Five Surefire Ways To Be Uncreative
Creativity arises when the inner, psyche conditions and the external, environmental conditions are appropriate. Instead of focusing on how to be more creative, it’s often more rewarding to stop doing things that inadvertently hinder creativity.
Here are five things executives often do to block the creative flow.
1) Sit in front of your computer all day.
The muse is unlikely to visit while you are sitting at your desk aimlessly staring at your monitor all day. The muse has left the building, and frankly, you probably can do the same. Get up and go outside for a walk.
2) Ensure your day is full of distractions.
Information overload converges from every direction. Staying busy is easy; producing creative results is not. Too many executives sacrifice their innate creativeness in exchange for a relentless stream of demands. Block off time at work and minimize your distractions.
3) Read the same things you’ve been reading.
Reading the latest business book may not be the most valuable use of your time. You can end up chasing the latest trend while you perpetually fall behind in your industry. Be willing to explore ideas, fields, and disciplines outside your comfort zone and make connections back to what you know.
4) Get stressed and emotionally unbalanced.
Part of the challenge of living a life full of distractions is that it tends to activate the “survival self,” which shuts down access to the creative impulse. Learn to let go of negative emotions as they arise without getting “hooked” by them.
5) Assume creative ideas come from your head.
Creative geniuses throughout time have intuited that their ideas didn’t arise from themselves. Operate from a profound level of humility without the need to be the “creator” of your work.
The creative waters are within us; we need only crack the damn and witness the creative forces flowing of its own.
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I especially like these thoughts. Interrupting our destructive patterns is many times easier to apply than trying to establish new ones. Great juice for my day!
So much of establishing new creative rhythms comes down to eliminating what we’re unconsciously doing to block them. We really don’t need “techniques” to be more creative — we just need to allow creativity to flow of its own.