“Fortune favors the prepared mind.”
–Louis Pasteur, scientist
I often hear creative people attribute their breakthroughs to luck:
“My ideas come to me out of nowhere,” they’ll claim.
I don’t think so.
Although breakthroughs may seem fortuitous, they actually result from preparation and work. Lots of preparation and work, the kind that empowers our intuition to lead us to creative discoveries.
So, by knowing effective ways to do our creative work and also prepare ourselves to create, we maximize our productivity.
Here, then, are 6 preparatory habits that fuel creativity.
“By knowing effective ways to do our creative work and also prepare ourselves to create, we maximize our productivity.”
Six Habits that Fuel Creativity
1. Reflect Before Sleep
As you turn in for the night, reflect on your creative goals and any challenges you’re facing.
In that way, you prime your subconscious and fuel your motivation.
2. Act First Thing
At minimum, sketch out some ideas as soon as you rise.
By acting first thing, you start the day with accomplishment and put yourself in a creative frame of mind.
3. Use Mental Imaging
When you aren’t practicing, writing, or rehearsing, keep your materials such as music scores handy, and mentally image when opportunities arise, perhaps while riding public transportation.
Even when life becomes hectic, preserve some mental space and let your imagination brew.
4. Capture Ideas
Throughout the day, use a recorder, phone, notepad, or tablet to capture ideas as they surface.
But take care not to filter or edit – just record, and save the refining for later.
5. Feed Creative Energy through Self-Care
Creating is hard work under the best of circumstances; doing so when you’re ill or fatigued becomes arduous if not futile.
So abide by a self-care plan in which you sleep, eat, exercise, and promote your health. In tandem, seek out sources of inspiration.
6. Trust the Process
Even when you’re keeping creativity in mind, some days will be more productive than others.
It’s okay.
Trust in your ability to grow as well as in the non-linearity of the creative process. And enjoy the journey.
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Yes, very good points! I don’t really have specific goals myself, except when it comes to memorizing. Then, I set a goal to memorize a specific passage for the day. Good to break it down as well. Thanks! -B.
This all brings to mind something Janos Starker says: Talent is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.
Well said, G – Thanks for broadening the discussion.
The usual eurocentric dualism sees “My ideas come to me out of nowhere” and thinks of some god out there, somewhere, who puts stuff in the post and you get a package and suddenly its your birthday. But what if that ‘out there’ is really you, the real you, not the you who does all the reasoning and study and preparedness, who plans their day and notices their wrinkles, but the vast unknown real you that filters your blood and keeps your body perfectly balanced under the chaotic vibrations of brushing your teeth? 🙂
In both buddhism and in brain science, we find that we don’t know how ‘insight’ happens, we don’t know how we reason on the real world problems that come up. We thought we did, until we tried to make machines do it for us, and then we realized how so very little we knew about anything we did, even very simple things. But what we DO know is that this me-who-chatters-nonstop can be lead to focus attention and that it is through that attention that the other greater vast unknown me acquires its mysterious worldmodels by which it can do its miraculous calculations that can result in the fine motor control to execute a stunning cadenza.
So you see, you’re BOTH right 🙂 The conscious-I has the opportunity (often squandered) to shovel information into the unconscious-I (as Alan Watts said, “I don’t like that word, ‘unconscious'”) and to do so in a methodical and deliberate way, to husband that mysterious thing into generating truly astounding forumations that conscious-I can then bring forth and realize.
This is so true. Good ideas aren’t a gift from the heavens, they are the result of knowledge and practice. I’ve read enough books on lyric writing to know that only through practice can one achieve greatness. Daily practice. I’m still trying to get my brain into the right mindset to work because it’s easy to untrain your focus with a TV or Facebook, or whatever. But I just think the idea that great ideas are divine, is just silly.