I used to smoke. I think this was my way of bringing fire into my life. Or it was a method of slowly killing myself? Undecided however the nihilist in me would say it is both.
Either way, I don’t smoke anymore because of ‘reasons’ and they are all personal but one day I decided I didn’t want to anymore.
This isn’t a Ted talk on the dangers of smoking, by the way, you have the information, you can do with it what you will. This is riff about the conditions creativity needs in which to spark.
The brain exists to spark creative ideas. But we use our brains to try and hold every thought we ever had in them. All the things we have to do, the shopping lists, the presents to buy, the bills to pay, the worrying, the cough that the kid has when the sun goes down, the parent who seems to be forgetting more and more, the pain in your back. There is so much content in our brains we don’t have space for the idea to spark.
The ignition point for fire is when more energy is generated than can escape into the surrounding medium. In order for combustion to occur and flames to form, three things must be present: fuel, oxygen, and energy (usually in the form of heat).
In order for creative ideas to form, three things must be present. Fuel (inspiration), Oxygen (breathing room in your mental and physical life to let them form, and Energy (the ability to do work).
I have been thinking about this concept of the ignition point for creativity, as I have spent this year creating a life that will support fire in my world.
My first step was to get a job with a regular paycheque. Freelancing is fine for some but I do not think it allows you to truly commit to your fire when you’re giving energy to trying to juggle multiple projects and worrying about money in the downtimes. All the mental bandwidth you have is being spent on how to get by, how to cope, not on how to create.
The second step was to refill the well of creativity. This is your ideas box. Your mental dress-up trunk of knowledge and fuel. Reading is the way I find inspiration. I read everything I can, from books to those handwritten ads on the notice boards at the supermarket. Everything is kindling for your fire.
The most important step was changing the way I ran my life. Everyone has stuff going on and no life is the same so I would not be so forward to say this will work for you because you are you and I am me but I did the following to help me use my brain for creativity, not as a storage box for everything happening now and in the future. How can you notice amazing opportunity to fuel your work when you’re obsessing over whatever that is draining your mental bandwidth?
Your brain can only focus on about four meaningful things at one time, yet we are asking it to try and do it all and solve work problems and other peoples problems and world problems and more. Talk about impossible!
The best way I have found to manage my life and I repeat this works for me and isn’t the one ANSWER, is using an app called Notion.
I have tried bullet journals and To-Do-Lists and more but I love Notion because it’s fun, clean design, easy to use and I can customise it to whatever I need it to be.
The idea is you do a brain dump of everything that is bugging you in your life.
For me, it is Christmas stuff, organising kids, home, writing, blogging, some creative projects I want to do some work on. This is all bullshit shallow work that needs to be done so I can focus on the deep work, the book writing and the creative ideas I want to flesh out and research.
Here is how Notion works for me.
All of these has a page attached and are editable according to how you want to view the content.
A sample of my pages are below. You can add an icon of your choice. A background cover of your choice and then play with it all you like! It really is remarkable.
The key is to use the system. It only works if you work it.
I recently used this for my day job and got my assistant hooked on it also. We were pumping out a huge number of projects and we needed to be organised and transparent and independent. I needed to be able to look at the list and see what was done and when. It was a wonderful tool to support us through an exhausting period of output.
Like any system, you can be as ambitious as you wish when you use it but one thing it does do is take all the bullshit from your brain to be able to create oxygen for the sparks of creativity to feed from.
And the best thing? It is free for one user. FREE. Nothing is free but this is. It will free up your mind for nothing. Just do the work and get it all down.
If you use it, let me know how it works for you. I am dedicated to it and am planning on watching a few videos so I can really get the most from it.
Happy weekend friends and I hope you have a spark of genius and brilliance soon.
Kate
xx