by Naomi | Sep 22, 2016 | Tools & Apps
My playlist is an eclectic collection of tools that help me approach my work as play. My hope is that they’ll do the same for you.
Object: Sorting ideas and options into now, queue and later categories.
What Didn’t Work: Keeping a loose mental list of all the books I wanted to read and ending up feeling forever behind, taking the next action on all the projects on my mind, and all the ones that anyone talked about on the most recent podcast that I realized I “really should do,” hoping that I’d recall a blog post or lesson plan when the opportunity to repurpose material arose.
My Aha! Moment: When I learned my primary creative style is Inventor, I dug deeper into what this style meant about my thinking. First, I learned I’m a visual thinker. No wonder databases and spreadsheets made my head hurt. I examined how the Inventor style expresses itself in my personal creative process, and realized that my strengths are in ideation and implementation. So, I have an idea and then I act. This loop repeats at speed. Projects layer on top of projects until I’m buried. My own deadlines are forced to defer to the “hard” deadlines provided by others, and I end up frustrated. The projects I care about most move along at a snail’s pace because I’m doing forty of them simultaneously.
I imagined how I’d like my process to work. I pictured a colorful machine with various chutes and conveyer belts all sending material to an “action zone,” where projects could be completed, wrapped in shiny paper, and sent on their way. What I needed was a tool that could queue up my ideas, allowing me to easily sort and resort them. Rather than immediately acting on new ideas, I needed to put them into the “machine” where I could see them lined up against all the queued ideas.
Enter Airtable. It’s a database, yes, but the data can be viewed visually. Many relationships can be built to categorize ideas and sort them based on the criteria of the moment. Re-ordering is as simple as drag and drop. My imagined idea machine might not exist, but with Airtable, I could build a close enough replica to manage and streamline my work-flow.
How I Play:
- I created bases for books, for ideas, and for my blog posts to start.
- I set up fields for images (such as cover images or blog post images) so when I viewed my bases as cards, they’d be visually appealing.
- I created categories so that I could sort the entries in the various ways I would want to see them. For example, in the book base I used “creativity,” “mystery,” and “literary fiction,” as a few of my categories.
- I also created a field called status. Here, I can sort ideas or books into “now,” “queue,” “consider,” and “finished.”
Player’s Notes:
- Airtable allows the user to create links between records. So, for instance, in the book base, I have a table for books and another for authors. Books and their authors can be linked, to make for additional sorting options.
- The sample bases in Airtable are entertaining and offer a fantastic introduction for new users. Try them out, have some fun, and let yourself play. Especially if databases aren’t your thing, approaching the process from a playful vantage point will help you blast past the difficult parts of getting your ideal system set up.
Take it to the Next Level:
- Zapier and IFTTT are two automation tools that work in collaboration with Airtable. This means, for instance, you can set up an email link so that whenever an idea pops into your mind or someone recommends a book, you can send the info to your base on the spot.
Sometimes tools that offer many options and functionalities can cause overwhelm. Rather than allow myself to lose focus by considering every possible function for Airtable, I started with a few that felt most immediate and important. If you try out the tool for yourself, I encourage you to start wherever you are. Let your system evolve. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the perfect.
We hire professional organizers to help us conquer our closets because sometimes we simply need outside perspective. We often need similar help with our creative process. If you could use a strategy mentorship to help you tackle a thinking or work-flow mess, I’d love to help! Check out the opportunity here.
by Naomi | Sep 19, 2016 | Creative Life
If I asked you to pick up a pencil and free-write about an experience that caught your interest in the past day or so, chances are, it would take you a while to come up with an idea.
How many of our daily experiences do we remember?
Already this morning, I’ve taken my dog for a walk around the park. I popped out to Trader Joe’s on a quick errand and then went for a run around our local rose garden. If you asked me before I pushed myself to remember, I’d say, “Nothing much happened this morning.”
However, in point of fact, I had a mildly embarrassing moment when my dog snapped at a neighbor’s dog who was running around off leash. The Trader Joe’s clerk asked me my cat’s breed (I was buying litter), and when I told him she is black with a white patch, he said, “Oh, a tuxedo cat.” He insisted this was an official breed, which left me wanting to consult Google. On my run, a kind crosswalk guard helped me across a street. Also, I observed a man training his puppy. The puppy tugged, bounded, and every once in a while, sat, while they walked around the rose garden.
Many of the people I met could inspire character ideas. The sounds, smells, or colors might provide visual inspiration for a room remodel. Some of the interactions might provide metaphors to aid my problem solving. For instance: How could picturing my role as a helpful crossing guard provide new perspective on this situation? The truth is, life brims with material that lays the foundation for creativity to strike.
Unfortunately, we often miss the rich material our lives offer.
The first task of the Attic is to collect ideas and information from your world. If you’re wondering what the Attic is, here’s the short description. The Attic is one mental room we enter during the creative process. In the Attic, we gather ideas, sort them, and identify a creative question or challenge statement that points our creative problem solving in the right direction. If you’d like the longer description of the Attic, or want to know more about the full set of mental rooms, read more here.
Like much in the creative thinking process, collecting happens whether you try to or not. However, if we don’t have an intentional collection practice, there are a number of drawbacks.
What happens when we don’t intentionally collect moments from our lives?
1. We end up with a collection of the wrong things.
Science tells us that negative thoughts and experiences are like velcro. They stick easily. Positive experiences are more like teflon. They are strong, but slippery. Neurologists tell us that in order to impress a positive memory into our memory, we must focus on it for at least 15 seconds. We need proactive ideas and a positive outlook to fuel our creativity, and thus, we need to be intentional about what we mentally collect.
2. We end up with mental clutter.
If we rely on memory to serve as our mental collection bin, we’re forced to sort through everything in order to find the moments that might be useful. Like any unappealing junk drawer, we tend to shut the clutter out of sight rather than utilize it in any meaningful way.
3. We lose ideas or memories that could be highly useful to our projects.
Our brains aren’t computers, and they don’t have a reliable search function. Worse, if we ignore the ideas that pop into our heads at odd moments, our subconscious is likely to determine that we don’t care about those ideas. Then, those thoughts become harder to access a second time.
So, how can we be intentional about our collection practice?
1. Start where you are.
The harder you make collection, the less likely you’ll regularly do it. So, go with the first strategy that comes to mind–it’s likely be an approach that comes naturally to you. Maybe you’ll take photos, or write in a journal, or set a timer for a certain time each day when you’ll list some thoughts in Evernote that you don’t want to forget.
2. Make collecting convenient.
Choose an app that automatically collects your photos into an album. Find a sketchbook that’s small enough to fit in a bag you regularly carry. Come up with three standard questions to answer in your journal so you don’t have to start with a blank page every day.
3. Give yourself a boost.
Starting a new habit can be difficult. Consider your style. (And if you haven’t taken the creativity styles quiz, there’s no time like the present!) Given your strengths, what will give your collecting habit a boost? A reminder alarm on your phone? A periodic check-in with a friend? A block of fifteen minutes on your daily calendar? A colorful post-it tracking system for your office wall?
Do you want to make sure that when you need it, creativity will strike? If so, you need a collection action plan. Choose a next action right now, and if you’d like, share it in the comments below. Where might you start? If you need some extra inspiration, you might enjoy reading about my Thoughtbox, the simple system I’ve created for my own collection process.
by Naomi | Sep 15, 2016 | Tools & Apps
Naomi’s Playlist is an eclectic collection of tools that help me approach my work as play. My hope is that they’ll do the same for you.
Object: Collecting the ideas and thoughts that pop into my mind all day.
What Didn’t Work: Remember to always have a certain notebook in hand, having ideas while driving and trying to remember them until I parked, wanting to reference links on the web or use photos or audio files to help myself remember why I had the thought in the first place.
My Aha! Moment: While on my sabbatical, I was in a rich landscape of thoughts all the time. However, I also wanted to be as physically and mentally free as possible. I didn’t want to drag a notebook around with me all the time. Evernote was another challenge, because opening it up meant looking at work and bills and real life. As a storage tool Evernote is fabulous, but as a collection tool it hindered me.
That’s when I came up with the concept of the Thoughtbox. Imagine you could carry an invisible box, or a magical, expandable bag like the one Hermione Granger carried, where you could store ideas, images, audio files, documents, and research. Even handwritten notes and drawings could be collected in this box. In order for it to work, the box would have to be flexible and ever-present.
I asked myself: What do I always have? The answer? My Apple Watch and my phone. Now, even if you don’t have a smart watch, you likely have a phone, so you can adapt this tool to fit your style and toolkit. The point is to choose a collection entry point—or, as in my case a couple entry points—with an air-tight container to catch everything you toss into your Thoughtbox.
How I Play:
- Because I collect thoughts in so many different mediums, I use Evernote as the holding zone for my Thoughtbox. I use the tag #Thoughtbox, so all thoughts of this type end up together.
- I’ve chosen a few appealing apps that live on my watch, phone, and iPad. These apps make collecting ideas easy and integrate well with Evernote.
- I use Day One on my watch and phone and Noteshelf on my iPad, but there are many other apps that will work. The point is to choose apps that appeal to you, which you already use or are easy to add to your system, and which will seamlessly send material to Evernote.
- Once a week or so, I review my Thoughtbox and pull out any ideas that need further attention right away. In general, the collection becomes an expanding record of my thinking. I access it during brainstorming sessions or when I enter my Attic looking for raw material to take into the creative process. (The Attic is one of the Writerly Play rooms, more on that here.)
Player’s Notes:
- One reason my Thoughtbox works so well is because Day One has a recording function from the Apple Watch app. Any time I have a thought, I can tap a button, speak a thought, and the words are instantly transcribed.
- I can also take a photo with Day One, or easily add any photo that I’ve taken on my phone to the app. When I’m out on a hike or in a museum, this allows me to take a picture and make a few quick notes.
- I use Noteshelf on my iPad because handwritten notes and drawings are an important part of my thinking process. However, it is nearly as easy to draw or write on paper, snap a photo, and add the thought that way. Scannable is a great app for taking clean pictures with your phone for Evernote.
- I use Evernote’s simple web clipper and app extensions to send other material into my Thoughtbox. Since Evernote is such a well-connected tool, it allows my system to grow as technology changes.
Take it to the Next Level:
- Since I collect most of my thoughts in Day One, I can review my thoughts periodically in the app’s well-built interface. Looking over my words and images will often spark additional ideas, which I then add to the feed.
- Day One doesn’t instantly export material to Evernote, so I do this once a week or so. The exporting session provides another chance to review my collected ideas and think them over. I take the opportunity to also look at my complete Thoughtbox in Evernote to see what I’ve collected recently from the web and from Noteshelf.
- Since Evernote can be overwhelming to my visual-thinker’s mind, I use the presentation mode to scroll through the Thoughtbox. This way, the noise is cut out and I can see the ideas in a more compelling format.
by Naomi | Sep 12, 2016 | Creative Life
Creativity is like a fingerprint, unique to each person. And yet, there are also recognizable creative styles. Understanding our general thinking patterns can be very powerful. For one thing, when we notice our preferences, we’re more likely to also see our blind spots.
Recently, I took a course on creativity from the Great Courses Plus called The Creative Thinkers Toolkit. One highlight was the Creative Problem Solving Model, which identifies four steps to creative thinking. They are:
- Clarify: We sharpen our understanding of the problem so that our idea-generation energy is focused and effective.
- Ideate: We think widely to come up with many options (divergent thinking), and then choose the most helpful option to take forward (convergent thinking).
- Develop: We shape and refine our idea, adding layers and removing anything extraneous.
- Implement: We take action and bring our solution to life.
Most people are drawn to certain steps in this model and have blind spots in others. For instance, I’m an Ideator and an Implementor. My mind brims over with ideas and I often leap straight from enthusiasm into implementation. Were I to slow down and clarify first before brainstorming, or to develop my idea before implementation, I might improve the speed and effectiveness of my creative process.
People of varying creative styles approach the model differently. A structured thinker is likely to be methodical through each step. An intuitive thinker may not even realize there are steps through which she is moving.
If you’re familiar with the Writerly Play rooms, you’ll likely notice that the Problem Solving Model can be carried out in each room. For instance, if you’re in the Attic, collecting, organizing and choosing material, you might clarify what you’re looking for, generate ideas around the material available, add to and refine your idea to make it more solid, and then take action by putting your idea into words and/or images. Then, you’ll take the idea into one of the other rooms such as the Studio, where your Creative Problem Solving might focus on creating a first draft.
After learning about the Creative Problem Solving Model as well as encountering some fabulous material on Productivity Styles by Carson Tate, I decided to revise my Creativity Styles Quiz. I don’t have a lab coat or a two-way mirror, but I’ve spent a lot of time observing people of all ages engaging in creative tasks. Clear patterns for creativity styles have emerged from those experiences and my continued research. What I see most often are people who switch between a couple of these styles depending on the situation. Understanding which styles fit you best will help you better understand any sticky parts of your creative process. Like me, you may discover a few blind spots. By playing to our creative styles, we can choose strategies and tools that fit us and that also help us through any part of the creative process that doesn’t come naturally.
I’m excited to share this resource with you! Here’s the link to the creative styles quiz.
by Naomi | Aug 30, 2016 | Creative Life
In the Writerly Play Cafe, you’re invited to collaborate with others—giving and receiving feedback, problem-solving, and overcoming any creative blocks that may arise.
Creativity doesn’t happen in isolation. In fact, the most common definitions of creativity require that an idea isn’t only original, but useful. To determine usefulness, we look at a work’s impact on others. And thus, others are a key part of any creative act. That’s why we can’t forget the importance of the Writerly Play Cafe.
If you’re joining this series mid-stream and wondering what in the world the Writerly Play Cafe is, you might find it helpful to start at the beginning.
The Cafe rounds out our collection of mental spaces in the creative landscape of Writerly Play. Depending on your medium and your creative style, the Cafe may be your main work space. It may also be your least visited room. Whichever is true for you, it’s important to be aware of when we are in our Cafe and when we are not.
Even the most collaborative of art forms benefit from individual voices. At some point, we need to quiet all outside noise and listen to our own intuition. So, like the Studio and Workshop, I’ll invite you to think about the distance you need between your Attic and Cafe. You might only need a thin door. Or you might choose to set up your Cafe out in the back garden as I have.
I need the distance to give myself time to ask:
Do I need feedback right now?
What kind of feedback do I need, and from whom?
So, where will you place your Writerly Play Cafe? What type of doorway will invite your collaborative, social self out to play? Listen to the buzz of the Cafe, feel the warmth of community inside, and make your way inside.
Look around. Who is in your Writerly Play Cafe right now?
Do people come and go? Is it an invitation-only space? Are there nooks and crannies to quietly speak with one friend, or a wide, weathered table with plenty of seating for a crowd? What other items are in the space? A whiteboard? Snacks? Past successes on display?
The more you engage with Cafe thinking, the better you will become at processing and putting feedback to use.
The core skills in the Writerly Play Cafe include:
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Asking for Feedback
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Receiving Feedback
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Applying Feedback
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Giving Feedback
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Discussing Options
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Learning from Feedback
In order to play to your strengths while thinking in these ways, what tools, strategies or supplies ought to be in your Cafe? What tried-and-true strategies do you have? What kinds of tools or activities would you like to seek out? Add to your toolkit or list. And if you’d like to explore some additional possibilities, here’s my
recent list of Cafe tools and strategies.
Writerly Play is a tool to individualize, map and problem-solve the creative process.
Before you start work, you can use Writerly Play’s narrative structure to identify your strengths and weaknesses, choose strategies that will work well for you, and determine a starting place.
As you go, you can use Writerly Play to track your progress. Which rooms have you visited? What room might help next? In your chosen room, what tool or strategy is most likely to yield momentum? If you haven’t downloaded it already, use the form below to snag your Writerly Play map. Print it as many times as you like to map your way through a project.
Or, when you find yourself stuck, you can use the map to unlock new possibilities. Writerly Play is a powerful antidote to creative blocks. Rather than beating your head against the wall, trying to do the same thing over and over, you can try out a different space, a different approach.
Ultimately, the who, the what, and the where of Writerly Play will help you transform your creative development into a story. And by telling yourself that story, you will be able to find and maintain creative flow.
And that, my friend, is what I truly wish for you.
The world needs your voice, your perspective, the stories that only you can tell. We need your creative solutions and most importantly, your joy.
