Right now, I have about new 10 ideas scrambling around in my head for attention that span the gamut. If you got a sneak peek into my thinking, you’d leave feeling confused and dizzy. Not that my ideas are ambiguous but when I get a surge of creativity/ideas, I tend to get mental/verbal diarrhea which of course to me reads as completely understandable but to others perhaps not always so.
We all I know I’ve got a shit load to do but on Friday I was completely taken over by a refreshing wave of creativity and determination. Naturally, I want to roll with it and I did at the cost of that shit load I need to do. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t abandoned it completely and I’m working through it but perhaps not as fast as I could if I could just mute my creativity. That’s where my problem lies.
Last week, Michelle of Holley & Gill shared a post about how her creativity seeps into her everyday life called Design is Everywhere. Here’s a portion of my reply. While it’s not all necessarily related to this post, I do think there are points in there that describe how being ambushed with creativity affects me.
“Being creative can be overwhelming. At times it’s hard to navigate through your thoughts when you’re being pulled visually in all directions. My mind goes a mile a minute sometimes and it can be exhausting. But, eventually I think this is where your gut/instincts kick in. Often all the different paths we see lead to the same destination creatively… one where our true self emerges. We just stopped and had a few “conversations” along the way.”
Like most people, I tend to get these ideas logged in some format whether it be in writing or simply firing up Illustrator to do a quick mock-up. Sometime I keep it all in my head but that’s a whole other form of mental jello. Anyways, somewhere along the way the idea(s) begin to consume me and before I know it I can’t think straight. Sometimes, I’ll look up and the day is drawing to a close, I’ve often forgotten to eat and the items I’ve struck off my need to do now list is shall we say… dismal.
I consider myself a pretty self-aware person. So, when I become a creative pig, I try to take away what I’ll call my creative carbs so I’m not so fueled. Some days, okay most days, I fail miserably, but here’s what I found can work:
- Rearranging/cleaning up my work space. Though an organized person by nature, when I’m on a roll crap tends to invade my work space. So, by putting it back into an orderly fashion, I find this in turn reorganizes my thinking and forces me to address the items needing my immediate attention.
- Changing work location. Sometimes this can simply mean moving to another place in my condo or other days leaving entirely. But, when I remove myself from my “creative hot spot” sometimes it’ll short-circuit myself to get back on track.
Yep, that’s all I’ve got folks. Clearly I need more tactics. Like I said though, this doesn’t always produce the golden ticket to getting ‘er done. While it’s great to be hit by a wave of creativity sometimes it’s so big my focus sails away. And even though I love need to feed my creative side sometimes I just want to hit the mute button.
I put a question out there in Twitter land and here are the responses I got:
How do you tame your creativity when you’ve got other less creative stuff to do? @modernemotive
No taming. Just don’t sleep to get the max out of 24 hours! :D @nottypooch
The muse is fleeting so if I find myself very inspired to create I try not to stifle it, the business side might have to wait @madeinlowell
Listen to music – usually classical or jazz. Seems 2 stimulate the creative side of my mind so I can get the mundane tasks done @amypotch
Make a list of the creative stuff so you dont forget, then put it in your sight the whole time your working, speeds it up @ashenhurstphoto
Use noncreative work as break from creative work @copybabe
What about you? Do you find yourself being consumed by your creativity? When you are… how do you mute it when it’s the better thing to do? Do you even bother?
Photo Credit: Katie Tegtmeyer
