Creativity in the way? Turn the tides in 15 minutes a day.
Here’s how to dive into your creativity and find the golden treasure of production.
Day 1. Sea of Ideas
Take all of your ideas, spread them out on a bulletin board, sticky notes, or cards on the floor, and look them objectively. You may want to take more than 15 minutes so that ALL your ideas are included don’t, you can always add more along the way.
Day 2. Surface Pools.
Chart your ‘Sea of Ideas’ into themes; red fish, blue fish, coral, treasure, and create a log.
Day 3. Submerged Pools.
Re-chart your Surface Pools into new themes; fish, human structure, sea creatures without eyes. Log these pools.
Day 4. Seabed of Substance.
Look at your Surface and Submerged Pools, strengthen them by tying them into knots. Check your Logbook and chart new connections until your 15 minutes is up.
How? Play with them
- Use rope to create a mind chart linking similar ideas.
- Use building blocks to create a ship with cargo holds, levels, decks, connected by hallways, stairs and doorways. Your ideas become the ship.
- Experience your themes. Go outside to your backyard or a park. Move to where themes connect with nature.
- Use an ecosystem (water and evaporation) or physiological system (respiratory system) as a template to work from.
- Use the four corners in your office to represent seasonal connections – the door is spring, fresh new concepts to open and bloom, the north wall is winter for those that are dormant or require a warm fire of people connecting by a cozy fire, the window is summer where ideas activate growth, south wall is fall representing ideas related to change.
It’s tempting to continue to chart until you get it right or get ALL those ideas down, however, this is about moving beyond the idea phase and into action so be sure to move past, you can always go through the process again.
As you chart and re-chart you may find that some ideas walk the gangplank, others that didn’t appear to be strong divers in the first wave will build inertia . Now you’re getting somewhere. Give it time.
Day 5. Focus on the Most Colourful Fish.
As you see deeper currents emerge you will be drawn to certain pools and, of course because you are an idea generator, a whole new set of ideas will splash up on shore. Add those to your Sea of Ideas
Choose the Most Colourful Fish that pops and play with it into production. Choose the initiative that you will pursue. It may be plain and elegant like a sea turtle or flashy and flamboyant like a clown fish, choose the one that brings a smile to your face every time.
Day 6. Float.
After all that playing take time to float, snorkeling in full buoyancy.
Day 7. Dive in.
Take 3 strokes away from shore and start swimming.
