Hey everybody, this is Steve. Let me ask you a question. (I always ask you a
question!) Do you come to a task a creative task and just freeze up, you
know, like you pick up the pen to write a new brain just freezes or that you come
to the keyboard and you lift your fingers up and the words just don't come?
Well look don't worry I think it happens to all of us, it happens to me, it
definitely happens to all of us. In this video I'm gonna be sharing some of the
ideas that I've come across over the years as a coach that people use to
overcome that creative block and writer's block and be able to start
moving, and stay with me to the end because I think the very last thing I've
got will surprise and amuse you, it's really off-the-wall, it's
counterintuitive, but it's also really good. But why I listen to me when I've
already confessed to you that I get creative block just as much as anybody?
Well maybe not just as much as anybody but I certainly get it. Well the thing is,
yes, but I've also studied coaching, I've studied aspects of psychology, I put them
into practice, I've been on the receiving end of coaching, and I have learned and
used and applied ideas that work. And by the way just before getting to the meat
of this, if this is the kind of content you like please hit that like button
please subscribe please hit that notifications bell. Now the first tip is
really simple, relax and slow down, when you feel stuck there is nothing worse
than psychologically pushing harder, generally doesn't work, let's use a
metaphor, let's say that there's a sort of creative plumbing that goes on, if
that creative plumbing is all stopped up then pushing harder on it isn't gonna
get it moving, the thing to do at that point is to flex it, to relax it, whatever
muscles you feel tightening in your body, because when we are locking up you'll
notice there's a tightening in the body as well as in the mind, wherever you're
tightening up in the body relax that part, if it's in the shoulders
relax and drop them, if it's in the forehead then just relax around the eyes
and let that unfold, and also put your attention in your breathing, breathe
slower, breathe deeper, notice the breathing going down to the center of
your body and that will help you relax and that will help relax the creative
plumbing system as well. The second thing is to just move that pen or just hit
that keyboard, might sound strange, there's a mentor, a coach who I really
admire, I've never actually met him personally but I really admire his work,
is called Steve Chandle,r and he said something a long time ago which really
resonated with me, now it was actually about motivation rather than creativity,
but it crosses over, his actual comment is, motivation is not the prerequisite for
taking action, it's the result of taking action, what that's really pointing at is
again creativity is not the prerequisite of writing, it's the result of writing, or
whatever the creative task is. Let's look at the problem as if the problem is that
we're still and we've got to start getting some momentum because once we
have momentum it's easier to keep going, so how do we create momentum from still,
look just write something, even if it's bad, in fact maybe even make it an
exercise in writing something bad, like look I'm gonna write a page I'm
gonna try to write the worst page possible, just to get some creative
momentum. Just to get off of still, the same idea comes up in brainstorming if
you've ever learned that, I mean imagine if you're putting ideas on post-it notes
and putting those post-it notes up on the wall, the idea to get some creative
momentum, is to not care about whether what you're putting on the post-it notes
is good, just put whatever comes to mind on the post-it note even if it's rubbish,
put what comes to mind, slap it up with everything else, you might not use those
ideas but again it's about generating creative momentum.
Sometimes it is better to just go and do something different, just go and do
something else, let your unconscious mind work on it
while your focus is elsewher, I've got to tell you I often get my best ideas
when I'm doing something else, when I'm gardening, when i'm hoovering the lounge,
when i'm cleaning the bathroom, when I'm ironing my shirts, sometimes that's when
the ideas come to me, and one of the most powerful ways to let our unconscious
processes sort themselves out is actually with sleep, so sometimes the
best thing to do is just go to bed, go to sleep, let all those things that happen
during sleep, about organizing your memories and things like that, let all
that happen and very often you wake up in the morning with a new clear idea
because your unconscious mind has been processing it while you sleep. Another
trick that comes up a lot is to give yourself a deadline,
now that sounds paradoxical I know because I've just been talking about how
you stop pushing harder, how you relax rather than put pressure on yourself,
well look the ideas that we're showing in this video, the idea isn't that
they're the same idea at all all related to the same idea, sometimes when
something isn't working, do its opposite, so if relaxing isn't working for you if
just moving the pen or just typing things on just creating post-it notes
isn't working for you then try this technique, try the idea of giving
yourself a deadline, because you know if you've got a real deadline I mean some
people who write professionally like a journalist who's got to get his article
submitted in time for printing that person has not got time to overanalyze,
that person hasn't got time for perfectionist paralysis, they've just got
to get their thing down on paper and get it submitted in time, I've often found
though that if I've sat down and said I've got one hour and that's all I've
got I definitely approach it differently to
when I think I have an indefinite end time.
Now I promised you an off-the-wall idea and this is it is to use a psychological
technique called the Zeigarnik effect, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly I'm
not hundred percent sure if I'm honest, with there was a
Lithuanian psychologists a Bluma Zeigarnik who first published about this
effect in a paper called on finished and unfinished tasks in 1927,
the finding was that people who were given a task but did not complete it
versus people who were given the same task and completed it, when you
interviewed them about that task the next day, the people who had not
completed it had much greater retention about what the task was and what they
were doing, well if the people who finished it had much less retention the
suggestion is that if we have an incomplete tasks we, it's like we have a
memory cache where we store information about this test for when we come back to
it, whereas when we finished it it's like we clear the cache, so the way that you
can utilize this effect to overcome creative block is to leave things
unfinished, and that's what's a slightly counterintuitive about it, so many things
are based on get to a convenient finish point before you put it down, this is
saying don't get to a convenient finish point, actually leave it half done so if
it's time to finish your writing for the day and go to bed if you're going to
utilize the Zeigarnik effect you're going to do something like leave the
sentence you're writing unfinished, leave the paragraph unfinished,
leave the chapter unfinished, depending on what chunk size you're working at,
because what that means is there's going to be a some retention of where you were,
so that when you get up in the morning, you're not showing up to work with an
empty cache you're showing up to work with a full cache, you know, what you're
in the middle of and it's easier to get going again it's easier to get momentum
because you were already in the middle of something now. Please let me know
about your experience of using any of these techniques, have you
try the Zeigarnik effect for example, how did deadlines work or not work for you,
what have you found that relaxes that creative plumbing, please do comment, I'll
reply to as many comments as possible if you liked it please like this video it
really helps me that you like this video because it means other people get to see
it as well, please share it with your friends if you think this will be useful
to them, but most of all please please please subscribe and hit that
notifications bell so that you'll be notified when new content arrives.