Creativity – Velocity Media

18 May 2016

Six ways to overcome creative blocks

In the age of innovation, creativity is essential for your business growth and survival. With creativity ideas are born, problems are solved, industries are disrupted, competitors are overturned and customers are engaged. Without it, you become stuck, stale and predictable.

Your ability to think creatively and act fast is often the difference between being the disruptor or being the disrupted.

To ensure you stay ahead of your industry and keep your creative juices flowing here are six ways to overcome creative blocks.

1. Ask questions

Nothing kills creativity faster than accepting things the way they are. To find new ideas, create better products, develop faster processes and disrupt value chains you need to question everything.

When you continually ask questions, you train your brain to keep searching for answers. This sparks your creativity and ensures you continue to find new, better, and faster ways of doing things.

2. Create distance

Sometimes creativity needs space. Take a break, go for a walk, start another task or even take some time to productively procrastinate.

When creative blocks are strong, distance gives you greater perspective and clarity, and it can also give you the time you need to replenish your creative juices and get out of your own way.

3. Utilise high emotions

While emotions can at times be a barrier to our creativity, high levels of emotion can often fuel it.

Think about how creative and resourceful we can be in the fight-or-flight zone. We tend to have greater clarity, sharper problem-solving skills and find easier to think outside the box. When you are in a high emotional state, try to harness the passion and energy of the emotion and use it in into your creative process.

4. Shift perspectives

Sometimes the key to giving your creativity a boost is to discover different perspectives.

Approach the problem, solution, idea or opportunity at hand through someone else’s point of view. This process of role playing can often uncover issues or ideas that haven’t yet been considered.

But don’t just limit yourself to the stakeholders involved in the issue at hand, also consider how your competitors or other entrepreneurs would think and act if they were in your shoes.

5. Don’t edit your creativity

Perfection has no place in the creative process. When you are brainstorming or questioning, let no idea or thought be off limits.

Lift the pressure of being right or wrong and qualify the ideas later. Great ideas have a habit of forming out of bad ones so let your creativity flow.

6. Reign it in

Be specific, look at one problem, solution or idea at a time. Studies have consistently shown that we are more creative when we operate within boundaries.

While you don’t want to put limits on your creative ideas, you do want to work within clear boundaries to get the greatest return.

Amanda

19 May 2015

Five ways to overcome blank page paralysis

There can be something quite intimidating about a blank page. The pressure to fill it with words can be overwhelming. Even the most experienced writers can, at some point, feel as though their ideas have dried up, and they don’t know where to start. But it can be overcome.

Whether you need to write a presentation or proposal, a book or a blog, an advertisement or an anecdote, a newsletter or news release, here are five ways to help you overcome blank page paralysis.

1. Work backwards

When you are stuck, it can help to look at the end goal. What do you want to happen as a result of this? What is the next action step? What do you want customers, readers, journalists, staff members or other stakeholders to take away from it or do as a result of it?

Once you know the end goal, it is easier to determine what you need to write to achieve it, giving you a place to start.

2. Be inspired by the work of others

Need to give a presentation? Watch some TED Talks and other great speeches in history. Have a blog to write? Read other blogs and publishing websites. Need to develop an advertisement? Look over the most successful advertisements developed over the years.

Sometimes we need a touch of inspiration to get us on our way. To see an example of how it is done right or to see it achieving results for us to know it is possible and make a start.

Inspiration should not be confused with plagiarism though. You don’t want to copy what you have read, listened to or watched. Instead, look at the subtle details that appealed to you like their tone of voice, presentation of facts, how they formulated their argument, captured attention or used imagery.

3. Reconnect with your creativity

Sometimes sitting behind a computer can stifle our creativity. We can get too caught in the humdrum of routine and are too easily distracted by the noises of new emails and social media updates coming through.

Think back over the times when you have been the most creative. Chances are it wasn’t in front of your computer screen; it was with a pen and paper, over a whiteboard, away from your desk or talking with others. Also, take into consideration the time of day it was. Identify any patterns and do what you can to recreate these moments of creativity.

4. Write your way

You don’t need to write from start to finish. If you are more inspired to start at the end or halfway through then follow your inspiration. Pressure will only fuel procrastination and overwhelm.

Make notes under different sections or headings and come back to them when you feel you have more clarity. There is no right or wrong way to fill a page. You need to find the process that most suits you.

5. Delegate it

If you are experiencing severe writers block and can’t find a way around it personally, then delegate it. Give yourself something to work with by asking a staff member, ghostwriter or copywriter to do the first draft for you.

It might just take someone else’s interpretation of your business, product, service or topic to help you gain more clarity around your positioning and what you do and don’t want to say.