"When we live creatively, boredom is banished and every moment holds the promise of a fresh discovery." – What other professions does this hold true for? SCIENCE. Oh heck yes.
In the way of creativity are four problems:
1. Exhaustion: "exhausted by too many demands" and have trouble accessing creative energy
2. Distraction: "easily distracted and have trouble learning how to protect and channel whatever energy we have"
3. Laziness: "laziness, or lacking discipline" to direct the energy
4. Unknowing: "not knowing what to do with the energy we have"
All people have roughly the same brain power and energy the difference is "how much uncommitted attention they have left over to deal with novelty. In too many cases, attention is restricted by external necessity."
— too true. I stopped playing videogames because too often I found any energy I had to create was immediately absorbed by the television and console controller so even though I thought it was a "recreation" it was actually drawing attention away from the things that satisfied me most—the art of drawing and creation. Further, we too often believe that recreation is the thing that will give us satisfaction btu if you really stop to think abotu it, greater satisfaction can be found elsewhere.
— for students I believe the desire to study and worry about "getting things right" is the hiundrance to creativity even within a creative degree such as design. It's necssary to forget that the work we're doing is for grades and instead lose yourself int he process. Same appleis for commercial work—when you let go of the stress and worry you're removing a blockage from the real work.
"There are real limits to how many things a person can attend to at the same time, and when survival needs require all of one's attention, none is left over for being creative."
"... often the obstacles are internal. In a person concerned with protecting his or her self, the practically all the attention is invested in monitoring threats to the ego." — which reminds me of Ian Anderson of the The Design Republic's discussion last night (7 march 2017 at Mercury Cinema) in which he discusses "Kill Your Self" t-shirt campaign. He said it wasn't meant in a negative light but that rather instead of preening and primping oneself to make sure we "look our best" in front of the mirror, instead we get over it and move on with more important things in life. We kill the ego in order to gain control of our lives."
Never fear being wrong. "A paranoid tendency is one obstacle to the free deployment of mental energy. The person who suffers from it usually cannot afford to become interested in the world from an objective, impartial viewpoint, and therefore is unable to learn much that is new." — and we might attribute a fear of experimenting, pushing boundaries, trying new things, for fear of failure prevents us from pushing forward. As scientist on BBC Science Hour (or was it The Monkey Cage) said, "I love being wrong because I've still learned something. I've learned what doesn't work." Which means you're still describing the parameters of something through it's negative instead of positive which still helps us to form an understanding of the thing we're doing or exploring. It's like drawing the negative shape in life drawing in order to learn new forms.
Cultivate Curiosity and Interest
Children's curiosity "highlights and invests with interest anything within range."
Adults "lost the sense of wonder, the feeling of awe in confronting hte majest and variety of the world."
"Yet without awe life becomes routine."
"Creativity within a domain often goes hand in hand with conformity int he rest of life." Using Einstein as an example, but is this true? I don't know—I hope I can disagree!!
Things to help creativity:
- Try to be surprised by something everyday
- Try to surprise at least one person every day
- Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others OR Keep a Journal / Sketchbook
- When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it BUT be careful when these things are found on Facebook. Perhaps a better way of approaching this is to subscribe to blogs and emails which pique your interest and follow these instead. For example, I love Nautilus and Capture and sometimes even AGDA.
Cultivating Flow (or Focus) in everyday life
- Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to—also be sure to keep lists of things TO DO and be sure to include on them things that you want to do for YOURSELF and NOT JUST for work. Too often we write lists of things we MUST do instead of lists of things we WANT to do.
- If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable.
- To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity—which is true. Continue to push yourself daily and you'll quickly improve. This goes for design. If you've mastered one grid, then try something new. If you already know how to draw figures then begin to apply that knowledge to drawing horses. If you've mastered typeface then try to design one.
Direct your time
- Take charge of your schedule
- Make time for reflection and relaxation — when shooting a recent burlesque show The Deco Dolls (3 March 2017) I was using a 70-200mm zoom and after shooting portraits for a period I put the lens down and realised that in focussing on the face for 20 seconds I'd completely missed the beautiful foot work and flow the dancer was cultivating with her legs and the sensuality of her hands. I needed to see the whole picture to appreciate what I was missing because my focus was too narrow. Though, it was necessary to focus at the time!!
- Shape your space.
- Find out what oyu like and what you hate about life OR know your feelings. This is important to understanding the way you work as well. If you know that you require time away form the computer to socialise in order to do your best work then do it. If you don't like to hang out with a certain person because you feel they drain your energy, then don't. If you don't feel like drinking then don't.
- Start doing more of what you love, less of what you hate
TBC
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