Creative Streak

Warm-Up with an Ice-Breaker

It’s 6 a.m. in Chicago.  It’s 6º Fahrenheit (that’s a balmy -14º for those in Celsius).  I’m looking at every car on our street under 8 inches of snow, even more now that the city snow plow has gone through upending even more white powder onto the cars.

The first two people out for the morning have different plans of action.  The first man – blue coat, blue car – comes out, pushes just enough snow off the windshield/windscreen to see, starts the car and drives off.  I can hear the car groaning as it drives down the street.  I can’t tell if the trail behind the car is exhaust in the frigid air or snow blowing off the car.   The interior must have been as cold as the exterior because he'd already fogged up his car.

The second man – red coat, red car – clears enough snow off the car to get in and start it.  Next, he works his way around the car to wipe off more snow on all four sides.  By the time he gets in a few minutes later, the car is warm, he can see in all directions, and his car easily glides out and down the street.

Excuse the pun, but that’s pretty much the point of an ice-breaker. In short: get your brain warmed up before it brainstorms.

29 Ways To Stay Creative

 

A good use of 1.51 minutes: 29 simple ways to keep the creativity flowing, thanks to MrNotFamous and YouTube. (Thanks for the discovery too, from Denny McCorkle (aka @TweetRightBrain), a good source of daily tweets on creativity.)

Cindy Ratzlaff on Leaders' Successful Daily Habits

Marketing expert and blogger Cindy Ratzlaff gathers an insightful list of daily rituals from successful leaders in a variety of fields and industries in her post "15 Daily Habits of Powerhouse Leaders." She interviews her friends and colleagues on tips ranging from philosophical to immediately practical, in areas such as social media, curiosity, time management and creativity. Some good food for thought during a time-out break this week. (Photo taken from her website.)

Give Up Trying To Find Your Idea

At the beach today, I overheard two friends talking about love, or specifically, the lack of. At one point, I heard the familiar advice: “You know, the moment you stop looking for love, you’ll find it.” How strange, the same thing is true with the elusive idea. Got a problem to solve? Go do something else.

The intentional separation of your brain from the problem is a form of cognitive disengagement, a turn of phrase meaning “mental activity not associated with the problem itself.” I’ve found several psychological text books which give it a more colloquial definition: “spacing out.” It’s been more or less a part of creative philosophy since the first specific process was articulated by Graham Wallas in his book Art of Thought, published in 1926. He developed a four step process where Incubation (“where the problem is internalized into the unconscious mind and nothing appears externally to be happening”) was a necessary part of ideation. Almost every creativity expert outlining their own thought process has included a similar element ever since, from Osborn to von Oech to others.

Many times, the incubation step of “daydreaming” accompanies a creative block. More often than not, the block is self-imposed – usually by assumptions the brainstormer places on the topic or issue. The most common remedy for creative blocks – found in creative writing courses to acting workshops to engineering analysis – is to get away from the problem.

How To Get A New Perspective

I’ve written before how about re-framing the problem is a great way to re-think your creativity. Another way leapt out at me today when I was reading the Sunday New York Times over lunch. ("Food for thought," as they say. Or should that be "Thought for food?")

Anyway, in yesterday’s Sunday Business, there was a common theme among most articles:  how you can reposition something in your mind to see something else. 

Foods with Benefits, or So They Say. FMCGs and similar looking at ways to deliver functional benefits in existing food products.

‘Sex on Wheels’? Now It’s Room for Groceries,’ Too Ferrari moving beyond vroom for thrills to room for hauling stuff around on the weekends.

The Two Most Important Questions for Brainstorms?

I recently was on the train, riding between London City Airport and the Tower Hill station. Bored (tired?), I picked up a French magazine a young woman left on her seat next to me. Biba, I think it was. Anyway, my rudimentary French was sufficient to read one of the big headlines: “The One Question You Should Always Ask On Your First Date.”

Sadly, I don’t know enough French to figure out what the vital answer might be to a 16-year-old, but it made me think what might be the one question you should always ask in a brainstorm. *

I started making a list of questions over the next few weeks until I eventually weeded it down to two questions: What if? and Why not? 

During The Brainstorm

This is a follow-up to an earlier post. Two friends - both of whom work in established agencies (one in Sydney, another in Hong Kong) - had asked for a quick, down-and-dirty list of things to do before, during and after a brainstorm. These were my responses. Go to the bottom of this post for links to the other posts.

Here are the basic tasks to do during a brainstorm, with the primary objective to inspire creativity and minimise all negativity.

Step 1: Set the tone

The atmosphere should be set the moment people arrive. It should “feel fun.” At the same time, minimise distractions - whether it's 'external" (such as obtrusive noise, catering, etc.) or 'personal" (such as people's mobile/cell phones, BlackBerrys, etc.

Before The Brainstorm

This is a follow-up to an earlier post. Two friends - both of whom work in established agencies (one in Sydney, another in Hong Kong) - had asked for a quick, down-and-dirty list of things to do before, during and after a brainstorm. These were my responses. Go to the bottom of this post for links to the other posts.

Here are the basic tasks to get properly organised before the brainstorm.

Step 1: Determine the purpose of the brainstorm

What goal are you trying to achieve? What do you want to accomplish? What problems are you trying to overcome or address? And most of all, do you agree with the meeting sponsor or client on the purpose of the brainstorm?

Step 2: Use a creative problem-solving process

Often, the process is embedded in a creative or strategy brief. See the last page for one CPS methodology.

Step 3: Conduct research

Pull together information about the topic, the objective, the business or societal environment, and the target audience. What key insights can be drawn from this information? And, how can this insight be leveraged by turning it into an idea?

Creative Jolt: Breaking Habits

The inspiration for this post comes from a well-known quote by American actor Alan Alda: “Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself."

Part of out of curiosity, I did a quick survey of (non-creative) friends and colleagues and found a decidedly non-startling fact: most people come and go to work the same way, every time. It's efficient, said one. It saves time, said another. I don't even think about it, said a third. In fact, one person offered a day organised entirely by rote. Same route to work, same coffee shop, same order, same routine at her desk, same place for lunch, etc.

"I'm going to get a lecture now on not being creative, aren't I?" she laughed.

Creative Jolt: Journal Writing and Drawing

I might walk out the front door without my house keys, but I never leave home without a pad of paper and a pen. It’s also my first answer if someone asks for one easy task to integrate creativity in their life: carry a journal.

Journal writing is a common creative activity shared by everyone from Michelangelo to Thomas Edison to John Hughes. I began carrying one simply because I have the world’s worst memory. Quickly it became a habit. Not just to write down an idea, but more often, to draw an idea. To use to sell an idea to client. Other times to record notes. Sometimes a word to look up. A bed-side spot to scribble an idea that popped into my head before sleep, or during a dream. I know draw every PowerPoint slide before I get anywhere near a keyboard (see artwork below).

In other words, any time inspiration hits, keep a journal handy to record it, to amplify it, to solve a problem.

For some people, journal writing - akin to writing a diary - is their way to make sense of a event, task or problem. My friend Marilyn describes it as "a way to make sense of a challenge that my brain won't let go of." Dylan, an old co-worker from my Burson days living in San Francisco, uses it to express himself when words are limiting - or "when my friends can't take me banging on about something." Whether you write or draw or something in-between, it's essentially the act of reflection - in my mind, another way to describe day-dreaming. You should drink eight glasses of water every day and every day you should schedule daydreaming into your day. Otherwise, when do you stop to actually THINK?