A few ways to stay creative!

OK so hopefully you can relate, sometimes I find it challenging to stay creative or just turn it on and off when needed. I decided so scour the web and put together a list of ways to stay creative. Here goes nothing:
Some of these tasks include:

1. Find Inner Peace Before Starting Tasks

While I do try to be at peace and free of negative thoughts most of the time, on occasion I can get run down with incessant mind activity. If you can relate to feeling angry, frustrated or stressed at times, then you need to realise that being in this mode is not the best place to come from when you want to work on creative projects.

Instead, I use a number of techniques that help me relax, whether it be meditation, taking in my surroundings or simply focusing on my breathing. Anything that helps me get into a calm mood. From here, with an empty mind, I find it much easier to produce some creative output.

2. Be Willing to Explore New Ideas

If you ever get too stuck in a mindset that your way is the only way and you know everything about a topic that you need to know, then you could be missing out on some purely genius information. Even though I might have a good idea of how I think things should be done, I’m always willing to explore new ideas.

If you stay fixed and isolated in one area of your life it can easily cross over into your more creative pursuits. This doesn’t mean you have to accept or agree with everything you see / read, but at least give new perspectives a chance before dismissing them.

3. Always Take Notes

Since I started taking a lot of notes in my daily life, I honestly have no idea how I lived without them in the past. Whether you are an artist, a writer, an engineer or anything that allows you to use your imagination at times, be ready to take notes whenever necessary.

I tend to read informative books rather than ones based on fantasy or science fiction, and always keep a small notepad with me to write down some real gems I get from the content. Similarly, if I’m out and about and something comes to mind, I’ll keep notes in my phone and then upload them to Google Docs later in the day.

These simple but useful notes have helped me massively when it comes to the likes of article ideas, design inspiration and more.

4. Outline a Core Structure for All Projects

I’m sure this is a case by case example, but for the life of me I can rarely sit down and work effectively unless, I keep a structure of what I want to stick to and then flesh out ideas from there.

Even for this blog post, on a piece of paper I wrote down the title and my six main points first. Only then did I open up a text editor and start turning the points into paragraphs. Not only does this help you stick to your goals, but I find having a structure first of all can greatly increase efficiency for any project I undertake.

5. Follow Other Creative People

This is by no means in order to steal pieces of their inspiration, but you could see it as stealing some of their workflow. I love seeing how people in my industry plan their work days and I can see certain bloggers’ posts on the topic tend to be some of their most popular.

If there are people you look up to in your niche, see if you can find out how they structure their days, where they get their inspiration from and what makes them ‘tick’. If they’re well known it’s likely someone has done an interview with them and asked them questions like this.

6. Tidy Loose Ends Later

This especially applies to writing, but this tip can be used in many other creative outlets as well. I find that I work the best if I stick to a core structure, but then just let my imagination flow, not worrying about spelling mistakes or slight imperfections in design.

I believe that if you spent all the time you are trying to be creative, also being logical and fixing up mistakes, it not only leads to less inspiring results but it is a much slower process. Let your mind wander, see what you come up with, and tidy the loose ends when you are finished.

Three reasons why fear is a creative's friend

For the creative person, fear is always nearby. But in spite of the close proximity, it’s usually a very strained relationship. Fear is one of those emotions that most of us are trying not to have. Because it doesn’t feel good, it’s been coded as a so-called “negative” emotion. And we’re so keen to avoid this negative emotion that we find ourselves avoiding situations that elicit fear for us, so we code the fear-inducing situations as “negative” as well.

But, fear isn’t bad at all. All emotions have a positive purpose that serves us. Have you ever thought about the positive purpose of your fear?

Fear is a signal you’re learning

Because we’re designed this way, we tend to respond to ALL unfamiliar experiences with fear - even if they’re not dangerous. So long as you’re taking yourself into new territory, and growing, you’ll always feel some fear along the way. From a creativity point of view, fear is useful because it makes you more alert when you’re learning and growing. And fear is a signal that you’re learning. In fact, if you’re telling yourself you’re learning in a particular area of your life, yet you’re not feeling any fear in that area of your life, you’re probably not learning.

Fear lets you know what’s important to you

A third purpose of fear is that fear let’s us know what’s really important to us. Think about it: when something isn’t important to you, you probably don’t care what happens with it, and you won’t feel fear then. It’s the stuff that’s closest to our hearts, that we really care about, that we feel the most fear about - because it matters to us how things work out. With so many choices available to us these days, alot of creative people find it difficult to figure out what’s really important to them and decide what they want in life. A really counter-intuitive, but easy way to figure whether something is genuinely important to you is to notice how much fear you have about it. The more important it is to you, the bigger your fear will probably be.

Fear holds creative tension

When there’s an unresolved problem or a gap between where we are and where we want to be, a tension develops. The bigger the gap, the greater the tension, and fear we’ll feel. Alot of the time, in order to relieve the tension, we change our vision of where we want to be or stop asking that unresolved question. Successful creative's embrace this tension, knowing that tension is an important part of the creative process. Creative tension motivates our unconscious mind to continue searching for a resolution, even while we go on with our other tasks or go to sleep at night, those epiphanies that you have, where the idea just seems to have popped into your head out of nowhere.

So next time you feel afraid, stop and remind yourself that fear works. And then check which purpose your fear is serving, and ask yourself, “Knowing that this is the purpose of my fear, what would I love to do next?”