Creative Flow: Do you have it? Do you want it? Do you NEED it?

I read this amazing, amazing, AMAZING blog post today, written by Marc McGuinness of the Business of Design Online blog. While 90% of the blog post is heavily geared towards writers of somesort (bloggers, novelists, poets, etc), I found a lot of the information he provided to actually be pretty fucking useful and insightful for the mind of an artist in general.I’ll begin this post by saying that this is in no way Second Life related. But for those of you who are bloggers, writers of some sort, or graphic/digital artists (like so many of us are!), then you might actually be interested in what I’m about to write about.

Now, back to the incredible Mr. McGuinness. Essentially, his post was about time management, and the necessity of organization in order to effectively enhance your creative work flow. He gives you some intriguing questions to ask yourself, a few pointers, explains the concept of “self-hypnosis” to get into the “creative zone”… Effectively, the entire little “seminar” is about 5 blog posts long and a LOT of reading… but REALLY worth the ride.

For those of you who don’t want to read all five posts, I’ll sum up some stuff for you. For those of you who do want to read every word this brilliant man has to say, I will provide the links in order:

Post #1 – Why You Need to be Organised to be Creative

This post was more an introduction to the proceeding four than anything else. Marc goes on to explain the importance of setting aside time to work towards obtaining your own personal goals, along with the goals everyone else expects you to accomplish. He also gives you the following questions to ask yourself, mostly to “assess” your personal creative needs:

What is your attitude to organising your creative work? Do you see organisation as soulless, uncreative routine or as a necessary, helpful part of your creative process?

• What effect does feeling muddled and disorganised have on your creativity?
• Which areas of your work would you like to be more organised about?
• What do you like about chaos? Where in your work do you want to give chaos and randomness free rein?

Post #2 – Prioritise Work That is ‘Important But Not Urgent’

This post goes on to explain the four levels of prioritisation and how you rate your tasks effects the work you are able to accomplish realistically. Noting Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, McGuinness states in his post that:

Covey’s solution is to prioritise work that is important but not urgent (the blue square in the diagram). Though this is hard to do on any given day, it is the only way to ensure you are making progress towards your own goals and dreams, instead of merely reacting to what other people throw at you. And over time, the more you are dealing with important things before they become urgent, the fewer ‘urgent and important’ tasks you will have to deal with.

He also follows the post up with four more questions:

• Think of the achievements you are most proud of, and that have added most value to your life and work. When you were working on them, how many of them fell into the ‘important but not urgent’ category?
• How do you feel at the end of a day where you have made even a little progress towards a cherished goal?
• How do you feel at the end of a day that has been totally swamped by others’ demands and urgent tasks?
• What difference would it make to your life if you devoted more of your time to ‘important but not urgent’ work?

Post #3 – Ring-fence Your Most Creative Time

There is one main focal point of this post. At least, the one that I want to get across: Pick your most creative time of day. Pretty simple, right? I know exactly when mine are (I have two of them… who’da thunk). They are between the hours of 6:30 and 8 AM, and 11:30 PM and 2:00 AM. If you’ve ever noticed my photo-posting trends on Flickr, you’ll notice that most of my work goes up around those times.

Another good point of this post is the idea of unintentionally self-hypnotizing your mind into the creative zone. His explination touches on the habits and “routines” that other well-known writers have (i.e. Maya Angelou and ProBlogger Darren Rowse) in order to get their minds started on their creative process. Everyone seems to have that little thing that they need to ignite that creative spark. I never actually thought about it, but I do have a particular routine that I go through in order to maximize my creative potential for a project and completely immerse myself in “the zone”. Do you?

And, as always, follow up questions:

• When is your most creative time, when you are most alert and find it easy to focus?
• If you could arrange your ideal schedule, what time would you ring-fence for focused creative work?
• How close to your ideal schedule can you get within the constraints of your current situation?
• Do you have a special place for creative work?
• What physical triggers (such as pens, paper, computer hardware or software), rituals or routines do you use to get yourself in the right state of mind?

Post #4 – Avoid the ‘Sisyphus Effect’ of Endless To-Do Lists

I have to admit, I am VERY guilty of making to-do lists, as I’m sure a good bit of us are. I always feel overwhelmed to the point of needing to write everything down in order to avoid forgetting it. Most of the time, it actually works out for me. Sometimes, it’s just intimidating.

Among other things, a couple of Marc’s really good points in this post are:

The bottom line is that interruptions destroy your concentration. And loss of concentration = loss of creative work. If you’re not careful, you can end up in permanent ‘reactive mode’ – spending your time responding to others’ demands and all the things you ‘have’ to do instead of the one thing you really wanted to do today.

Faced with the twin problems of unpredictable interruptions and the Sisyphus effect of never-ending tasks, you need to give yourself room to breathe, keep a clear head and stay focused on what you want to achieve. In short, you need to install a buffer between others’ demands and your response. Otherwise you’ll end up in permanently anxious and unproductive ‘reaction mode’.

And of course… more questions to ask yourself.

• What effect do interruptions have on your creativity?
• Do you recognise the Sisyphus effect? What does it do to your motivation levels?
• What difference would it make to your working life if being derailed by others’ demands was the exception rather than the rule?

Still with me?! Good! Last one…

Post #5 – Getting Things Done by Putting them Off Till Tomorrow
What difference would this make to your creativity?

I will simply cut and paste my favorite part of this entire post here:

Dealing with e-mails in one batch is more efficient. You can get into ‘e-mail mode’ and zip through them in one go.

It’s more motivating to deal with a finite number of e-mails than an ever-expanding inbox. In other words, it cuts out the Sisyphus effect and presents you with a manageable task instead of a never-ending one.

Today’s e-mails can’t interrupt you – because you’re not going to respond to them today. I experience a feeling of relief each time I look at an e-mail containing a request and then ‘let go’ of it and return to the task in hand – confident that I will deal with it tomorrow.

You answer e-mails in a better state of mind – so you’re much less likely to take on unnecessary commitments by agreeing to something in order to get rid of the e-mail. You are also likely to make a more thoughtful and helpful response.

It doesn’t really matter how often you check your e-mail. Personally I can see the benefit of only checking e-mail once a day, but I’m not disciplined enough to resist, especially if I’m waiting for something important. This way, I can check my e-mail as often as I like without getting caught up in responding to it.

You deal with the difficult e-mails. Most of us have a few ‘tricky’ e-mails that we put off answering for various reasons. But this system means you answer all the e-mails that came in yesterday – so you end up clearing out the difficult ones and getting them off your mind.

You know when you’re finished for the day! Once you’ve answered yesterday’s e-mail, you’re finished with e-mail today – how good will that feel?

Followed by the final two questions:

• What difference would it make to your work if you knew every morning how much work you had to get through that day?
• Apart from ‘do it tomorrow’ how else could you create ‘buffers’ between incoming demands and your response?

Wow! That was long. But honestly, guys… very well worth the read if you get the chance. And I’m sure he’d appreciate your feedback as well!!! *runs off to enter the “creativity zone”*