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Maximizing your creative energy - #1

by Rick Baker
On Sep 22, 2010
Jim Estill’s August 26th blog caught my attention. Thank you, Jim, for the opportunity to relay your thoughts about ‘creative energy’.
 
Here’s what Jim wrote on August 26th…
 
“In my experience, there are limits to creative energy. Sometimes in a very short period of time I can prepare a great speech, powerpoint or article. Other times, it takes me five times as long to produce quality material (or it never gets produced).
 
And what I have found is these creative periods tend to be short. Of course my goal is to make them more and longer.
 
Some tricks I try are:
  1. The old timer trick. Set my Blackberry timer for 25 minutes. And just do it. 25 minutes is short enough that I can do it any time.
  2. Stimulation. I find reading often acts as a stimulus. I take notes while I read.
  3. Rest. Obvious but I am more creative if I am rested.
  4. Health. I am more creative if I am healthy.
  5. Exercise. A good run or weight lifting session can inspire.
  6. Setting goals. I always work better with goals. Creative goals work for me.”
 
***
 
As I read Jim’s blog, I thought about 3 things:
  1. How we can be more creative…
    • About the quality: being able to do work that scores high on the ‘creativity scale’.
    • About the quantity: being able to produce a larger amount of creative or innovative work.
  2. How we can be creative when we want to be creative…
    • About the timing: being able to do creative work when we want to do it.
  3. The definition of creativity. In this note, when I write ‘creative energy’ I mean whatever it is [inside us] that provides us the ability to do innovative or creative business work.
    • About understanding how the human brain works when it performs innovative and creative work.
In this blog-series – Maximizing your creative energy – I will write about all 3 of these topics.
 
To finish off this first blog in the series, I will share a few things I do to bolster my ‘creative energy’. At first reading the set of things may appear strange or disconnected…or worse. Hopefully, after I have finished the blog-series the things will make much more sense.
 
Things I do to bolster my ‘creative energy’…
  • Sometimes I intentionally procrastinate to force a tight deadline
  • I keep a file on my Blackberry to record "Did you ever wonder..." things
  • Sometimes I brush my hair with my left hand [being right-handed…that explains why my hair looks messy]
  • I listen to volumes of business and personal-development audio CDs
  • Sometimes I write poems, many of them designed for humour and song lyrics
Footnotes:
Link to Jim Estill’s website: CEO Blog – Time Leadership  www.jimestill.com
Link to an Innovation & Creativity blog.

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Comments (2) -

Rick Baker Canada
1/8/2011 9:54:35 PM #

“Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.”

Edward de Bono

rick baker
1/22/2013 8:29:37 PM #

“Play and games, as it turns out, increase activation in the very parts of the brain associated with creative thinking. Playfulness also increases your motivation to pursue and persevere in a creative project by turning on your internal reward system.”

Shelley Carson
‘Your Creative Brain’, (2010)

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