Exercising the Creative Spark
Had a great chat with Janine Cahill of Future Journeys today in which we covered a great range of interesting topics. The one that stood out to me was creativity exercises and the various approaches to creating a workplace with a sense of fun and spontenaity.
I then brought up Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies, and the more recent example of similar thinking, Jesse Schell’s Deck of Lenses. Both of these represent a great way to integrate some new thinking and perspectives into your routines, especially in places where you might get stuck – either in a rut, or just stalled completely. There’s a difference in approach between them – but they’re more similar than they are different.
What I find most interesting about these sorts of approaches (apart from the ease with which they conceptually adapt to technological solutions) is the potential benefit to our thinking of adding a random element, especially when you’re working in a creative field. Of course, I tend to think all fields are creative fields, but that’s my bias showing through. Enforced randomness is something that’s hard to find in the whirl of day to day business, but there’s nothing wrong with planning fortuity. One of the things I do is add appointments to my calendar that say things like “Take a step backwards and look at things differently” – which is a great opportunity to utilise a tool like the Oblique Strategies, or to look over Noah Falsteins 400 project which even without an update for the last 3 years or so, still remains a great list of things to think about.
