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creativity processes
Is Structure Stifling Your Creativity?
Is Structure Stifling Your Creativity?
For many people, having structure is very beneficial to their work. Having goals, milestones, and plans on how to achieve them is a great way to keep yourself on track and focused.
However, that doesn’t mean that more structure is going to be equivalent to more or better results. In some cases, if you have too much structure, you might actually end up doing more harm than good to your creativity processes.
If you were to have every little detail of your work planned out and highly structured, down to when you’re going to do what, where you’re going to do it, and how it’s going to get done, then you’re really not leaving yourself with much wriggle room.
If you feel like doing a different part of your work on one of those days, but force yourself to follow the schedule and plan, then you’re going to be unhappy with your work and probably end up creating something that isn’t your best effort, because you didn’t want to do it.
This type of rigidity is especially harmful to your creative thinking. If you’re expected to come up with decent creative ideas on command, that’s a pretty unrealistic outlook; you should really be nurturing creativity.
Some of these ideas will have to come naturally, and you can’t really predict when you’re going to be feeling creative and when you’re going to be feeling more work oriented.
You need to have a bit more flexibility in your plans. Instead of planning day by day or hour by hour, you should instead have weekly goals to fulfill, so that depending on how you’re feeling on various days throughout the week, you can accomplish everything you need to for that week without being overly dependent on a schedule.
Of course, if there’s a case in which you’re feeling a bit too loose, and you’re unable to focus or you’re struggling, you can tighten up your schedule as needed. But when it comes to your day-to-day life, you should have a bit more flexibility and freedom to approach your work as you see fit.
Tightening up your schedule is something that you can do if you really need to see more progress, just know that when you’re in a more comfortable spot, you can let up again in order to regain a better sense of creativity.
One of your goals should be that you’re able to constantly maintain a flexible schedule, so work towards that goal diligently.
Don’t Allow Your Work Days To Bleed Into Your Time Off
Many people have begun mixing their work and off time together, so that they’re always thinking about or doing work throughout the entire day.
They might take small breaks between work, and what ultimately ends up happening is that they don’t get enough work done, but also don’t end up relaxing that much.
Instead, you should separate the two, so that you have dedicated relaxation time and dedicated work time. It’s necessary for your mental wellbeing to have ample time off to relax and unwind from strenuous work.
If you’re working all day every day, with random bits of “relaxation” strewn throughout, you’re going to be getting the worst experience of both parts. You won’t have enough focus in your work, but you also won’t have enough time to properly relax.
Work requires a certain amount of focus and effort if you’re going to do your best and get it done efficiently. Many people essentially put their brain into “work mode,” where they’re only focused on work and nothing else.
During the times that you have dedicated to work, you’re not distracted by anything else, and you can give 100% effort into getting your job done. Once you’re done with work and you’ve worked hard, you can actually fully relax without having to worry about working again until the next day.
Just as work requires your full attention, relaxation requires you to have a clear mind. If you spend your entire relaxation time worrying about the work you haven’t gotten done yet, you’re not going to relax at all, but rather you’ll just be distracted while getting more stressed out.
You should take the time you’ve set aside for relaxation and use it fully. Completely take work off of your mind and just enjoy whatever it is you’re doing. You can be watching TV, chatting with friends, reading a book, or doing absolutely nothing.
Whatever it is, just make sure you’re not letting work bleed into the time you have, otherwise you’re not going to enjoy it very much. Some people can blend their work and enjoyment together, but this doesn’t work for everyone.
If it truly works for you to do both around the same time, then you shouldn’t stop doing that. If you’re unsure, you should try to separate work and relaxation time as much as possible, because that may be what’s going to work best for you.
Get Used To Thriving With Background Noise
If you only work well in complete silence and complete focus, you’re going to need to learn how to adapt. Very few places are dead silent. Even if you have your own home office, chances are you’ll hear your family in the background, as you should.
If you’re at a café, there will be people talking. If you’re at an office, there will be background noise and voices. You need to train yourself to be able to either tune out or work well with background noise.
Only working well in near or complete silence is indicative of larger problems with focusing. You might be able to focus in those situations, but you can’t let the smallest things throw you off completely, otherwise you’re going to struggle to keep up with your work in all kinds of places and situations.
One option you have is to simply get used to it and work in places with background noise more often. Instead of holing up in your apartment or house where it’s all quiet while you work, go and work at a nearby café.
Try to go during hours when they’re not busy so it’s not too noisy, but there’s a background murmur that you can get accustomed to. Eventually, you’ll be able to work in somewhat more distracting locations, such as your home if there are a lot of residents, or in a loud office with others.
This will allow you to work under more and more circumstances, meaning that you’ll be able to efficiently keep up with your work anywhere you go. Of course, not everyone has a nearby café that they’d want to work in for extended periods of time.
Coffitivity is a website that you can use in order to better get used to working in environments with a bit more noise. You have a few free selections to choose from, in various levels of noise, and you can adjust the volume as you’d like.
This allows you to get used to it, even from your quiet home or office. You don’t have to get used to a ton of noise. Everyone has their limit. Nobody is expecting you to work well in the middle of a theme park or at some other loud location.
The point is to be able to handle fairly common level of background noise that you would encounter in a wide variety of situations, so that you don’t need a special place to get all of your work done.
As you can appreciate, a lot of this is dependent on the way you think and if you want to know more about developing a good mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
Boost Focus And Creativity With Purposeful Meditation Techniques
You may have heard before that some people use meditation to increase their focus and to help them clear their minds. This is true, it does work well for a lot of people.
However, if you’re trying to do something specific with your focus or creativity, you probably won’t benefit as much from a random generic meditation class. You may need something a little more purposeful or specific to assist the creative process!
Instead, you should find a method that works for you to help you boost those specific things that you need. Typically, meditation involves cutting out all distractions and completely clearing your mind.
You shouldn’t be thinking about anything whatsoever during it, allowing your mind to go entirely blank. This helps people destress and relax, because they’re not thinking about all the things they have to worry about.
However, while this is helpful for that, it might not be as conducive to helping you focus or figure out a project. You should instead try more purposeful meditation, where instead of having your mind go blank, you focus on one thing and one thing only.
By clearing your mind of all other distractions, except for the project at hand, you’re going to be able to completely focus on that and come up with much better solutions.
Ideally, this would be accomplished in a space where you’re free of any noises, obnoxious sights, or people trying to get your attention.
There aren’t many places that would fit this bill perfectly, so just work with what you’ve got. The most important thing should be to not have people interrupting you, so if you can get to a space like that, even if it does have errant sounds and sights, you should still be able to focus well.
You might end up finding that different things help you more or less while you’re meditating. Try experimenting a little bit. You might not be able to focus in dead silence, so you might have some ambient nature sounds playing through some headphones.
You might want the lights up or down, and you might want to keep your eyes open or closed. It’s different for everyone, so try a little bit of everything at first to see what helps.
The goal of purposeful meditation is for you to be able to direct all of your energy and thoughts toward one single goal, which ought to make the whole process more efficient. Let it flow and try not to force it too much or you could actually hinder the process; just relax and let your mind do the work.
For most people, this is worth a try, but don’t be upset if it doesn’t work for you. A handful of people don’t focus well under meditation conditions, so you might find it’s simply not right for you. At least with a purposeful meditation, you have something to focus on (your task) rather than just trying to clear your mind which can be very difficult for some people. Give it a try; what have you got to lose?
Be Available To Creative Moments Whenever They Happen!
Unless you’re particularly lucky or skilled, creative ideas probably don’t just happen on demand for you. In fact, in most cases, creativity will appear whenever it happens to, and you tend to have very little control over when it will occur.
While you can put yourself in a situation where you are able to be more creative, you aren’t able to force it to appear at will. In many ways, creativity is like a toddler running around.
The purposeful meditation techniques described above may help you to get yourself into creative flow so may be worth a shot.
Otherwise, creativity can come up and interrupt you at any moment, even if you’re in the middle of something important. You could be trying to focus on your normal work, trying to sleep, or in the middle of a call or meeting with someone very important.
In these cases, you have to treat it the same way you would a toddler. The first thing you should try to do is train yourself to reserve your creative thoughts for later.
If your mind wanders even a little while you’re trying to focus, you can get flooded with all these different ideas that you can get lost in.
Hold all of that off until you have some time that you’ve either designated to be for creativity, or just when you have some time off to relax. However, also in the same way as a toddler, if it’s something important that it has interrupted you with, you should take a second to address it.
Sometimes a creative idea will pop up that could be life changing for you, and in that case, you need to stop what you’re doing and at least write it down quickly. Don’t ignore your creativity outright if it’s something that’s a really good idea or something that you really want to work on.
If that’s the case, try to come back to it later and continue expanding on it. You just can’t let random intrusive thoughts take over your work. Focus can be extremely important while also being rather fragile.
The slightest wandering thought or break in your concentration can pull you way off track in some instances. While some people’s focus isn’t easily broken, yours might be one little distraction away from crumbling, allowing you to get fully enveloped in that distraction.
Keep these creative distractions out of your mind while you’re trying to focus down and work, otherwise you’re going to keep on letting your mind wander without getting any good work done.
As you can appreciate, all of this purposeful meditation, creativity process and maintaining focus can take a lot of self-discipline and a positive attitude. If you don’t have this, you will probably struggle to maintain any focus and creativity, so it is well worth your while to adopt the correct mindset; I know this may sound a little cliched, but it does really work.
If you want to develop more self-discipline, click on the featured resource below to get a free report, The Power Of Self-Discipline; download, read it and take action 😊
