Creative Blockbusters - From Me to You

Here are five things that may help bust a creative block. At least they work for me…most of the time:

1. Start with the familiar – What forms / styles / characters / media are the old stand bys that always work for you creatively? Use them to get started. (As the cartoon suggests, when I’m stuck for something to draw, a cow or a growling dog usually shows up on the page first.)
   
2. Do something mindless – Start something productive that requires no creative energy to get your mind off the block. (For me, that’s usually some type of data entry or spreadsheet work.)
   
3. Perform very yes/no or close-ended tasks – Find things with clear right & wrong answers (math, puzzles, etc.) and work on them. (I will often create flow diagrams for something I’m working on that force yes/no points or provide only a couple of choices at each step.)
   
4. Go where you’ve gone before –Return to a setting where you’ve been creative before or get out tools that have stimulated creative ideas previously. (It’s Sharpie markers, a blank piece of paper, and starting to write or draw bold lines to get me going.)
   
5. Create a variation on the theme – Modify something you’ve done or build off of somebody else’s creativity. Start working with it, but vary it in increasingly bold ways until you’ve moved into creating something new. (For me, that may be drawing Dilbert characters in unusual settings or searching Google images for offbeat pictures that convey what I’m trying to say.)

Those are five potential blockbusters. For a bonus 6th creative blockbuster, here’s a link back to a previous post. And share a comment on what you do. Happy busting!

Give Your Workspace a Massive Creative Boost - Guest Post from Andrew Tilling

We have another international guest post this week. Andrew Tilling, from Surrey, UK, is a consultant specialising in creative thinking techniques, team dynamics and leadership. He heads Preseli Partnerships Ltd. which provides providing training, coaching and consultancy to help organisations make a difference.

Andrew is also a founding partner in The Nutshell Project, recognizing the value to be found in personal professional development time away from the demands of the day to day. Based on connecting on Twitter and visiting Andrew's blog, I asked him to share his perspective on the importance of place on creativity:


I have the luckiest job in the world. I am given the freedom to work with people to help them find new ideas, develop those ideas, and get on and make a change in their world. Plus, I get to do this in some beautiful places. It strikes me how much more creative people can be with a change of environment.

And as tempting as it is to write a detailed report on why all businesses should send employees to areas of outstanding natural beauty in order to boost creativity, it's more beneficial to explore what we can do to our own environment to help become more productive – and especially more creative.

The unconscious mind is our creative powerhouse. To help it along we need to understand it's capable of processing a lot more than our conscious mind. A natural, stimulating environment adds fuel to the creative fire. We are fortunate that simple objects can remind us of those environments. Objects help our unconscious access old memories in incredible detail, allowing us to draw on new connections and shifting our state into a more resourceful one.

Here are a few things you can add to your workspace to help you become more creative.

• Have something natural – Innovators constantly draw on nature for ideas. We are part of nature and only our artificial environments disconnect us from that. Office policy or not on potted plants, you'll want something that grows (or at least grew) in nature to allow you to reconnect.
  
• Make time work for you– Have a stop watch or countdown clock you can set for 10 minute bursts of concentration or bookmark a site with a countdown-clock.
  
• Something from somewhere special – Remember a time when you felt free from the pressures of daily life? I have a notebook used while travelling that's never far from my desk. It helps unlock creative potential just thinking about it.
  
• A picture of a creative genius – We all need a circle of inspiration – alive or dead. Find a picture of someone whose work blows you away. Learn about and talk with them often (in your head, of course, or people will think you are nuts).
  
• A picture of a business genius – Someone else for your circle of inspiration. If you can keep in mind the demands of the market place while being creative, you have more chance of your ideas becoming a genuine innovation.
  
• Blank paper and 4 color pen – These 'click' pens are awesome for mind-mapping. Shut your laptop lid and find somewhere comfy to sit and doodle.
  
• Composition & presentation space – Recognize that finding and presenting an idea are two very different mindsets. Make different spaces for different kinds of work. Even if you can't move from your desk, you change your space internally through listening to different music styles.
  
• Water – Drink it, walk by it, have it flowing nearby. Take holidays by it, swim in it, and study it. You are 90% water. A dear writer friend of mine swears by toilet breaks for getting over writers block. Water helps you get into the creative flow on so many levels. Without it, there is not much of you left.
  
• An excuse to walk the scenic route – Whether it is walking a dog or feeding stale bread to ducks, get out into nature at least once daily. Walking will allow you to let off steam and clear your head. That beats playing "spot the idea amid all the clutter" and will make you rapidly more productive.
  
• A crowded square – People-watching is a great for finding new associations to help your ideas grow. J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter in a coffee shop. Snatched snippets of conversations and chance encounters make all the difference – SO LONG AS YOU STOP TO LOOK AND LISTEN. Invest the time, and you will reap rewards.
  
• Join the conversation – Social media is a constant source of inspiration nowadays. Just keep your objective in mind as you set your countdown clock and do a 10 minute resource harvest. Later, make sure you post something you learned in return to keep the flow going both ways.

I hope you find these tips to be as much value as I have. I love interaction, so if you have any questions, feel free to comment, get in touch on twitter (@andrewtilling) or check out The Nutshell Project blog. - Andrew Tilling

Stuck for Creative Ideas? Five Ways Structure Can Help

Creativity isn’t always wild, crazy, and free form.

When you hit a creative block or venture off into a new creative area, structure can actually enhance your creative skills, whether it’s an artsy pursuit or part of an everyday role. How can structure help get your creativity going? Structure:

• Provides models and patterns to serve as inspiration sources. An example is Jan Harness’ frequent use of Haiku – a strict poetry structure with 17 syllables spread across 3 lines. If you can count, you can write Haiku, and its structure makes almost any words sound impressive.


• Reduces the number of creative variables you have to consider. Fewer options allow you to concentrate greater creative energy on those that remain.


• Makes it easier to find instruction and input about using the structure itself. Think about the number of Dummies books available for a variety of creative pursuits.


• Adds depth, since structure itself can help communicate messages. Icons represent this, since certain images and figures suggest far more depth than their visual meaning alone.


• Can make your work more shareable, since others will already understand the form and be able to build on and adapt it. A 12-bar blues structure is an example since it easily allows other musicians to improvise within it.

Remember this Equation: No Ideas + Structure = Creativity

I Only Paint When the Walls Are Bare

Last weekend, I finished the first large painting I’ve done in more than a decade. This was prompted by the prospect of losing a cool Howard Finster print that’s been in my office for years at work. I learned of the possibility on a Friday and by Saturday night, I’d purchased a canvas, new paints and brushes, and was gridding out a Peanuts cartoon to do a painting in Tom Everhart’s style.

While painting, I thought about the very productive bursts of artistic creativity followed by long droughts that have marked my life. I’ve always attributed the periods to major life changes (going to grad school, getting married, buying a house), but it doesn’t explain other creative periods, i.e. a tremendous output early in high school and doing a lot of cartooning the past few years – much of it on paper table cloths in Italian restaurants!

It struck me finally that the creative bursts were explained by bare walls - what triggered the output was the need to fill empty space. In each case, I’d moved into a new space with walls needing to be decorated. Some walls have been physical; others have been non-traditional – refrigerators, presentations, blogs. In each case, once the “walls” have been filled, my artistic spark has vanished.

Interestingly, the spark doesn’t come back when a previously bare wall becomes empty again. There’s a big bare area over our mantel where one of my paintings used to hang, yet there’s no inspiration to fill this empty space yet again.

My lesson from all this is that there are different types of creativity patterns. I appear to be a “utilitarian creative.” I don’t ooze artistic creativity all the time as many do. Instead, my creative juices get going only when there’s a clear need and application for the output. So in the future, when I hit a creative block, I’ll just have to find new bare walls to fill.

Creative Quickie - Flip Out

There are so many situations in everyday life that can be sources of current and future creative inspiration.

How do you become better at actually capitalizing on their inspirational value?

One way is to get an easy-to-use video camera and start capturing these situations.

Having a Flip camera with me nearly all the time this year has not only allowed capturing blatantly creative images, but has also refined my eye for spotting hidden creativity in more mundane situations.

Figure out which type of device works best for you - it could be a Flip, a Kodak (that's for former BMA board president Jeff Hayzlett!), or your PDA. Find the device that allows you to video at a moment's notice and build an inspiration reserve for when you hit a creative block. - Mike Brown

Another Creative Blockbuster to Try

When you’re stuck creatively, almost any forward progress is positive, no matter how small. It’s even better when your progress can be turned into something tangible, i.e. an artifact.

An artifact can take any of a variety of forms including a word, a sentence, an image, an outline, a chart or graph, a good article you’ve found, etc. Anything that provides you with a jumping off point for further opportunity is ideal.

The next time you hit a creative block, simply lower your expectations, find a small something that’s more achievable than the whole project (maybe even something already sitting in the creative trash heap), create it, and use it as your first step to get to the next step!