“Did you have a pandemic project?” As we come out of the lockdown, it’s my favorite question. With the world mostly shut down, how did we use our time? I learned that aside from home schooling, purging closets and sourcing toilet paper, people started podcasts, designed mentoring courses and fostered baby chicks. One colleague created a series of 1930s-style move posters interpreting Edgar Allen Poe book covers. And Forbes reports an explosion of entrepreneurship.
Creativity drives the engine of innovation, which is essential for businesses to survive. Some companies institutionalize the pursuit of good ideas. Google and 3M expect employees to spend up to 15% – 20% of their time – almost one day a week – working on their own projects.
The World Economic Forum lists creativity, ideation and innovation as essential skills for jobs of the future. I wanted to up my creativity game, and stepped into a goal to establish a writing practice where I posted more frequently about these skills to help people thrive at work.
Regardless of how big or small your creative goal, start strong by nurturing your project with these tips:
Establish “space” for your project. By space I mean a home where your project will live. Perhaps a new notebook, or a project board on Mural or Trello. Mynotebook has an image of Ruth Bader Ginsberg to set the tone to be tenacious and to embrace my inner notoriousness. Create a notes page on your phone to capture ideas, a folder on your computer, whatever you’ll need as a go-to place to move your creative project forward. In other words, set your intention and get ready.
Push beyond the first ideas. Ideas are not just for your project itself, but how to achieve momentum. During the lockdown I found it too distracting to do deep work at home between sharing a home office with my husband and navigating pandemic necessities. Coffee shops and libraries were closed to sit-down visitors. I needed other solutions. My ultimate solution was to borrow a friend’s apartment while she was quarantining elsewhere. I felt like Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast where he rented a second apartment just for writing. You might trade child care to get a confined period of quiet, or carve out a spot in the basement.
My borrowed apartment has the bonus of no WiFi, meaning I need to prep my research and be organized for my writing sessions. During my sessions, keep a list of what I’ll want to research later and thus avoided the black hole of the internet. You may not have a borrowed apartment in leafy Oak Park, but you can switch off your WiFi or use apps that limit access to help yourself focus.
Find an accountability partner. If your goal is solo rather than a team goal, hold yourself accountable by reporting to someone. My accountability partner is a fellow member of Ellevate Network, a global network of women dedicated to supporting each other’s success. We text each other at the beginning of each week and then recap at the end. If we accomplished our goal, great. If not, we look at what contributed to the lag and what could be done to avoid that the following week. Your accountability partnership doesn’t need to be reciprocal. You can send your goals to a friend simply as a method to say it out loud.
Make mini goals visible. Identify your weekly goal, then post it in a place you’ll see it frequently, like the bathroom wall or above your desk. I realized that I am great at generating ideas, but need a boost on tying everything up in a bow for a lovely package at the end. My post-it says “Finish” and each week I add a smaller post-it about what specifically I’m going to finish that week, along with the date to remind me to not let it languish.
Build space for your brain to percolate. Brenda Ueland’s seminal book If You Want To Write, a Book About Art, Independence and Spirit, she says that “imagination needs moodling – long inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.” Ueland’s book dates to 1938, way before smart phones, but the advice rings true event more today. Manoush Zomorodi’s TEDx talk How Boredom Can Lead to Your Most Brilliant Ideas, discusses her experiment to get people to reduce their phone use for more and better ideas.
I ran my own experiment as I left my loft in Chicago’s West Loop to take the Green Line to my writing space. On the days I used the commute to send email and catch up on my newsfeed, it took me longer to settle into my writing than when I left the phone and earbuds in my bag and looked out the window. Yes, I felt itchy at first. Then I’d remind myself that when I’m so busy cramming my brain with information, it pushes out room to let ideas ruminate.
Debrief with yourself and iterate where needed. Work goals are mostly straightforward. You have a specific accountability, a deadline and people counting on you to come through. With demands of work and home life, individual creative goals are easier to lose sight of. In your weekly debrief with yourself or your accountability partner, look at what’s standing between you and your goal. Something blew up at work, perhaps, or your friend suggested a spontaneous dinner during the time you used for your creative project. Look at how will you deal with fun or unfortunate disruptions to make room for your longer-term goals.
Hemingway developed a writing process where he stopped writing when he knew what was going to happen next. He’d spend the rest of the day meandering and would know where to start when he began writing again. With Hemingway in mind, I developed a strategy to identify what I was going to do during my next session to avoid losing time when I came back to my project.
Don’t let your creative goals stay a wish, that elusive something you get to “when you have time.” Put structure in place to make them happen. I’m happy to report that through these strategies I landed a gig as an ongoing contributor to Forbes, and this is my first column. I look forward to helping professionals boost creativity for career success, and look forward hearing about your success.
"strategy" - Google News
June 26, 2021 at 09:01PM
https://ift.tt/2T6RlRS
Design A Strategy To Reach Your Creative Goals - Forbes
"strategy" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2Ys7QbK
https://ift.tt/2zRd1Yo
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Design A Strategy To Reach Your Creative Goals - Forbes"
Post a Comment