Creative Streak

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?

Some Problems in the World Are Not Bullet-izable

Some days I wake up to a marvelous gift (via e-mail). This morning, my friend Hertha sent me the New York Times article on the U.S. military and its use of PowerPoint, entitled We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint.

I love this sentence in particular, "Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making." To the end of that sentence, I'd add in "... and creativity."

Let me say now, I love PowerPoint. Use it constantly. It is infinitely flexible, easy to use, and when used properly, can add incredible impact to any project. The operative words in that sentence are: "when used properly."

Unfortunately, the vast - 99.99%, if you ask me - of people only use it merely to justify writing paragraphs in bullet points. Just last week I saw a colleague in a agency here in Sydney swipe and copy paragraphs from an Acrobat document and paste them into a bullet point. Just out of curiosity, I counted the final tally of words on the slide: 217, in 7 point Helvetica. When I asked her if the word size was a tad microscopic, she said, "Perhaps." She immediately bolded all of the text, then said, "There, done and dusted."

Indeed she was. I got a call a few days later saying their agency didn't win the pitch. "The client didn't think our ideas were very creative," she said, extremely disappointed because the ideas were in fact fantastic.

A few thoughts to consider.

• If you use PowerPoint frequently, learn how to use it. Find a local class or workshop. People, PowerPoint is not going away any time soon. Trust me, life's easier if you aren't trying to practice your fluency at the same time you're writing a document. I also don't buy the argument any longer "I don't have time to go to training." If you can negotiate two meetings which are scheduled at the same time, then you can negotiate planning a workshop into your diary. 

Creative Jolt: Quiet Time

From Psychology Today a link to a great article entitled Boosting Your Sense of Quiet Force, outlining the benefits of focusing by removing daily distractions. In turn, less distractions often mean boosting creative thinking.

I particularly liked the person's complaint: "I left my Blackberry at home, so I was so bored during my cab ride home. I had just had to sit there." It reminds me of a friend who said she can barely stand to ride public transport if she doesn't have her iPod.

While I have nothing against music devices, it always begs the question: At what point, do you allow yourself - give yourself - the simple luxury of thinking? When I've taught Time Management workshops, I've always found it strange that people will actively fill up their diary with meetings - some of which are totally irrelevant - but they would never think of booking time for themselves to constructively think.

For some - myself included - it's pretty easy to get distracted. For you and me, here's another article in PT entitled Easily Distracted: Why It's Hard To Focus, and What To Do About It.

Both of these articles on 'focus' give me an excuse to re-publish another of my favourite articles from PT - Everyday Creativity - from November 2009.

Thanks to Ralph Kerle for the article. Go here for his blog, Creative Matters.

Finally, if you have any of your own suggestions, please send them here. I'll post each individually in the future, and give you full credit.

Bits & Bytes, March 15

Here's some of my week-end catch-up on posts related to creativity, innovation and communications.

Framing Is Everything - One of my favourites, Luciano Passuello writes Litemind, always a thought-provoking blog on creativity and innovation. His post Framing Is Everything speaks to the process of "framing" and its importance to problem solving and decision making. He suggests that how you articulate the problem will profoundly influence how you solve it with creative thinking.

How Good Is Your Website? -  My colleague Neil Drewitt sent this website to me - Bowen & Cragg - a company which consultants on website effectiveness. It has a terrific database of best practices, plus 1,000 articles free on its website. You can also sign up for its newsletter. Handy, practical and a beautiful website to boot (no surprise there).

Two Articles on Innovation

Verbal vs Non-Verbal Communications

You may not recognise the name, but Albert Mehrabian authored some of the most famous studies in communications research. His most well-known hypothesis: When two people communicate face-to-face, how much of the meaning is communicated verbally, and how much is communicated non-verbally?

First published in 1971, his research is almost a quaint idea today, considering that a lot of organisational and personal communications uses decidedly non-face-to-face methods of social media.

Despite using Twitter, Facebook, blogs to communicate (and I’m as guilty of it as anyone), there's something in Mehrabian’s research that continues to fascinate.

 He concluded there are three parts to face-to-face communications – sometimes called the 3 V’s – and these three elements determine how much a receiver “likes” the speaker:

• Visual, or body and facial expressions, accounting for 55% of the liking
• Vocal, or tone of voice, accounting for 38% of the liking
• Verbal, or words, accounting for 7% of the liking

NY Times Interview with Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air LInes

I'm not a fan of posting links to recent news articles, but I couldn't resist in this case.  I very much liked this recent interview by Adam Bryant of Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines, for "Corner Office" in The New York Times on 25 April 2009.

On the second page of the link, Anderson has some specific points about communications which I think is not only timeless - but timely, given that customers, shareholders and employees need more - and more compelling - communications in challenging times.

Of course, I didn't mind either the barbs about PowerPoint and Blackberry. Here too he subtly underscores the key point that modern technology won't make you a better communicator if you don't know how to communicate effectively in the first place.