126 - Creative Block

What this episode covers

What do you do when you run out of ideas?   Subscribe: ITUNES | ANDROID | STITCHER | RSS FEED   Music and links from this episode Not Locrian by Captive Portal Beautiful Reciprocal (Half Mix) by Captive Portal Line-by-line notes Today’s episode has a double-edged meaning On one instance I’m discussing the idea of struggling to find ideas And in the other instance The reason I’ve done this episode Is because I’m struggling for ideas This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess MUSIC No matter what kind of creative person you are An artist, a designer, a musician, a writer You’re going to hit creative block You’re going to hit a point where suddenly You can’t think of any ideas You’re going to go from being an absolute ideas machine Where they come freely and easily To a complete idea vacuum Where nothing exists anymore And that…is scary Different creative people react to this kind of thing differently Some relish the challenge And some get scared It’s OK to feel like that When you trade on your ideas and suddenly your stock has vanished That’s scary I think that a creative shouldn’t be judged on their creative output Although that’s important But a truly experienced creative should be judged on their ability to consistently come up with good ideas And also should be judged on their ability to recover from creative block An experienced creative knows that they’ve not just become irrelevant They don’t get scared by creative block And they have endless strategies on how to overcome such a situation Overcoming creative block isn’t a skill you develop overnight as a creative I don’t even think that’s it’s something that you could teach to a young creative It’s just a thing you develop with experience And pressure And really, doing things wrong and running out of ideas I talk a lot about the creative muscle and needing to exercise it regularly If you’re not regularly flexing that ideas muscle, your creative muscle It gets smaller and harder to use, and it burns out quicker Mood, anxiety and just generally being in a bad mood affects all this too If you’re in a bad place, ideas are hard to come by And that can be a vicious circle that’s hard to escape You’re in a bad mood, you get creative block, it makes you in a worst mood, and so on So creative block is more complicated that it looks It’s hard to combat and hard to come out of Sometimes the only way out Is just get doing Just start writing, designing, drawing, whatever it is And creative block just disappears MUSIC This was AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess Music featured in this episode was Not Locrian by Captive Portal Beautiful Reciprocal (Half Mix) by Captive Portal For a line by line rundown of this episode go over to askadesigneranythingdotcom/ep126 I’m back tomorrow Support Ask a Designer Anything Ask a Designer Anything Website Twitter (@craigburgess) Ask a Designer Anything on Facebook Leave me a review on iTunes