Creativity Takes Practice & Boredom
I never considered myself creative or an artist. I always wanted to be but never felt I had those natural talents. My skillset was being organized and organizing others. This led to me working with creative types in management or supporting roles. By spending time with people I considered artists, I learned so much about their process and what it took for them to get their creative juices flowing.
The answer: Practice and rest.
Practice is a simple one. The more you practice your craft, the better at it you get. Many great artists were terrible when they first started. With practice and experience, they were able to level up. There is such thing, however as burnout. Even for creatives. Even when their form of relaxation is creating.
The second piece you need is rest. Experts recommend stepping away from a project when you get stuck and focusing on restful activities. If your mind is wrapped up on a project you can easily get stuck in a rut with your thinking and creative solutions. Stepping away from the problem and allowing yourself rest often leads to the ability to see the problem from another angle.
Usually, a bit of rest and taking time away from a project is enough to pull someone out of their rut. It can help provide new insight and perspective. But what happens when that’s not enough? What if a person is looking for a bright creative spark but feels nothing, no creative ideas? The answer is, again, more rest! So much rest it leads to boredom. This might sound silly, but it’s been proven that boredom leads to more creative thinking. Social neuroscientists have found that the brain has a default network mode that is on when we're disengaged from doing. This means mental rest is as important as physical rest sometimes!
We all hit roadblocks, lack of ideas, and times where we wish we were most creative. It may feel like rest is the opposite of what you should do. If you’re like me, you will probably want to push harder, work more, try to come up with ideas. Even though rest is the real answer, it’s hard to slow ourselves down to accomplish it. And boredom? That’s not fun. That’s why we’re so prone to binge-watching. But that boredom is what allows our brains to rest, reset, and re-spark new ideas and ways of thinking.
If you think you need some mental rest, here are a few things to try: sitting outside and listening to the sounds around you, drawing or coloring, trying a paint-by-numbers, fishing, listening to music, visiting your local zoo, hiking, window shopping, daydreaming, and napping.
We often search for neural stimulation but find ourselves unfulfilled. Rest is the answer to rejuvenation in your creativity. Practice is the key to leveling up.
Challenges/Points:
Hitting a wall with a project is normal.
Many times we’ll want to push through our creative block and work harder to find the solution. The real answer is to stop and rest.
Ask yourself if you are in a position of needing more practice or a time of rest.
Questions:
If you are in a spot of needing rest, is there anything holding you back from getting rest?
What are two activities you can try that will allow for mental rest?
If you are coming out of a stage of rest, full of new ideas or creative solutions, how can you encourage others around you to take their turn to rest while you dive in?
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