My playlist is an eclectic collection of tools that help me approach my work as play. I love them so much, I want to share them with you!
Object: Seeing my work, staying on track, and setting realistic expectations.
What Didn’t Work: Trying to piece together to-do apps with Evernote, Google Docs, and other reference material, losing track of past thinking and having to start over again and again, digging through Google Drive or Dropbox to find that standard language that I used nearly every week, feeling absolutely frustrated because I couldn’t see my work or build connections between research, my drafts, my ideas, and other material.
My Aha! Moment: In my dream world, my office has a digital wall that resembles a crime board. On it, I have ideas, questions, reference materials, clues, developing theories and writing projects, all connected together with string. Since the board is digital, I can swipe between projects, link one project to another and use all kinds of reference material, including online articles and material. I can also stand back and see my developing body of work, find new connections, and build on my thinking.
Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? Except it’s not. When I stumbled across Milanote, I knew I’d found a piece of technology that would supercharge my creative process. Thoughts come and go, and our brains simply can’t keep them all in view. Milanote makes it possible to build a body of thought, and multiply our thinking. It’s honestly that good.
How I Play:
Milanote does come in a free version, but when I decided to make the tool my window into all of my projects, I chose to go with the paid subscription. I haven’t regretting it for one moment.
Like a crime board, Milanote is a wide-open tool. I had to think through the organizational structure that would most help me. On my home page, I’ve included categories of my work and play, and I’ve linked boards from there.
I think of Milanote boards as file folders. I have some for projects, some for clients, and others to help me track my schedule. By using board links, I can create shortcuts so the link to a board can show up in multiple places.
Player’s Notes:
Since Milanote links to webpages, you can make a live link to a Google Doc. This means you can work on a doc while you’re inside Milanote. On that same board, you can see supporting material, plus instructions to yourself (think: a don’t forget checklist).
The column tool helps to organize related material, and the arrows and other mind-mapping tools make it possible to brainstorm, connect ideas, or define work flows.
Do you have a task that requires you to visit three websites to complete your work? Place links to each of those pages in a sequence on a Milanote board, along with instructions. Speed up processes by using a templated flow.
Milanote has a feature called “power-up,” and in this way you can transform a note into long form text. The rest of the screen dims, and you can focus on a draft of an idea, which then collapses when you are finished writing. In this way, you can quickly draft and develop ideas as you work toward placing them wherever else they belong in your workflow: InDesign, WordPress, Scrivener, or otherwise.
Take it to the Next Level:
It took me a bit of time to figure out how best to use Milanote. You have to do some structural and organizational thinking. If you’d like a shortcut, I’ve created a short video that walks through some of my boards to cast a quick vision for what’s possible. Here’s that link:
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.
To me, the start of the journey has to be locating myself. There are many ways to do that, of course: journaling, conversing, mind-mapping. One key part of this, for me, is to try to rise up above my life and see. In order to do that, I’ve been clearing clutter. Physical clutter, mental clutter, digital clutter… I’m taking stock of it all. I knew I’d need some kind of system to help me organize everything.
A few years ago, I tried out David Allen’s method, Getting Things Done (GTD). The system did help me to organize and clear the clutter, but that time, my system didn’t stop the mental lists from running nonstop through my head. If it wasn’t my to-do list on mental repeat, then it was my to-worry list.
But this time implementing GTD has been different. Maybe it’s different because I tried it once before. Now I know where things fell apart for me, and where I needed to push myself on creating new habits. It’s taken real effort, but I’ve been able to create a GTD system that’s working in my real life. I have places for all the incoming paper, ideas, requests, resources, and also for the enormous inventory of ideas that pop up inside my own head. My system reminds me of my childhood room, where I had buckets and boxes for every kind of thing. Organizing was a game. I knew where every kind of item went, and when a new toy arrived, part of the fun was finding where it fit.
How can this be part of a creative journey? Being organized? Becoming more productive? Don’t real artists lay around in their PJ’s most of the morning and then follow every whim that pops into their head? I have to admit it. When I hold myself to a system and work on improving my practical experience of work and life, I can’t help but feel I’m not being a “real artist.” It’s a lie, though, and I know it. Right now, I have my life in order and my creative energy and enthusiasm are in high gear. I feel ready for anything. Why?
I found some clutter quotes that might offer a clue.
Clutter is stuck energy.
The word “clutter” derives from the Middle English word “clotter,”
which means to coagulate –
and that’s about as stuck as you can get. Karen Kingston
Clutter is a physical manifestation of fear that cripples our ability to grow.H.G. Chissell
When you have cleared all of your clutter, you can be of greater service to those around you.Michael B. Kitson
Clutter is stuck energy. Mental clutter is the same, but it’s not easy to see. An intentional process is required to transform our thoughts, worries, and ideas into productive action. Might I even say creative action?
Artists may be known for their playful ability to follow the muse, but to be able to do so, we have to clear and categorize and honor the many ideas (internally or externally generated) that come into our lives. If you’re anything like me, this is MUCH easier said than done. However, it’s definitely worth the process. I’ll write more about it as the journey goes on. In the meantime, if you need a launch point for your own creative journey, I highly recommend reading David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done. He says implementing the whole is greater than the value of picking and choosing parts, and I can attest, that is absolutely true.
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