Do you feel like you’ve lost your creativity? A hectic schedule and a ton of work can do that to even the most inspired of individuals. Luckily, simple strategies exist to help you get your creativity back.
Rediscovering your creative thinking is often a matter of a few basic adjustments. You don’t have to go through a massive transformation in order to become inspired and productive once again. Here are five of the approaches bound to give you a good result.
Break Up Your Routine a Bit
Your routine is probably making you feel comfortable but quite often, it’s the one thing that keeps you stuck.
A simple change in your everyday work/life pattern can help you rediscover exciting moments and seek inspiration in them.
Don’t get in the car and drive to the office – walk instead. A morning walk through the city will show you so many beautiful things – the colors of nature, the scent of freshly brewed coffee, the city noises and the diversity of people walking by. Stop by a little coffee shop, get yourself a bagel and a warm beverage. A little change like this one is all you need to start feeling awake and excited about the day.
The same rule applies to your working habits. Choose to tackle projects in unusual ways if you want to come up with creative solutions and a better execution than what you’d typically deliver.
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Deal with Distractions
You may fail to realize it but little distractions can quickly accumulate and sabotage your creativity efforts.
Coming up with inspired solutions necessitates some concentration. If the process is broken and you are not 100 percent invested, chances are that you’ll fail unleashing your full creative potential.
To work in a creative way, many people would say that they’d need to “get in the zone.” Facebook, phone and email don’t really contribute to being in the zone and staying there when you need to get the work done.
Improve your work environment to get rid of the distractions. You can employ various solutions to eliminate the mundane things standing in your way. FocusMe is one of these solutions. It’s a pretty simple productivity app that blocks out digital distractions, helps with scheduling and boosting your performance. You will not be disappointed if you employ a distraction killer like this one.
Stop Devoting Time to Mundane Tasks
Let’s face it – our everyday routines rarely involve creative work. Most of the time, we have to deal with mundane and mediocre tasks that we can easily handle in our sleep.
To find inspiration, you have to let go of these irrelevant assignments. Finding it difficult to delegate is keeping you from focusing on pressing, creative and strategic tasks. Minutiae can easily drown you and make you forget about what really matters.
Take some time to analyze your day and find out what activities you’re dedicating the most time to. Are these activities meaningful and in line with your skills/competencies? If the answer is no, you will probably have to find someone else to handle the respective tasks.
To be creative and inspired, you have to challenge yourself. Obviously, you cannot do that by engaging in work you’ve been doing for years, work you could complete with your eyes closed (and your hands tied behind your back
Failing to delegate is not doing you or anyone else a favor. It keeps you from moving forward with your career and it also prevents your colleagues from acquiring new skills and stepping up the professional ladder.
Just Start Working
Many people refuse “just working” on a project until inspiration strikes.
Are you one of these people?
Are you waiting for the perfect beginning, the perfect moment or the perfect idea?
If the answer to these questions is yes, you’re missing out on an amazing opportunity to actually find inspiration in the work process itself.
Starting is the most difficult thing, especially if you’re not feeling the thing that you’re doing 100 percent.
Change your mindset and find the courage to just start. It may not be perfect, in fact, your idea may suck. As you become more and more invested in the execution, however, you will fine tune and enhance the original concept.
It’s very difficult to be inspired by something shapeless and vague. As a result, you’ll keep on postponing those first steps indefinitely. Try the other approach instead and you’ll be surprised by how quickly a basic idea can be elevated to the next level.
Limit the Amount of Planning You Do
All professionals plan ahead of time to do a good job and meet a deadline. Excessive planning, however, can be one of the biggest productivity killers.
While a bit of planning will still be essential to execute a project professionally, you have to give yourself some opportunity to improvise.
Excessive planning can limit self-expression and the pursuit of new ideas. We engage in planning to limit the risk of mistakes. At the same time, however, we may be limiting the opportunities and the ways in which an idea can be brought to fruition.
Give yourself a little opportunity to be spontaneous during project creation. You don’t need to improvise all the way through. Straying from the typical routine or the plan, however, could surprise you.
Adhering to what’s common and expected will make it impossible for you to explore the unexpected. The unexpected is precisely where creativity hides. Work routines are good and they speed things up. At the same time, however, you will need to do something fresh once in a while to get those inspirational juices flowing.
A final thing you need to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes.
Mistakes are learning opportunities. Most of the time, they can be corrected quickly and without consequences. Giving yourself the chance to make mistakes means giving yourself an opportunity to explore new avenues, to find what you’re capable of and to have fun. Don’t be afraid of mistakes and novelty. Once you accept these as a normal part of the work process, you will get inspired much more easily.
