A Strategy for Overcoming Creative Stagnation

Whether you're an individual creator or part of a larger team creative, blocks can be paralyzing, not only bringing productivity to a halt, but bruising our oh so fragile collective egos.

Here’s one strategy for effectively overcoming creative stagnation.

1. Just think about it. Deeply

The fake, great Don Draper ounce said, “…Just think about it. Deeply. Then forget it. And an idea will jump up in your face.” While Don was very wrong about a lot of things in his life, when it came to finding and guiding creative ideas, he was hardly off the mark.

The best way to think about something deeply is to journal about it. While many people will insist on using a computer for this task, I’ve found that there is something more rewarding, more freeform, more human about putting physical pen to actual paper. Of course you can type faster than you can write in a notebook, but that’s the point. By handwriting you have to focus on the thoughts that you are having and consider them: Deeply.

By asking yourself the right questions and then writing about them, you enter into a conversation with yourself and access parts of your thought process that you might not have been consciously aware of prior. If you can’t have a conversation with yourself, how in the hell are you going to have a conversation with someone else? Year after year, road block after road block, in my personal, creative and professional life, I find myself coming back to this strategy to great success.

But, that’s only part of Don’s equation: the thinking deeply. What about the other part?

2. Forget about it

Journaling about a specific issue will provide many answers, but sometimes it just doesn’t or sometimes the answers that it provides are not as useful as one would hope. That’s when you forget about it. Letting go and moving on is often times the most productive thing that you can do.

But, while letting go in and of itself is important, what I’ve found to be even more important is what you do next. Simple, non stimulating tasks seem to work best. Of course, these are dependent on your specific situation but these are what I tend to gravitate to:

Taking a walk
Working out
Going for a drive
Taking a shower
Cleaning
Playing an instrument

All these activities change the dynamics of your brain and body, allowing for the question and problem to percolate in the background. In my experience rarely, counter to what Draper says, does the idea jump out in your face. Most often, without even realizing that it has happened you will find the answer standing beside you, more or less fully formed and ready to be applied.