Keeping a constant stream of big ideas is a huge challenge for any marketer. Here are a few things I do to make it easier to draw from my inner well of creativity.
Talk to somebody.
Sometimes I ask other creatives on my team to give me ideas. Or I ask them to talk to me about anything. They may have something to share that will inspire me. They may flat out give me an idea to run with. You can call me lazy for doing this, but sometimes this is an efficient way for me to get jumpstarted on a deliverable.
Talk to nobody.
You know your limits. Sometimes people have the opposite effect of energizing you. If you’re already having a lackluster day, keeping to yourself can help you stay focused. Avoid the Debbie and Danny Downers at the water cooler, and wait for your creative muse to appear very soon.
Take a break.
Go for a walk outdoors. Get some fresh air. Just breaking away from your desk and screens for a few minutes will improve your mood and clear a few of the dust bunnies from your mind.
A Stanford research study found that walking—even indoors on a treadmill—can boost your creativity levels by up to 60%!
Check out your backlog.
Keep a running backlog of ideas to draw on. If your team is already operating in an agile framework, this can be easy since you’re always maintaining a backlog of work that needs to be done. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of what you can work on. However, you don’t have to wait for your team to go agile to keep a backlog. Every time you get an idea, jot it down in a running list of ideas. It’s like making a deposit into an idea bank that you can withdraw when your creativity funds are running low.
Take care of yourself.
I think I do my best work when I prioritize my well-being. Trust me: I suck at all of these recommendations most of the time. But we can all aspire to do better in these areas. Improving in these areas, I’m sure, will benefit other areas in our lives.
Some basic ways you can care for yourself include:
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Getting a good night’s rest. You know your body best. If you only need 6 hours of sleep, that’s great. Just organize your schedule in a way that allows you to get those uninterrupted 6 hours. I have a FitBit, and what I’ve learned is that I am prone to having interrupted sleep. I’m better off going to bed super early to account for the fact that I will most likely get my bare minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep over the course of 8 or 9 hours in bed.
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Eating a healthy diet. This is a tough one, too. Personally, I took one baby step in this area: I no longer eat out for lunch. I also make my own coffee every morning. If I can at least have an idea of what’s in my meal or know that I prepared it, that’s half the battle. You feel a lot better when you make healthy food choices versus eating a whole canister of Pringles in one sitting. I also save time by not waiting in lines for 25 other folks to get their mocha-choca-lattes with nonfat almond milk, 2 squirts of artificial flavors, before me.
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Getting some exercise. If you take that walk I suggested earlier, then that’s a two-for-one!
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Deal with stress in a positive way. There has to be some stat out there about how stress is a creativity-killer. Stress is counterproductive, although it’s a fact of life. Whether you deal with stress using one of the other tips discussed here or take bigger steps to seek professional treatment, being aware that you are stressed is a start. Unless you work in a medical industry, usually your work is not a matter of life or death. So if you miss a deadline here or there due to your present lack of creativity, it shouldn’t be a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Do something that relieves your stress, and then get back in front of your computer screen to try again.
Drink responsibly.
Now before you laugh at me or reach for a bottle to test this recommendation for yourself, hear me out: There’s some real science behind this.
Consciousness and Cognition, a scholarly journal, published a study Jennifer Wiley, psychologist, and her research group conducted to evaluate the effects of alcohol on creative problem solving. What they found was:
“… Intoxicated individuals solved more creative word problems, and in less time, than their sober counterparts. Interestingly, people who drank also felt that their performance was more likely to come as a sudden insight, the answer came all at once, in an ‘Aha!’ moment of illumination.”
There you have it—a legit excuse to booze it up when your creativity levels are down.
Connect with your personal goals.
This is something I have to default to when my creativity is at all time low. I remind myself of the answers to these questions:
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Why do I do what I do?
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Who do I do it for?
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What am I working towards?
You have to stay focused on what motivates you.
Now, I’m not saying to decorate your cubicle with all of your pet cat’s photos and motivational word art you just bought off of Etsy. But take a moment to write down—on paper or Evernote—your life goals.
Writing your goals may prove to be a very difficult task, especially if you haven’t given it some serious thought. It’s ok to write something—anything—down and revise it later. No one’s tracking this list other than you and whoever you choose to share it with. Sharing is completely optional. It can be your own little secret. Just knowing that you are working on something beyond your paycheck—even if it’s something that may be frivolous, like a trip to the Caribbean or a designer handbag—can boost your mood and innovation abilities.
Get one thing on your to-do list done each day.
There’s probably one thing on your to-do list that is pretty important and that you’ve been dreading getting done. Get that thing done today. Just bang it out. Even if that’s the only thing you get done today, then you’ve had a productive day. Getting that one thing done will empower you to feel like you can move onto the other fun things you’ve got on your list.
Take a look at what your competitors are doing.
Don’t copy your competitors, but taking a peek at their websites or social profiles can spark an idea.
I recently did this exercise and discovered that I’m not getting enough mileage out of content I’ve been promoting. My competitors are taking very little bodies content and dividing it out into very small bits of content and publishing it more frequently over time. I am going to start using the same strategy!
Travel.
Sometimes you really need to get out of your environment and try some new things, see some fresh sights. Pick a destination along with activities that suit your travel tastes—beach trips for relaxation, a mountain resort for an outdoor adventure, etc.
Speak with your customers.
This is so easy, yet so many of us don’t take the time to do this when our roles don’t involve regular customer interaction. Our customers can tell us directly and indirectly what would help them when selling to them or retaining them as customers. That’s sure to yield a list of deliverables and topics to work on immediately.
Just write/dive in.
The cobwebs may clear from your mind when you just commit to word-vomit onto a page/Word doc.
Do some keyword research.
This is a lazy way to spend time with customers. Try to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and ask the questions they would ask when dealing with a problem you can help solve or evaluating a solution similar to what you offer. What kind of Google searches would you do if you were your own customer? Use your favorite keyword research tool to determine what kind of traffic those keywords would get, get keyword alternatives, and assess how difficult it would be to rank for those keywords. Then start to create some content around the keywords that would be strategic to grow your business.
Listen to music.
Put on your favorite jams. I don’t know how I’d get through a day without some music in the background to get me excited about creating something new.
Listen to white noise.
I have an on-and-off relationship with a productivity tool called Coffitivity. I love coffee, and I struggle with creativity. Coffitivity plays the delightful sounds of an actual coffeeshop with no interruptions or ads. It also claims to increase my creativity and provides actual data around that claim.
Change your environment.
Especially if the weather’s not conducive to going for a walk outside, grab your laptop, and work out of a different part of the office. Try to get a window seat in an open area. Or be selfish and book a conference room to yourself for a few hours. Looking at a different set of walls may stimulate new ideas.
Take your feelings out of it.
Maybe it’s just me, but the dialogue within myself saying, “Will this be good? Who will like this? What if it gets no engagement? What if I’m wasting my time?” can be overwhelming. I have to take a figurative pillow and smother my fears and doubts when they try to drown out my ability to create. Otherwise, allowing negativity to dwell in my mind when I’m trying to be productive only leads to, figuratively speaking, creative paralysis.
I’m sure you’ve felt uncreative and uninspired at various points in time or maybe even in the last week. How did you overcome it? Please tell us in the comments section below.