5 Effective Ways to Avoid Creative Block
April 13, 2009
By Dan Goodwin
I’m sure you know all too well how it feels to be creatively blocked, wondering where the next spark of inspiration or the next idea is going to come from, when you feel all washed up with nothing forthcoming.
So here are 5 effective ways to help you avoid creative block:
1. Create every day. How often do you create? A couple of times a month? A few times a week. Or every day? When it comes to keeping yourself as creative as possible, and your creative fitness levels high, then every day is the only way. Not creating for weeks then expecting to be able to sit down and flow freely is like asking a marathon runner not to even so much as look at their running shoes for weeks, then suddenly go out and run a marathon at a moment’s notice! They might start, but soon they’ll tire, get despondent, and probably injure themselves in a way that means it’ll be even longer until the next time they come to run again. 15 minutes a day, at the same time every day. It will transform your creativity, and banish creative block.
2. Expose yourself to new inspiration. There are times when we create that we need a great degree of isolation, so we can focus on just creating, without distraction or interruption. But if we spend ALL of our time in a small dark room locked away from the world we’ll soon dry up on inspiration, and feel blocked. If you ate exactly the same meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for a month, you wouldn’t feel too excited about that meal by the end of it! Same with creativity. Go out to different places, see new things and a variety of people. The more diverse your stimulation, the more ideas and inspiration you’ll have. And so, you greatly lessen the chance of getting blocked creatively.
3. Your creative space. You can be overflowing with ideas and inspiration, and bursting to create, but if you then head to your creative tools and find complete disorder and clutter, you’re not going to be able to create anything. Setting aside a specific space to create in, and just as importantly, making sure everything you need to create is there and close to hand, is an often neglected part of staying in creative flow. What’s your creative space like right now? Time spent organizing in a way that works for you will save major frustration and creative clock in the long term. Set aside specific time, declutter and prepare yourself a creative space you can go and dive headlong into creating in, in an instant.
4. Start small and build. A classic way to trip up your creativity is to overwhelm yourself with either too many creative projects at once, or projects that are huge, complex, and so daunting that you give virtually before you’ve begun. Each stage of the creative process is important, but if you always abandon projects half way through, you’re not getting this experience. The answer is to start small and build momentum and confidence. You can then go through every stage from initial idea to sharing your creative project with the world, then gradually take on larger more involved projects.
5. Enjoy your creativity. One of the biggest traps we can get caught in that blocks creativity is forgetting to enjoy our creativity, what we create, and the way we create it. Instead we focus only on volume and product, treating ourselves like some kind of industrial creative factory that’s simply churning out virtually identical pieces of art over and over again. Get back to basics, and remember what you enjoy most about creating. When’s the last time you had fun creating? When did you last completely lose track of time immersed in creating? Notice what the key factors where, and re-introduce them. Once you start enjoying your creativity more, it’ll flow far more easily, and creative block will be a stranger.
Which of these tips will you start using today to help you avoid the clutches of creative block?
Want to learn more about how to increase YOUR creativity? It’s easy: just sign up to "Create Create!" – Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin’s free twice monthly ezine – today, and get your free copy of the "Explode Your Creativity!" Action Workbook. Head on over now to http://www.CoachCreative.com
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