do leave a comment. In the meantime, pick a habit and begin.
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Why are you being creative?
Posted on July 22, 2008, by dazzer67, under creativity basics, preparation.
This is all about defining purpose. It may seem an obvious question to ask and you may already have an answer on the tip of your tongue, c’mon Darren, that’s a bit straightforward! Well, yes and no. The simplest answer is because I can, it is something that I do. I live, therefore I create. I have no problems with this, and wholeheartedly agree with it. But left at this level, it can lead us into frustration as we struggle with motivation and lack of focus. All creatives should share in the mantra, ‘lead us not into frustration.’
Being creative is our identity, part of who we are. Why we are creative can be seen as our purpose. It should flow from our identity. My point is we can become fuzzy with the purpose of being creative. Like most things in life, if we can set goals, and I mean clear, timed and measured goals, our purpose is clearer.
So why are you being creative? We’ve established that you are creative, but what are the outcomes to your creativity? Are you being creative to make money, to pass on your creative output through a sale? Are you being creative to produce something that you can look at, or use, or enjoy? Are you being creative to relax and develop your own sense of oneness with reality? There can be many reasons and those listed are only thoughts and ideas. But if you can define your reason for being creative in this way, you will have a focused purpose. It will help you understand why you are doing something and provide motivation along the way. Of course, the way is another post. But without a destination; a purpose, you can’t begin the journey.
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Disorderly creative conduct
Posted on July 16, 2008, by dazzer67, under creativity basics, preparation.
The following quote from A. A. Milne is an interesting one. On the one hand, the more uncluttered we are, the more space we give to our mind to be creative. However, does the following contradict this…
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
Personally I think there is a difference to disorderly and cluttered, and that is why the opening statement and the A.A.MIlne quote are essentially true.
Disorder, allows us to create connections, to dream dreams and to use our imagination. If we kept everything in order, and ‘as it should be’ there is no development, no evolution and no creativity. In some areas of our lives we need order, but when it comes to being creative it can stifles.
Keeping things uncluttered is about the mess, the distractions. While these may initially lead to some interesting connections and creative ideas, they more often than not distract us from our creative goals.
To sum up, I think the following illustration helps. If I am creating some music on the computer, I don’t want several other applications running and cluttering up my workspace, however, keeping an open, disordered mind during the process can allow me to develop new ideas and walk down new musical paths - ‘what if I did this instead?’
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5 ways to rediscover your muse
Posted on July 14, 2008, by dazzer67, under creativity basics, inspiration, quick tips.
I must admit that I have been struggling recently in the creative arena, and the posts here have been few and far between because of that… well okay I have also been extremely busy with the day job, but that is no excuse. Still it got me thinking about what you can do when the ‘muse’ has gone away, when the creative ideas just don’t seem to flow. (You’ll find this is a recurring theme here and I’ll return to it quite often).
So here are five quick ways to rediscover your muse if she’s gone away:
- Open your eyes - It is very easy to crawl into our own creative ghetto and just keep putting out. But that eventually leads to creative burnout. Find others who use a similar creative genre and look at what they are doing, immerse yourself in their creativity for a while.
- See the ‘real’ world - Nature is organic and as such can provide us with limitless inspiration. It isn’t bound by our human ideas and so reaches beyond what we can imagine. Tap into that creativity by taking a look at what is beyond the concrete. It also gives you any excuse to get out of the studio!
- Close your eyes - Sometimes you simply need to down tools for a while. Simply close your eyes and get away from the paper, paint, materials or music, and relax. It is surprising how often the muse will return when you stop looking.
- Make a list - The brain fills up quite quickly with a lot of junk to distracts us. One of the best tried and tested methods of helping the poor brain during these times is making lists. Even if you don’t do anything with them, just getting it out of your head helps a lot, and gives space for the muse to move back in.
- Fall in love - Find your soul mate, spark up the relationship and voila. Okay, that is easier said than done, but what you are looking for here are strong emotions. Emotional energy has a big impact on creativity, so if your creative levels are down, perhaps you need to hold an emotional audit.
I’d love to hear any other ideas you may have to woo the muse back into your life, so please add them to the comments.
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Batch processing, productivity and ProBlogger
Posted on June 13, 2008, by dazzer67, under creativity basics, perspiration.
Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has a really interesting post about keeping ‘like’ tasks together. I am sure you’ll find something of interest in the post even though it doesn’t deal directly with being creative. However, if you are like most creatives then a little organisation could go along way.
How Batch Processing Made Me 10 Times More Productive
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Achieving your goal
Posted on May 29, 2008, by dazzer67, under creativity basics, inspiration, perspiration, preparation.
You too can achieve your creative goals through those three steps and if you keep those steps in mind you’ll be amazed at what you can create:
- Preparation - prepare everything you may need, both during your creative journey and before you even start, e.g. resources, templates, time.
- Inspiration - the enigmatic spark that is fanned into the creative flame. Seek out inspirational tinder for you fire, e.g. images, sounds, space.
- Perspiration - nothing is free (well almost) and creativity will take effort on your part, so be aware that you’ll need to sweat a little to create.
Now what creative mountain are you going to climb today?
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Need 20 ways to come up with new ideas?
Posted on November 27, 2007, by dazzer67, under creativity basics, inspiration, links.
Well look it seems you may be in luck, take a trip over to the link below and you’ll have a ready made to do list to prime that creative pump - so to speak. The post is written by Leo Babauta who keeps Zen Habits ticking along quite nicely, but he has also created this post.
The Top 20 Ways to Come Up With Amazing Ideas
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Giving creativity a helping hand, with a kiss
Posted on November 16, 2007, by dazzer67, under creativity basics, inspiration, preparation.
Stuck for that creatve idea to push the project forward? Has the muse flown the nest and taken your imagination with it? Are you struggling to find the idea to hang your assignment on? Well have a kiss.
KISS, or Keep It Simple Stupid is a maxim creative people need to keep close by. Creative people often exist in one of two spaces. The scenario I outlined above or letting our ideas run away to end up with something so complicated you need a study guide to explain it. In both examples it can be helpful to rely on a KISS.
Simplicity may be the solution your client is looking for, or perhaps the idea you need to convey needs to be blatantly obvious. Clever campaigns are fine, but are useless if only those in the know understand them.
One KISS approach I have found useful in the past is to look for something else that does what I am trying to achieve and then adapt it for the media I am useing or current project. Take for example web design. You need to design a news page for a client. One way that news has been delivered in the past, that everyone knows about is a newspaper. Therefore why not use the newspaper as your starting point? What about designing your links page? Again one way that people recognise the concept of linking is on train maps, so why not use this as your creative starting point?
The point is to start simply and at square one. The muse may be gone but you can kick start your imagination by doing a little thinking and making some very basic connections. Fancy a KISS?
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Another apology but creativety abounds in the zone
Posted on November 6, 2007, by dazzer67, under creativity basics, inspiration, news, perspiration, site info.
As you may have noticed by the lack of posts I have been a little busy of late and I don’t see any let up in that in the foreseebale future. However, I will be pressing on with things here.
One thing that often happens with creative poeple is that they get engrossed in what they are doing. The focus is total on the creative task at hand. Whilst this is great for that task, the more routine and mundane tasks that life often demands get left to one side. [Please note that I am not suggesting for one moment that !maginality is a mundane task.] It is no wonder that creative poeople can be hard to live with as they focus on what they are doing rather than the relationships they have.
The danger with such a strict focus is burnout. Creatives will seek the to stay in the zone and the more they cling on the more it can damage. It is all too easy to then look for external stimuli to stay in the zone, excess caffeine and even something a little stronger.
What any creative needs to do is make sure they take downtime, this doesn’t mean they can’t be playing with ideas, taking notes and doodleing, but they should take a break. The batteries need recharging. There is more than one masterpiece in us all.
