At the beginning of this newsletter, I mentioned a corporate workshop I ran last week. At the end of the first day, let's just say the ideas weren't where we wanted them to be yet. It was easy to feel discouraged. But by the end of day two, the teams were glowing with pride.
It was a good reminder of the Creative Process.
I often say that creative professionals' superpower isn't "being creative" — it's "being resilient." They know that it takes hundreds of bad ideas to get to a decent one, and hundreds of decent ideas to get to a great one.
They know that "day one" ideas are highly unlikely to be the best — or even very good. But they're part of the process. We can't get to the great ones without going through the others.
For people that aren't used to it, this early stage doesn't feel good. People think maybe they aren't good at this creativity thing — when in reality, they simply haven't kept going enough yet.
So, let's exercise the creative process and get our brains more used to it.
A simple way to do it:
Grab a piece of paper
Think of a key challenge or problem you'd like to attack
In three minutes, write down ten ideas.
Don't over think them. If you're running out of time, write faster and let the ideas be even worse.
Put the paper away and sleep on it.
Do the same thing tomorrow.
Then do it again the next day.
Repeat as often as you like.