A Why You Must Blog contribution to the monthly Word Carnival hosted by Tea Silvestre, The Word Chef
The left brain, we are told, exists to compute, criticise and assess. Logic, order, numbers, punctuality. None of these words really split the atom for the creative.
The right brain, while resident in the same general location as the left, is, well, different. For the RB, time simply doesn’t exist. It’s apparently about endorphins, little wellbeing factories.
Lovely little chemicals which mimic all those legal and illegal substances, we as humans are so enamoured with.
Think about that moment when you are suddenly alerted to time. Where did that last two hours go? How can it be midday already? Reflect on those lost hours. How did you feel? Usually exceptionally happy. And rather fed up that the necessity of time so rudely interrupted.
You were no doubt involved in a creative activity.
The entrepreneur and the creative
If you’re in your own business, by default you are or were once an entrepreneur. You had a creative idea and acted on it. Entrepreneurs have creativity in bucket loads.
For many, the doer, (manager, technician, book-keeper, office nurturer, operator-on-the-coal-face), often takes over from the entrepreneur once a business is up and running.
When you’re done doing all that doing, creativity recedes – a little like the nubility that was once your 18 year old self.
Genuine entrepreneurs wouldn’t have a bar of that, delegating everything, including creativity, to everyone else. But we’re not talking Richard and Bill here. We’re talking us, Tom, Susie and Harry. Mostly single owner operators or small business owners.
Overload, overwhelm, financial stress are all anathema to creativity.
When you’re stretched as thin as a crepe suzette, creativity disappears like a rare species of frog in a threatened wetland.
Stress and creativity
Not to be confused with stress and creativity. Stress, as in a deadline, is a potent creative aphrodisiac.
When you need to produce the stop-them-in-their-tracks presentation and you only have 24 hours left to do it in, creativity generally surges and stops for no one, like a bullet-nosed, fast train.
How to access creativity
What can you do to access creativity on a daily basis? After all, the middle of the night, shower in the morning, sitting at the traffic light, ‘eureka’ ideas are what propel our lives forward. Otherwise, we’d still be fossicking for nutrients in the swamp.
Don’t deny yourself. Two hours of RB creative therapy will make you feel that all is well with your world. LIkely, that will ensure that you get through a lot more doing than you might otherwise have achieved.
Right brain time. It’s a short list.
1. Recognise creativity’s importance and allocate it space. That means discipline which, by the way, is a LB thing.
2. Space means what ever it takes to enjoy the RB. Quiet, phones off, clean slate, music, mediation, EFT, allotted time.
3. Just be in that space, doing whatever it was that you kept putting off, because other things were determined by LB to be far more important – probably making money.
4. Once LB has given you permission, RB will have a field day. You don’t have to worry that you won’t access your creativity. Those little endorphins will drop in like GI parachutists.
5. For a short time, document what you’ve achieve in those hours. You’ll be blown away by the record.
6. Make it a habit.
The rules of a think tank
One more thing. Involve others in a creative think thank. There are very stringent rules for running a creative think tank. Do not shirk on them.
If you do it right, you and those attending will find that you truly can solve almost anything. Get it wrong and creativity will shrink as fast as a snail’s eyestalks, leaving you frustrated and disappointed. Neither emotion conducive to creativity.
Postscript: Content Curation
Alright, I admit that this is a bit right of centre. But content curation hit my creative button this week. Why?
Back to the overwhelm, overload, stretched thin like a crepe suzette reality.
Here we are producing volumes of extraordinarily creative, valuable intellectual property and disseminating it around the world online. It would appear that as everyone else on the planet is overwhelmed and stretched thin too, our efforts are currently under-valued.
Content curation recognises that. It offers us the opportunity to become a curator of our own creative gallery.
We become the cherry pickers of the very best there is to offer our community in our niche, in bite size pieces. (And here is an example of that!) Artfully wrapped creative toffee. Enough to stick on our wellbeing receptors.
In our overloaded life, how grateful would you be to be drip fed a diet of creative nuggets rather than digesting a thick shake several times a day?
Creative no-brainer for your clients
Think about it. For you and your clients. The concept is awesome. Simple, creative and potentially very powerful for those who adopt it an do it properly.
Watch over my shoulder (just subscribe at the top of the page) as I eschew time, put Why You Must Blog to the test this month, and pursue content curation creativity.
Word Carnival Words of Wisdom
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The right brain, left brain thing and content curation is a post from: Why You Must Blog