Can you tell me one job in the whole wide world that doesn’t require even a single bit of creativity?
Now if you find yourself belonging to that sorry group, you can quit reading right now and go about your routine. I’m saving you time. For real.
If you’re still with me, then I want to show you a crazy cool way to unlock your creative potential. Actually it’s a series of simple steps that can help you find that ‘spark’ which will bring you big ideas.
Now don’t worry if you think your line of work doesn’t need creativity. You can be a writer, an artist, a number-crunching accountant, babysitter or even a drug dealer- you WILL need creativity.
Yes. I can hear you saying ‘but Sibi I’m not or never have been creative’.
Total bullshit. Super quality crap. I don’t believe you at all.
But what you might have lacked so far is a handy system or a process that gets your creative juices flowing. Let’s begin, shall we?
I’m a copywriter. My job entails that I have to be creative on demand. I can’t skip work or put my ad script to rest because ‘I’m not feeling it’. I don’t depend on inspiration, rather I trust on a time-tested process.
I read about this process for the first time in a book titled ‘A technique for producing ideas’ by James Webb Young, who was an advertising mastermind of his time. It’s a cute little book that can be completed in under an hour, but its value has stood the test of time and will continue to do so.
So, without further ado, here it goes.
Step 1: Read, read, read, read, read, read, read. And read more.
In other words, consume a lot of information. There are a million ways to keep yourself updated in this era of the internet, but still reading is my favourite way to ‘download’ information because it helps my ‘imagination muscles’ stay strong.
Now there are two types of information or knowledge. General and specific.
General knowledge, as the name says, could be knowledge about everything under the sun. It could be your ‘experience’ trekking through a hill, or current events. Anything.
Specific knowledge is the narrowed down knowledge related to a problem that you’re trying to solve. For example if you’re trying to come up with an idea to make your home interior beautiful, everything related to architecture and home interiors could be your specific knowledge.
Gathering generic knowledge is a lifelong process while gathering specific knowledge is an immediate effort. Your goal should be to keep getting these from your life experiences and through rigorous study of all material that is relevant to your problem.
Step 2: Idea sex
Nope. It’s not what you think.
‘Idea sex’ can be defined as the confluence or merging, if you will, of your specific and general knowledge inside your head. After all, ideas are just combinations and permutations of different information. So this is the stage where you deliberately ‘feel’ a sense of your ideas, and bring your general and specific knowledge to create unusual and new thoughts.
These ‘unusual’ and ‘new’ thought patterns are key to making your idea ‘different’ and ’out of the ordinary’.
In a more simpler way, allow your general and specific ideas to ‘make love to each other’.
Step 3: Become desperate and hopeless
For real. It’s a part of the process for every creative person out there. You think, you ruminate and you get zilch. Embrace this stage. But what you can do is just jot down some of the preliminary idea combinations or rough sketches from the previous step. They don’t even have to be ‘complete’.
Now another, but an equally important thing that you must do during this stage is: drop everything and have fun. Like serious fun. Something you love to do apart from the problem in your hand. It could be listening to songs, dancing, hitting the gym or meditation. Whatever makes you feel relaxed and helps you forget everything else. This activity is very crucial.
The idea behind this is to shift your creative problem at hand from the logical brain to the subconscious. The subconscious is a wonderful (and a better) problem solver than our conscious brain. When you totally immerse yourself in an activity that engages the conscious, guess who’s working undercover to arrive at that creative solution? It’s your subconscious mind.
That’s why you would sometimes get up in the middle of the night with a solution for a problem you’ve been pondering for long. A missing plot idea for your script or a line that makes your Instagram caption perfect.
Famed author Haruki Murakami talks about a similar process in his book ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’. He uses running as the activity that helps him disengage and engage on a subconscious level. Read the book if you have the time.
Step 4: The arrival of the idea
Now that you’re totally engaged in an activity other than solving your problem, the answer will arrive to you in a mysterious, sudden manner. Nope, I’m not even kidding. It has happened to me a gazillion times. If you had gone through the previous steps, then this stage should be a breeze. Just don’t force it and remember to load your conscious brain with specific and general data so your subconscious can work on it. My guess is, sooner or later you will have an idea ‘arrive’ to you.
Step 5: Sculpt and polish your idea
Once you get the idea, now it’s time to fine tune it. Don’t expect your subconscious to send you an idea with a laid out power point presentation. Just jot down the idea on your smartphone or a piece of paper (that’s what I like to do) immediately as ideas begin pouring.
Once you have rough ideas, now begin working on making them better and suitable for the real world. This is where opinions, feedback and critique of other people will come in handy. Another person’s perspective can make your idea much better and refined in ways you would never guess.
Working for an ad agency, whenever I came up with an idea I never failed to get the opinions of my colleagues including art directors, servicing and account executives before taking it to my creative director. It just makes the process that much simpler and easier.
With all the feedback, inputs, insights, now you’re ready to crank out that idea into a sexy, applicable and relevant solution for your original problem.
There are no hard and fast rules about this process. Most people get ideas just like that without having to go through these steps. But it's always best to have a ‘system’ or a ‘process’ in your hand if you feel stuck.
Try this out. Let me know if it works for you. Or if you need me to elaborate on a particular step, I’d be glad to do that as well.
Yes, that’s it. Class over. It’s high time you became an idea machine at work or play or anything for that matter.
See you in another useful blog:)
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