Creativity and Outcome

People often assume that marketers and creative types spend their time having lots of fun making drawings, putting pretty pictures on a board and coming up with snazzy lines. They do call ads creative for a reason, right?

That creative work is hard. Especially since it is meant to produce an outcome. Developing creativity in your life is not terribly hard work if you cultivate the ability to keep mind, eyes, ears, in fact all senses, open. The skill resides in applying creativity to seeing a problem or a business need through a different lens -- as if for the first time.

Creativity happens by design. What are some ways to exercise our ability to remain elastic and think differently -- from a new angle? There are many opportunities in everyday life:

• Taking an alternative route or train when going to work - this gives you the opportunity to see another landscape, or maybe the same, in a new order.
• Enabling the shuffle function in your CD player - you listen to the same music, yet the order in which you hear it is unexpected
• Reading a magazine or publication that is totally outside your usual reading habits - this stimulates your synapses to connect about a less known body of knowledge, opening up other avenues

There is a myriad opportunities to shift your routine ever so slightly and embrace change as part of it. You can do that at work, too. Whether you work in a physical office at a company or at your home study, introducing new elements into the way you do things can often break you out of a pattern or rut. The opportunities at work can be as simple as:

• Walking to your office or desk from the opposite side of the building - you come at it from the reverse view, what do you see?
• Having stand up only meetings - you keep things brief and you have a chance to look each other in the eye instead of at the papers on the table
• Sitting at your desk from the guest side - I tried this one more than once and it amazed me how the perspective changed

I'm sure you can suggest many more ways. Routines are great, yet after a spell, they start preventing us from seeing things with fresh eyes. What would happen if we made a habit of creativity itself? Today at The Blog Herald I talk about seven ideas to make blogging your creative habit.

What other ways and ideas do you use to stay in the creative zone?

[photo taken in Modena, Italy. Model replica of which car? You were correct, Carolyn Ann, it's not a Bugatti. It's the replica of a Maserati 250 F1]

Comments

[Bill Gassett]

Valeria - I enjoyed your post about ways to make blogging a creative habit over at The Blog Herald :)

[Carolyn Ann]

I did, too!

And you've got me on the car - it looks like a 1953-55 Ferrari. And as far as I know, Bugatti never produced a Formula 1 car of that design (but I'm not anything like an expert on Etorre Bugatti. The nearest I can place it is a variation on the Type 251, but even then I'm not sure - its wheelbase looks wrong.

Totally flummoxed, :-)
Carolyn Ann

[Ricardo Bueno]

Reading other blogs and/or a good book keep the creative juices flowing!

Sure sometimes it's still hard to get something goin' but hey, that's what the draft feature is for :)

Just write random thoughts and sooner than you know, you'll have enough notes to post something cohesive!

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Bill -- thank you for reading and glad it was useful.

@Carolyn Ann -- :D I thought of you when I saw the model and I just had to take the photo. The label in the store did say it was a Bugatti. Beats me which one as I could not find anything resembling it on their site. But loved the elegance and presentation of the information.

@Ricardo -- my drafts tend to be pretty full posts already. I'm much better at taking notes on scraps of paper. Then again, that's why techniques are personal. The important thing is not to let the thought vanish.

[Carolyn Ann]

Thank you! :-D

It isn't a Bugatti. I did some checking up on the suspension, and it's wrong. Bugatti didn't employ that sort of double-wishbone suspension at all - in fact, the entire suspension system looks too modern: I'd place it circa 1970 to 1975.

So, either Ettore was doing something devious - and it was recently discovered (although I can't say I've read, or heard, of anything like such a discovery) - or the person making the claim really didn't know. It doesn't "feel" like a Bugatti. Any more pics of the thing? :-)

I think it's a replica of some sort, but I'd be more than happy if someone refuted me! Still, it is a nice car, and you took a great picture. :-)

Carolyn Ann

[Valeria Maltoni]

I have also gotten a couple of off line emails saying it is a Bugatti. But you are correct, Carolyn Ann, it is not. It's a Maserati 250 F1. See photo above. I am impressed!

[Mike Haberman]

Valeria, great post! I try to keep from being routine all the time. I think it keeps you interested and as a result interesting. I also try to teach HR professionals the importance of that as well. I blogged about it in my HR blog and linked to you for people to read.