Is something killing your creativity? Maybe it's one of the seven suspects identified by Gaia and Andrew Grant on the Fast Co. site. Here they are, in summary form, minus the silly names in the article:
1. Control: systems set up to allow minimum leeway for you to be creative. This may reside in your own brain, based on past experience or it may be part of the systems where you work.
2. Fear: generally fear of looking ridiculous or failng.
3: Pressure: the need for speed often makes us fall back on the safest approach.
4: Insulation: not exposing yourself to new influences
5: Apathy: lack of motivation based on the notion that there are no ideas anyway, or new ideas are too difficult to implement.
6: Narrow-mindedness: the belief that the status quo is good enough or being an expert and threatened by new ideas
7: Pessimism: the belief that there's nothing really new, or that new ideas are too hard to implement and will probably not work.
The solutions are simple but not always easy:
* expose yourself to fields other than your own
* do things you've never done before
* challenge the assumptions in your field
* focus on the idea rather than on yourself
* resist (as much as possible) the demand to deliver within an unreasonable time frame
* go for small wins to build up your confidence
(There are lots more ideas like this, with more detailed descriptions of how to use your time effectively and achieve your creative goals, in my book, FOCUS: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done. It's published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)
