Albert Einstein once said:
Why is it I always get my best ideas while shaving?
The idea of a standard or sure fire means of a successful creative process is contradictory in its very nature. The idea of confining the creative process to a set standard, jamming it into a box, will only result in creating the same or similar thing over and over. It you want to cut out cookies, use a cookie cutter.
If you want to create, eat the cookies while drinking your coffee.
I’ve mulled over my own creative process and arbitrarily decided to share three things I’ve learned through my own processes.
- Sleep on it – Seriously. Go stretch your legs, get a refill, move to another project, have someone else review it, and don’t look at it again until tomorrow. If you wrestle with something long enough, you lose your creative senses. I’ve reviewed my own work the next day and entirely scrapped it. I thought, “What was I thinking! It’s AWEFUL!”
- Think on it – Think about it independently. Unless you’ve solved the problem or brainstormed a new concept, don’t write it down, don’t sketch it out, don’t touch your computer. Go outside. Talk to your wife. Do the opposite of creative concentration. Whenever I’ve done this, I’m pretty sure the deep recesses of my mind was still working on the problem. 9 out of 10 times, this is when a creative epiphany occurs.
- Trash it – It’s a shame, I know, I really had a thing going with this list … Sleep on it … Think on it … and now, Trash it? That’s what you have to do, sometimes. Get the project out of your face and start over from scratch. This tactic has gotten me out of some deep creative ruts!
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