Staying Creative Always

Today I ran into this article on How to find time for creative work. It was well written. The author of the article talks about how he had prioritized time to ensure he can do his creative work – writing – done. In many ways this is applicable for many of us. I write occasionally and can benefit from having a regular habit of it.

Developing good habits take a long sustained effort. Keeping good habits also take effort. The benefit of the habit formation is that it becomes regular and sustained for our long term well being. For instance, I have to remind myself to drink water regularly. To remind myself, now I have a plant in my office. And seeing the plant reminds me of the need to water it and more importantly to drink water myself. In a similar way, we can create cues for reminding of habits including staying creative.

Here are four steps that have helped me focus on creative engagements:

1. Read – reading, in particular books, encourages me to learn from variety of sources. The good news about reading books (I like historical and technical non-fictions) is that I get to learn from others’ efforts of being creative. The authors had taken painstaking creative efforts to research and write … and these are available for a very low cost of my time and perhaps library visit.
2. Dream – think aloud and locally about what can be or what should be. Sometimes this appears as a critique of what we have or how we live. Despite that, having dreams encourages to explore things at low cost of time.
3. Stop – stop some non-creative or low-creative activities. A few years back, I was spending several minutes a day on a variety of online channels, consuming whatever was thrown at me. Gradually I cut back on these and limited the sources I read from. This helped me create time for creative active.
4. Tinker – try out things. Yes, some of the tinkering may not work. But without tinkering how am I supposed to learn and do things. Some times the tinkering projects cost money and time. Gladly though by dreaming and stopping some activities I can harvest time. Regarding money, I have to be creative about tinkering with lost cost.

That said, let us remind ourselves to stay creative. The creative efforts from the past had shaped me. And more such efforts now can lead to different spots in the future.