Julia Cameron has rightly said.
“Creativity is like crabgrass; it springs back with the simplest bit of care.”
That said, no matter what kind of person you are or what kind of job you do, we all have some form of creative expression within us waiting to be unleashed. Creativity can take any form from drawing comics, playing guitar, coding, and making new apps, designing clothes, or traveling, the opportunities are endless.
We all are born with something to express but we don’t have time for that. At least that is what we like to believe.
But then we do have weekends. And when we finally find ourselves with free time, we find that a Saturday morning filled with promise and inspiration suddenly becomes a Monday morning with nothing to show except binge-watching movies in front of Netflix.
Maybe it is time for you to relook at the way you are spending 48 hours of your time because whiling away these free hours isn’t helping you much. You are just setting yourself for a resentment-filled workweek which becomes one of the main causes of burnout sooner or later. The key here is to work with the time to have and nurture your creativity by performing small acts that boost health and creative thinking. Nurturing your creativity is important because being creative is just for you and no one else.
And here are some options to look into right now if you seriously need a creativity refresh this weekend.
Pick up a new hobby
Weekends are a great time for taking up some hobbies. Utilize your free hours to pursue things of interest that fuel your passion and are not related to work.
For example, photography and drawing are deeply creative activities. The ability to accurately produce or frame representations of what you see can change your perspective of the world. Every time. You draw a person’s face or his surroundings, you are unknowingly tapping into his visual experience and transforming that into a coherent piece of art.
As Dr. Kevin Eschleman, San Francisco State psychology professor who studied the effects of creativity on 400 employees rightly says.
“Creative activities are likely to provide valuable experiences of mastery and control at the same time providing employees experiences of discovery that uniquely influence performance-related outcomes.”
And the biggest benefit of picking a hobby is that creativity breeds more creativity. When you are feeling inspired by one hobby, you can often light a spark of inspiration in your other creative pursuits. So you pick up one hobby, say photography and soon you end up picking other related hobbies like drawing, calligraphy, creative writing, etc. Your artistic mind starts working out connections and soon you find yourself creatively blending the best of all the hobbies into your masterpieces.
Practice the art of doing nothing
The best-selling author Alan Cohen once wrote.
“There is a virtue in work and there is a virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.”
Sometimes your mind just needs to unplug from processing and skim past the humongous volumes of information in this 24/7 connected world. Relaxing for a while before continuing a task can yield great dividends for your creative capacity. The art of doing nothing is often associated with laziness and lethargy. Unfortunately, this is the most misunderstood interpretation, that is ever possible of this wonderful concept.
The art of nothingness is like taking a leaf out of the Italian way of life; La dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing). The very idea here is that doing nothing is an activity in itself. And some of the greatest creative thinkers to have walked on the earth practiced this principle.
In 1881, famous inventor Nikola Tesla had fallen seriously ill on a trip to Budapest. There, a college friend, Anthony Szigeti, took him on walks to help him recover. As they were watching the sunset on one of these walks, Tesla suddenly had an insight about rotating magnetic fields — which would, in turn, lead to the development of modern day’s alternating current electrical mechanism.
Similarly, Friedrich August Kekulé, one of the most renowned organic chemists in 19th-century Europe, discovered the ring-shaped structure of the organic chemical compound benzene while daydreaming about the famous circular symbol of a snake eating its own tail. And Albert Einstein famously turned to music — Mozart in particular — when he was grappling with complex problems and needed inspiration.
Practicing “nothingness” not only eliminates us from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) but also helps us to take control of our lives and utilize it in more productive pursuits. Let your mind wander, and who knows? You just might have the “aha moment” you were working so hard to achieve.
Team up
The physicist David Bohm, while researching the lives of Einstein, Heisenberg, and Bohr, noticed that their incredible breakthroughs took place through simple, open, and honest conversation. He observed, that Einstein and his colleagues spent years freely corresponding and brainstorming with each other.
During these interactions, they exchanged and dialogued about ideas which later became the foundations of modern physics. They exchanged ideas without trying to change the other’s mind and without any bitter arguments. They always paid attention to each other’s views and established an extraordinary professional fellowship.
Other scientists of the time, in contrast, wasted their careers bickering over petty nuances of opinion and promoting their own ideas at the expense of others. They mistrusted their colleagues, covered up weaknesses, and were reluctant to openly share their work.
This is the power of synergy which boosts creativity multiple times. In his book The Power of Two, Joshua Shenk explains how the synergy of a pair is much greater than the sum of two parts. He studied several famous creative pairs: The Beatles’ John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Marie and Pierre Curie, who discovered radioactivity, civil rights leaders Ralph David Abernathy and Martin Luther King and comedians Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld.
“The pair is the primary creative unit,” he writes. “Two people can do things together that are better, bolder, and more enduring than what they do alone.”
One word of caution, don’t collaborate for the sake of collaborating. Sometimes all you need is cooperation. The only reason to collaborate is to add or create value; to achieve things collectively that you cannot achieve individually.
Declutter your house (and your life)
Yes, decluttering can be a simple and powerful way to foster creativity. There are many benefits to owning fewer possessions.
· Less to clean. Cleaning is already enough of a chore, but having to clean around things you have zero emotional attachment to (or worse, actively dislike) makes cleaning the house much more stressful.
· Less to organize. Finding things suddenly become easier. Things don’t just “disappear” anymore
· Less stress. Wouldn’t you feel good seeing a clean, clutter less sight?
· More energy for your greatest passions. You can now focus your energy on the things you enjoy instead of worrying about unnecessary things. This will ultimately make you happier.
And one of the ways to declutter your world can be the Konmari method. The KonMari method is a system of simplifying and organizing your home by getting rid of physical items that do not bring joy into your life.
It was created by organizing consultant Marie Kondo and described in detail in her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. KonMari teaches you to ask a simple question when you go about tidying up your house. Of each item in your home ask, does it spark joy? If not, get rid of it.
By decluttering your world in every walk of life, from cleaning your house to your relationships, you will soon find yourself in a much better, creative state of mind to do things that matter to you the most.
Lastly, find creativity in the mundane
You might think that putting on clothes every day or cooking a meal isn't creative, but it totally is. Creativity is just finding new ways to do common things.
And you can do this by referring to a simple framework from Liz Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers in their book, Convivial Toolbox.
· Level 1: Doing - The first and most basic level of creativity is doing. For example, “I am making an omelet for breakfast”.
· Level 2: Adapting – At this level, you seek to adapt the process of any task and make it different. For example,” Ok, I am going to try to make that mushroom and tomato sautéed omelet that I saw on YouTube.”
· Level 3: Making – This is the third level of creativity when you try something new; a new recipe, a new sport, or even a new relationship. Making could eventually lead to mastery but even if you don’t master it, the very act of doing it will inspire you in deeper ways.
· Level 4: Creating - The fourth and most advanced level of creativity is creating. Here you have already made that omelet and it is a roaring success. Now you are in the “what-if” mode and you wander around looking for more innovative ways of making interesting connections and combinations. You are at your creative best here.
Thus, by recognizing the opportunities in your daily life to practice creativity—no matter how small—you will soon find yourself making greater leaps in creativity. And this will surely reflect on your work, the thinking just carries forward in every aspect of your life and you start connecting things for the better, every single day.
As Steve Jobs has rightly said.
“Creativity is just connecting things,”
Ravi Shankar Rajan is an information technology program director working in Mumbai, India. He writes on a variety of subjects ranging from programming, leadership, creativity, and even dabbles a bit in poetry. Connect with Ravi on LinkedIn and Twitter. Subscribe to his blog “The Perfect Programmer” for the latest articles on programming, creativity, and much more…...