To help my team tackle this issue of creativity as they handled more problems in marketing and design, I decided to complete a Creative Method Course in Interaction Org. I hoped to help the team and potentially speed up the creative process if possible.
These are the key learnings I got from completing the course:
Creativity can be planned and time managed
Early in my career or even going back to growing up I always thought that your creativity is a spark that you get or you have to be in the mood for.
Turns out it is but you can control it by doing the following:
Make it a habit instead of counting on it to happen at random.
Regular scheduling builds up the skill to do it at will. Like any activity, you practice every day, and eventually your going to get better at it.
Create the right environment:
To support the point above on either a personal or team level creating the right environment plays a big role in your creative output.
Creating the right environment starts with the culture of your team about failing.
- Begin with forgiving failures.
- Encourage different perspectives on failures.
You can do this by angling failures as a point of learning, creating the expectation of failure as part of the risk to innovation or encouraging your team to fail quick
Then there’s the physical environment, where you sit and your surroundings. Make sure your environment reduces distractions and allows you to focus. If the location for your creative practices is consistent this will help reset your mind and get you into the right mindset.
Getting into the mindset.
Daily activities that you may ceremoniously do to get ready to do something could also help with creativity. I find that similar to me being productive (even when I am at home) putting on the right clothes and where I am sitting helps my mind get into the right thinking mode.
Other ways that can help you get into the mindset of creativity is by running ideation practices such as:
- Bad Ideas
- Six Thinking Hats
- 3 Way Comparison
- etc.
It is fine to do nothing or do busy work
Why is doing nothing ok? According to Alan, it allows you to go through an incubation phase of your idea. It is also something that you should plan for. It is crucial for creativity and necessary for you to move forward. It allows you to come back to the problem with a fresh perspective. Doing nothing means finding things that open up your mind ex. walking, showering, sleeping, etc.
Doing busy work is great for when we are not feeling unproductive with our big task, and yes it does sound like that I am saying procrastinating is good.
By these small tasks, you are building yourself up to be more productive, freeing up space in your mind. You also get a sense of achievement, potentially motivating you through the day.
Overall there were other fantastic lessons in the course, and these are what stood out to me. I think the course offers will offer many learnings to designers that are new in the industry and also confirm things for the more experienced designers.