As a creative, there comes days when the juices stop flowing – it just ceases for a bit, you draw a blank when you’re supposed to come up with ideas. It happens to all of us and some people find it hard to come out of this lack of creativity bubble when it happens.
So how do you stay creative even when it seems like you are trying to draw water from a stone?
Rest
You are probably going through this phase because you are exhausted mentally, physically and maybe psychologically.
From experience, when you listen to your body and get an enormous amount of sleep, you experience an increased focus and productivity levels.
Creating great work requires creating great health – and this can be achieved by tuning into your body’s messages and acknowledging what it needs even when there’s a crazy workload and resting feels counterintuitive, inconvenient, or crazy.
Surround Yourself with Fellow Creatives
There is something being in a creative environment does for the creative mind – it opens you up to new ideas and possibilities. In that light, it is important to surround yourself with other people who are creatives – writers, poets, artists, etc.
Drawing inspiration sometimes requires drawing strength from like-minded others. If you have these people in your circle, start making plans to hangout with them now.
Do Something New
It might do a lot of good to break out of your usual routine and do something you usually don’t do or spend less time doing. For instance, I started recording a couple of TikTok videos, and started finding ways I can adapt that content into what I already do.
Go out of your way to shoot and edit photos, watch TV if you usually read and read if you usually watch TV.
Exercise Your Creative Muscle
You might have heard that creativity is a muscle… it is true. To get a muscle to keep going, you need to work it!
Exercise your creative muscle, even when you do not need to work, create something anyway. Do this daily and getting stuck might not become as often as it used to.
Write Things Down & Give It Some Time
It doesn’t matter how bad or simple an idea sounds in your head, right it down anyway and forget about it. Putting some distance between the work you want to do and the moment of thought will allow you picture it from another angle.
So, imagine you write down an idea now today and revisit it in a month, new ideas might have developed from taking some time to think about it.
Stop Thinking You Are Not Creative
A lot of creatives do not give themselves enough credit. Even in their best moments, they think it is not good enough.
If you think you cannot come up with good ideas, then you probably will not. When you do come up with great ideas that turn out to be just what the client needed, celebrate that win, ‘cause you did that!
Other ways to help you bounce back to good creativity shape include:
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Get support from friends
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Choose a random topic and work with it
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Don’t underestimate the importance of self-care, nourishment and not being a workaholic
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Never stop learning
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Take time to do some info-dump so that you can get a clear head and fresh thoughts to create.
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Spend time with children. I am yet to experiment this, but I hear it works.
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Carry a notebook and/or camera everywhere. Your muse can be waiting for you anywhere.
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Written by: Faith John – Creative Director, The Kween Media
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