Making time for creativity
Creativity isn’t a gift for the lucky few but a behaviour that everyone can tap into. It can be improved and made easier with practice.
I relish working in a creative agency where we generate ideas from planned brainstorms and collaboration sessions but automatic and intuitive creativity happens on a more personal level and has to be nurtured.
The first step in honing this personal creativity is to dedicate time and be disciplined to use that time wisely. The creative pause is not a myth, its no accident that ideas appear when you’re in the shower, on the throne, or just about to fall asleep.
Our brains work by constantly comparing our present experiences to those in the past and slotting them firmly into the categories that match best. This is a good and very necessary process. Imagine if every time you were handed a beer your brain didn’t say: “well that looks like a liquid, in some kind of transparent container, that looks like it will fit my hand, perhaps it’s like all those others I’ve had tonight, let’s try drinking it”.
Of course, this also gets in the way of creativity and uniqueness. But, by taking the time to actively do something else, make a cup of tea, read a magazine, or that old designers cliché of ‘talking a walk in nature’, our brains become occupied with a different set of experiences to measure the present against. And bingo, that’s when connections are made between these separate trains of thought and ideas start to spark.
With practice and variety you build up a growing library of experiences, which provide more possible connections.
If you take this further, and seek out new experiences, try different things and perhaps push your comfort zone, then the creative tool box you build will be immense, fresh, totally unique, and with you for life.
