What do you do when you are backed up to a wall, a deadline looms and you’ve “got nothin’” — no muse, no idea, no concept, no nothin’ — and that all-too-familiar panic is about to set in? What are you gonna do? If the idea of “positive vibes” sounds abhorrent, listen up! Here’s the […]
Get this week’s all new “free, quick and easy” creativity tip now! I just updated the tip line with this week’s creativity experiment and I hope you will listen to it. It introduces a simple yet surprisingly powerful creativity-boosting game you can play alone or with friends. As always, no special tools or equipment needed […]
Since creativity is not easy to measure, you can’t consistently quantify your daily creative effort beyond the simple question: Did I show up today? Showing up means arriving at the studio or desk or workspace ready and willing to do the work as required. Some days, what is required may be the joyful task of […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about the subject of “Time” lately, especially in terms of how we view it and use it and abuse it. Since watching the time and meeting deadlines and so forth seem to be fairly common concerns among so many creative people, I’ll be writing about time and our beliefs and […]
The more I read and experience and observe creative people, the more I notice how we get in our own way and limit our creativity by imposing rules about the conditions we require in order to create. We might be convinced we can only create using specific tools or in a certain setting or […]
Way back in January, I decided to try out a new-to-me technique: selecting a theme word for the new year. So now it’s time for the first quarterly report. According to my old MBA training, anyway. Have you tried doing this theme word thing? What word(s) did you pick? Or did the theme pick you? I […]
Do you have a well stocked creativity kit within easy reach? In his self-coaching manual Coaching the Artist Within, psychologist and creativity expert Eric Maisel recommends you keep a special collection of organizational and management tools together in a box or in a handy spot. Doing so will help you stay organized and productively on […]
Many creative people struggle with planning. Writing in Coaching the Artist Within, psychologist and creativity expert Eric Maisel suggests “Five Golden Rules of Planning” to help creative people set their goals and formulate better, more realistic, more effective short and long range plans. Too often our best and well-intended plans fail – let’s be honest […]
In his self-coaching creativity manual Coaching the Artist Within, Eric Maisel offers four specific tactics or strategies you might adopt to help yourself create more consistently and more easily. “Don’t Snivel” Stop complaining. Take that time and energy-sucking, self–indulgent complaint/excuse-generating habit and redirect its power and intensity toward doing the work instead. Do you seriously […]
Creating in the middle of things is admittedly not easy and often difficult, fraught with all kinds of risks and fears and do-ability issues. If “Just do it NOW!” doesn’t push you to take action, then you may need to work on some strategies to help yourself get moving. In Coaching the Artist Within, creativity […]