Wednesday, April 29, 2009
What To Do When You Run Out Of Ideas
Stepcase Lifehack: "It’s happened to everyone at one time or another. You’re going along, producing and feeling creative, and then, suddenly, you run out of ideas. You’re stuck. You search high and low for inspiration. You look back on your earlier work, searching through your past ideas, trying to locate your muse, looking for something to trigger a creative explosion. But it’s all for naught. You’re blocked."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
It is interesting that one of the ways to deal with running out of ideas is to know that you are never out of ideas. This seems like an obvious statement, but I guess many times we forget this. Some of the other pointers were also very interesting ways of coming up with new ideas like going on a walk or looking outside of your industry.
I can definitely identify with the "Oh no I can't think of anything ever again!" panic. While these all seem like reasonable suggestions, I find it hard to follow most of them. If I can't think of any ideas, I feel like I'm behind on a project, and taking a break or spending time doing other things just makes me feel more behind, even though the break might ultimately speed the process along.
Most of these things seem to be pretty obvious. It still boggles my mind what some of the "latest news" that comes up ends up being. Surely the paradigm shift that is taking place to replace Folk Psychology can be better suited in finding things that aren't so obvious; but to those who haven't thought about this, I guess it could help.
I really like this article. In the beginning of the year, I was having a lot of problems with the notion of running out of ideas -- of feeling like I had reached the bottom of my creativity well. Then I realized it was because I was being so insular. I have and always will get my greatest inspiration for my theatrical designs from everything BUT theater. Be it nature or architecture or other artists in different mediums. Its difficult sometimes, to really take a step back, turn off the problem and just open up your mind to new possibilities. When your struggling to fix a problem, its often too consuming. But as soon as you let your brain open back up again, I'm usually amazed at what I can come up with.
I love that site. I keep getting links to it, from here and from Digg.
Anyways, I feel like the most effective thing for me that they point out is to look at my competition. Or in our industry, look at other designers and artists. The first three bookmarks in my browser are Drawn! (an illustration blog), NOTCOT (an alternative design blog), and BOOOOOOOM! (a blog about independent visual art in all areas). I feel like when I'm stuck, flipping through other visual images and looking at the emotional respone I get from this is helpful with my design and art.
I also love the technique Joe taught us at the beginning of the year. I forget the name of it, but basically the idea is to try to fall asleep at your desk, with your chin resting on your hand. Then, when you do fall asleep, you fall off your hand and wake yourself up. Being in that constant half dream/ half awake state is always a good way to help me solve problems.
Post a Comment