Creative Block (and 9 ideas to overcome it)

Here’s the headline – creative block doesn’t exist. For some, though it’s a standard way of operating. An easy ‘get out of jail card’ – an outlet to shift the blame on for your lack of ideas.

Of course, it depends on how you define creative block. It can be described as a barrier to inspiration, preventing you from accessing your creativity. But far too many people use it as an excuse.

I’ve worked with some creative types that were so reliable in being able to generate innovative ideas that it was worthy of at least a small dose of envy.

Then there were others, sometimes referred to as the ‘primadonnas’. They acted as though they were waiting for a higher calling to visit, and of course, they weren’t to blame that they missed a deadline. ‘I’m just waiting for this creative block to pass’ they would say.

For me, creativity is less about a serendipitous moment of magic, a channeling of a higher calling or innate talent, and more about responsibility and discipline.

That is of course good news.

It means that contrary to popular belief, creativity isn’t just for a select few. So long as you can take responsibility for your creative process and implement some discipline into your routine, everyone can ‘become creative’ and avoid creative block altogether (or combat it if it does show up in some form).

Creativity starts with understanding your process

Sure, there are times when you don’t have the energy to ‘be creative’ – but often that comes down to one of two things.

1) Either not understanding or having a properly defined creative process that enables your creative self to do your best work (i.e. not optimising your days based on your circadian rhythms, not measuring your peak performance hours, not having clarity which daily rituals and routines create a more favourable environment for your creative self);

OR

2) Knowing your process but choosing not to follow it, not optimising your day to day, or basically letting yourself off the hook (i.e. staying up till 2am eating ice cream and watching sitcoms when you know historically speaking that kind of routine makes you sluggish and ‘uncreative’ the following day)

If you fall in the first category, start by measuring the times when you do feel productive, inspired, and ready to create and try and understand the events and routines that created that environment. Likewise, document what types of things you may have done to lead to ‘creative block’. If you see patterns of feeling lazy and unmotivated the day following binge-watching Netflix till 2 am eating ice cream, that would be a sign.

If you fall into the second category of understanding your most favourable routines but choosing to avoid them, you might need to focus on your discipline.

Creativity is a process, not an event

For as long as musicians, painters, writers, and other creative types existed, they struggled with a ‘creative block’ of some kind.

But while some seem to put their hands in their lap with the words “Oh well, I can’t create while I have this block”, others see it as part of the process.

We all have periods when we don’t feel like creating, or feel like the ideas are just not there. But if we create according to our process, and not our mood, amazing things can happen.

Writer Barbara Kingsolver, the Pulitzer Prize nominee shares:

“It’s a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can’t begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else”.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is another great testimony about how a disciplined process of creation is in itself a way to combat creative block.

When you start to create, regardless of your mood, eventually something will come to exist. The end result doesn’t always have to be a masterpiece – take the pressure off.

Taking the pressure off ourselves

Claude Monet was known to destroy a lot of this work due to frustration. And here lie the other culprits of ‘the creative block’. Perfectionism, judgment, and expectations.

Striving for perfection is one of the reasons many creatives freeze at the sight of a blank page. The expectation of coming up with a genius idea each time you sit down to create would be overwhelming for anyone.

But as Jodi Picoult shares, you can’t edit a blank page. “You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

You can combat the fear of a blank page by giving yourself permission to create garbage. Not judging or evaluating what you’re creating or expecting a masterpiece from the get-go.

Creating something of value, something polished and engaging is a lot like growing plants or trees.

You have to plant the seeds. You have to tend to them, water them, get rid of pests and weeds. Often, it means sitting on your hands and knees in the mud before you can marvel at your beautiful blossom.

9 actionable ideas to overcome creative block

I’m afraid that without understanding and applying the above mindset shifts first, no amount of ‘quick-fix’ solutions I could give would help you in the long run. Someone like me could give you the theoretical steps to take and mindsets to learn, but without implementation, you’re unlikely to solve your creative block, especially if it’s turned into a chronic problem.

As the saying goes, you can’t outsource your pushups, so to supplement those more theoretical concepts, here are 9 actionable ideas to help you overcome creative block.

1 Make it into a daily routine

We’ve spoken about the importance of discipline and process, but how do you go about making it a reality when the ‘huge elephant’ is too much to swallow? You eat it one piece at a time, of course.

Start by committing whatever feasible amount every day to make progress on your project/s. 30 minutes as soon as you wake up, or 15 minutes directly before lunch, any small amount of work daily can help you make progress on your work. So long as you make a habit out of it – the best way to accomplish this – set it in your calendar. As Japanese author Haruki Murakami says, “The repetition itself becomes the important thing.”

2 Adopt the experimentation mindset

Before you hit it big, your risk is low, the upside is big: no one has any expectations of you. American chef Anthony Bourdain wrote his first book when he worked in the kitchen. He said the certainty that nobody would read it is what allowed him to write it so freely.

We talked about how the perfectionism mindset can block you creatively, but how can you turn it into an actionable practice? Take a leaf out of Edward de Bono’s book and suspend judgment. Every time you sit down to create, set up a milestone to hit, with the view of only judging or evaluating the validity of the idea/s until you hit that quota. It could be working for 100 minutes straight. Or generating 100 ideas. Or 2,000 words. Experiment with the different benchmarks for yourself, but forbid your mind from evaluating until that target has been hit.

3 Add skin in the game and accountability

Similar to the idea quota, another tactic that can work is if you externally commit to something. It could be joining a challenge, sharing the progress of your project publicly, or investing $$$ into an idea (i.e. 36 days of type, 100 days of haiku poems, $1,000 into a 12-week social media content course)

When you are invested in something things become more interesting (and more motivating). There’s a reason why free online courses get much smaller completion rates compared to expensive courses. And if you share your projects publicly, even it’s still WIP (Work In Progress) the added accountability can keep you motivated. And as an added bonus you might even get some excellent feedback from your community to help you make it even better. That’s why I love the concept of MVP so much.

4 Make sure you’re solving the right challenge

If you’re not creating art but are solving a particular business problem you need a clearly define challenge before you launch into solving it. As Albert Einstein put it “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Defining the problem can sometimes be the most difficult step in coming up with an idea. It is also the most critical. It’s often the most helpful to phrase your challenge in a form of a question. A ‘How might we‘ framework can be useful, or you can try the following formula for generating the question for your challenge: How or in what ways (action) (object) (outcome)?

5 Add external stimulation

After a while, when I’ve been working on the same types of projects and things day in and day out, my ideas tend to become stale. New stimuli and input can help with keeping things fresh. Feeding the creative brain with new content can help to make new connections and novel ideas.

A trip to the theatre, a museum, or a new art exhibition can do the trick. Basically, anything that is outside of your typical mode of inspiration or environment. I often also break out the Get Ideas Cards Deck – a type of random stimuli with prompt questions helping me see a challenge from different perspectives and get my creative mind unstuck. I’m also working on two other sets of cards via a Kickstarter Campaign, specifically focused on idea generation for Brand Strategists and Content Creators.

6 Adjust the boundaries of a challenge

When you are struggling to generate ideas you could be thinking too broadly or too narrowly about your problem. If you have an open-ended problem like “I want to do something awesome” or if you’re trying to solve world hunger, your problem definitions are too broad and it will be difficult to come up with concrete ideas.

On the other hand, if you narrow your problem down to delivering fresh water to the slums of Lagos, Nigeria every Tuesday, you have gone too narrow. A problem definition that sits somewhere in between those two extremes will give the right amount of specificity and creative freedom to generate innovative and actionable ideas. i.e. How can we empower the existing food supply network to be more efficient?

7 Get busy on a repetitive task

According to an advertising executive James Webb Young who was prominent in the 1940s, nearly all great ideas follow a similar process. Part of that process is what some creatives call the incubation phase. It typically follows the initial phases of gathering all materials about your challenge and spending a good chunk of time immersing yourself in that challenge and then stepping away to let your subconscious mind do the work.

One of the best approaches to ensure you ‘hand the keys’ over to the subconscious mind is to get busy on a repetitive, non-creative task. There is a reason why Archimedes allegedly got his Eureka moment in a bathtub, or why some people get their best ideas during a run, cleaning the dishes or vacuuming the floor. The key is making sure this incubation phase comes after you’ve put in some of the work.

8 WOOP your way to creative unblocking

I recently took The Science of Well-Being course on Coursera and learned about a really interesting problem-solving technique called ‘WOOP’ – wish, outcome, obstacle, and plan.

The creator of the technique, Gabriele Oettingen says that simply having a goal and imagining an outcome is not enough to achieve it. You also have to prepare for the obstacles and plan how you will avoid or overcome them. In the context of creative block, this mental contrasting technique can help you uncover what is causing your lack of creativity in this particular moment, and then ideate some ways to solve it.

9 Don’t wait to have it all figured out

Ideas form in the mind, but they have to take a physical form in the real world, otherwise, they remain a dream. If you keep dreaming up the solutions and features of your idea but wait to do anything about it until you have the ‘perfect solution’, then you are bound to get stuck. They say if you launch something when you are ready, you’ve launched too late.

Don’t wait until you have it all figured out. “If I had to understand everything about connecting people before I began, I never would have started Facebook,” Mark Zuckerberg says. We’ve talked about the concept of MVP. Here’s a way to make that actionable and help motivate you to a ‘completed’ idea (as opposed to ‘perfect’) – try adding a deadline by which you need to finish and launch something. You can always iterate on it, remix it and improve it later.

Bonus idea for beating creative block

That’s right, lucky you  – you get a tenth bonus idea for combating creative block. It’s no surprise that in steps number 2 and 3 I mentioned 100 minutes of work, 100 days of haiku poems, 100 ideas. Because a List of 100 Things happens to be a powerful idea generation technique in itself. Similar to the Automatic Writing Technique you may have heard about it works as a sort of team-play between your conscious and subconscious mind.

Originally created as a journaling technique by Psychotherapist Kathleen Adams, it can be applied to problem-solving, idea generation, and general blockage (creative or otherwise). The premise is simple, you list your question or challenge and then proceed to write a list of 100 plausible solutions or answers, making sure you do it in one sitting and without distractions. The improbability of such a task is what enables your subconscious to kick in, once your initial 20 or 30 odd ‘standard’ ideas are down.

Try to limit the exercise to about 20 minutes, keep it simple, abbreviate, use bullets, repeat responses if you have to, just keep the answers coming – like with our step number 2, there are no wrong answers.

Now over to you

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