5 Ways to Beat the Creative Block

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We all occasionally get a creative block, right?

Even though technological advances in the recent past have made it easier to create content, the ideas needed still rely on the creativity of the content creator. In most cases, colleagues collaborate to develop new ideas and designs. Unfortunately, teamwork and collaboration is not an option if you work from home. You can exploit online forums and discussion groups, but these options can only provide general ideas but not the specific ideas you need for your home-based business or project. Employing original ideas in your business is undeniably important, but coming up with great unique designs can be a challenge due to the creative block. There are several strategies you can exploit to beat the creative block.

 

What are the five best strategies to beat the creative block?

History is full of great writers and musicians who faded into oblivion for years or even decades due to creative block only to reinvent themselves and emerge more substantial and more creative. How can you address and eliminate the creative block?

 

1. Write out every idea no matter how silly or small it seems

It is undeniable that creativity requires some level of silliness to free the mind by suppressing the effects of societal norms, education, and cultural beliefs. It is only through suppression of what you hold to be true and tested that imagination can strive. After freeing your mind, ridiculous and silly ideas and designs will begin to flow in effortlessly. You have to write down every idea and design no matter how absurd, trivial, or small it is to encourage your imagination to go wilder and trigger better ideas. Maintain a creative line of thought by playing around with words and designs. Don’t allow mistakes to deter you from attaining great concepts. The more mistakes you make, the closer you get to great ideas and creativity. 

 

2. Find someone to bounce ideas off

Whether it is weight loss, academic challenges, or creative block, having a partner increases success rate by reducing the workload. Two minds are always better than one. For starters, you have to accept that you don’t know everything and open the door for new insights and perspectives from the experiences of others. You can bring a trusted friend with expertise into the fold and bounce off your ideas and designs on them. The ones that stick are correctly aligned, which leaves you with controversial ideas and designs that are causing the block. You can brainstorm on the contested ideas with your friend or research for more information to enhance clarity and catalyse creativity.

 

3. Give yourself space

From ancient China to modern yoga studios, meditation has effectively teleported meditators from the chaos and frustrations of the day to serenity and inner peace for centuries. You can employ the underlying principles used in meditation by unplugging yourself from the routines and stresses of the day to beat the creative block. A simple break from the project can reduce mental load and provide the clarity you need to join the dots and pull together an original design or idea by combining all information from research with your knowledge. Be it a walk, a relaxing bath, or a chat with a friend, any activity that relaxes your mind can increase the release of dopamine, which is known to enhance creativity and generation of new ideas.

 

4. Save ideas for later

Whenever you experience a flash flood of ideas, it is always wise to save some for dry spells in the future. If inspiration strikes and great creative ideas or designs begin to flow freely and effortlessly, continue writing long after you have attained the content needed for that specific business activity. When it comes to saving for the future, you should never waste an opportunity to exploit sudden surges in creativity. Just like financial management, all the extra creative content can be banked safely for rainy days when a creative block inhibits you. To avoid losing great ideas or designs in a pile, you have to create an effective management and storage system that associates different saved content to future business activities and projects. This will make it easier to access and retrieve saved ideas or designs when the time comes.

 

5. Mind map

Just like road maps used to deliver physical projects, your home-based business can benefit from having a graphical representation of your idea-generation or content creation strategy known as a mind map. With a mind map, you can document the entire idea-generation process from research, collection, and exploitation of general ideas to create new creative ideas suited to your business.  By documenting how each new creative design branched off the general idea and evolved, you will attain a tried-and-tested mind map for future projects.

Your business or project does not have to suffer from the creative block just because you are working from home. By adopting these five strategies, you can beat creative block and be back to your creative self in no time.   

 

 

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