What do you do when you run out of ideas?

 

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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

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