Have you ever been at a point where you’ve spent countless hours just staring at a blank screen? May be they were just minutes, but minutes spent doing nothing productive can feel like never-ending hours. Moreover, you have the project deadline looming in and this creative block which was harmless before is now slowly and steadily becoming a creative crisis!
In such a crisis, you may be stressed, you can feel some churning in the pit of your stomach, there’s probably sweating and fear. Lots of fear.
Working under such physically straining conditions may not be ideal for your productivity, and so, we’ve put together five ways to overcome a creative crisis. Following all or even some of these may help you get your creative juices flowing and fresh ideas rolling in!
Break It All Down
When you have a brief to work with, if you are going through a creative crisis then looking at the whole project may feel very overwhelming. Being overwhelmed by the already stressed environment can make it worse. When you look at your project in smaller pieces, helps you get more ideas.
Therefore, break the project down into simpler pieces and work on each piece separately.
For example, if you have to work on a website, start with the ‘about me’ page and then slowly build on the other pages. Focus all your creativity one page at a time.
Before you know it, you will remove some unwanted parts, combine other parts and lo behold, your project is on its way to completion!
Start From The End
Whether it’s writing a book, drafting an important email or designing the cover image for your blog, people often get stuck at the beginning. Procrastinating the project until you find the perfect beginning can take days and even weeks!
So don’t start there. Start your work from the middle or write your conclusion before you get the introduction done. Or find a place within the project which is easiest to do and start there.
When you slowly start at some place, it gives you the confidence and the creative push you need to complete all other parts of your project.
Create Alternatives
When it comes to being creative, there is no one right answer to it all. Therefore it is a good idea to work with your project brief in such a way that you make multiple alternatives, instead of tweaking just one.
If a logo needs to be created, create 6 different ones to choose from or combine. The same is true if you have to pitch an idea, or create a website.
Remember to make a wide range of these alternatives – from simple, standard to surprising and hair-raising ones!
Get Inside The Box
It is a very well known jargon to think ‘outside the box’, however, when it comes to creativity, there is a lot of juice within the box.
That means, when you start working on a project, a project that has no boundaries will be stressful to work with. Therefore, create a box and look for constraints to work within the box.
For example, if someone asked you to name five towns, you will tend to think of the towns you have been to or have some association with it. So, answering a question such as naming five towns you’ve been to is much easier than otherwise.
Get Out, For A While
If nothing else pans out the way you imagine it, stop whatever it is you are doing and get out. Get out of your cabin, get out of your room, get out into the open fresh air. Get moving and get those ideas rolling!
My name is Alicia Honeycutt. I am a content strategist and a writer at Essaydot Essaydot. I love writing and investigating new places, reading and travelling.
