You've got a deadline--you're blocked. Nothing.
What do you do? How do you get the new insight or idea you need to get the results demanded by your manager or boss?
Getting past blocks is one of the most difficult things you can do. Often we are slaves to our own thinking. There's a fancy term for this: habituation. I call it autopilot. It's the state you're in when you operate from the same assumptions, ways of seeing, and beliefs you've always operated from. And it's those times when an answer or something crazy-new is right under your nose, but you can't see it. It's not unlike the famous violinist who draws thousands of fans for his concerts, but when he busked at a New York City subway station, no one even noticed him.
Famous violinist Joshua Bell ignored by thousands
Artists and inventors and innovators of various sorts are able to deal with blocks better than most people. Is it because they're smarter, or 'more creative'? No. It's that the nature of their work demands they work through blocks all the time, from which they've developed their own habituation, only it's habituation toward the right solution. Here are some tips:
1. Come up with 5 new ideas daily: An adoring fan once approached the famous author Ernest Hemingway, and asked him how he wrote such amazing books. "Easy," he replied. "Easy?" queried the fan. "Yes, easy," continued Hemingway, "I get up in the morning and I write and write and write. The next day I get up in the morning, and I write and write... See--easy." When you push yourself to come up with new ideas daily, you learn by doing. When the time comes for that deadline, you can either come up with a new idea, or take one you've already created, dust it off, give it a paint-job, and voila!
2. Read books--not just a book: Reading has taken a bad rap from generations of grizzly teachers who have taught reading in only one style: one book at a time. That method is simply one among several. Another method is reading multiple books at a time, and allowing for the ideas to push and pull on themselves. If you want to come up with new ideas, you've got to read a lot--simply put. Start with the NY Times best-seller list and go from there. Look up book lists on the internet and copy them down.
3. Keep a notebook: You've got to keep generating new ideas, and you won't be able to if you don't have a place to write them down. Also, your ideas form a repository or bank that you can withdraw from when necessary.
4. Synectics: An intimidating term, but it's basically making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. If you need to create some kind of business solution, go study icebergs--or hamburgers--and project what you've learned onto your problem: "How is what I'm creating like an iceberg?" or vice versa. The key here is stimulating your brain to think outside its routines. If you want real success in this, get a bunch of people together, and have them each research something random that can be applied to what you're trying to create. Ask the question, How is what we're designing like the Amazon rainforest?
5. Make your problem your solution: If you're stuck on a problem, maybe your stuck-ness is your solution in disguise. For instance, this blog post was written because I couldn't think about what to write. So I asked myself how I can generate new ideas, and voila! Your problem, phrased in a different question, may be the very thing you need to create.
6. Free up headspace: Go for a walk; put on headphones and Bach fugues; go wandering around bookshops and street front stores--anything to get out of your problem and free up headspace. Bring your notebook and get ready to write down your ideas. They will come at the most inopportune times. Indeed, ideas tend to come when we've stepped away from our problem. Artists, inventors, scientists, and innovators really get this, which is why they may maintain strange near-bohemian schedules.
7. Go to bed early or stay up late: If you're in a major funk and are a morning person, stay up really late over a few days; or, if you're a night person, get up really early. In both cases, you'll want to use that extra time for jotting down ideas and working on your problem. The shift in sleep pattern will pull you into a new way of thinking. And the next day, when you're wandering around work in near zombie state, you'll be in a perfect frame of mind for thinking outside of conventions and getting the ideas you need.
8. Do something childish: Julia Cameron, famous for her book on creativity, talks about taking yourself on dates--that's right, dates. What do you do on those dates? Fun stuff that will spur new ideas: digging through a record store, wandering through an old bookstore, eating at your favourite restaurant or trying a new one; going to an art store and buying paints and brushes when you have no idea how to paint--that sort of thing. It's appealing to the child within.
There are myriad ways to gain new ideas. The key is to a) work at generating them all the time, and b) break out of your old ways of doing things. One suggestion I read once was eating your egg differently several mornings in a row--just to break you out of your habituation. Who knows, it just might get you cracking...
No comments:
Post a Comment