Win the Battle Against Writer and Designer Block

It’s 3:45 pm and you’ve made no progress on your presentation. You’ve had exactly 5 cups of coffee and yet the winds of creativity refuse to move the sails of your ship.  Don’t lose yourself to madness and cabin fever, here are a few unique ways to win the fight against procrastination, unproductiveness, and maybe even madness.

Forget the Flow – Sometimes writing or designing in a specific order can leave you in a rut for one particular project. Movies aren’t filmed in order, and presentations don’t have to be created sequentially, either. Jump ahead a few slides or go back and work on something you enjoyed at the beginning. By ignoring the spot that’s lowering your morale temporarily, you may gain confidence to revisit it while you fly through other parts.

Be Harder on Your Deadline, Not Yourself – You are never going to have a perfect first draft. Forget it, let it go! Instead, focus on reaching manageable goals for the quantity of work you accomplish in one sitting rather than the quality of what you are creating. In the famous words of Stephen King (who has published approximately 10 billion books): “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

10 Jumping Jacks, 10 Sit Ups, 10 Squats – This is an exercise that can be done within a single room without making you too sweaty, but the point is to get your blood flowing. A little bit of exercise in between a difficult project can release endorphins which can improve your mood and get creative juices flowing. When the body is happy and pumped up, the brain will likewise follow.

Resize The Starting Gate – Don’t make your creative goals too broad or too narrow when you start working. For instance, a too-broad goal would be: “I want this presentation pitch to be the most creative one in my market. Also, I want everyone to cry at the end.” A too-narrow goal would be: “I want this 20-slide presentation about neurophysics to display all of the details of my study while feeling like a Star Trek movie with moving animation.” Don’t put your goals into boxes that will make you feel trapped later; they are flexible and fluid. You aren’t stuck with your core concept until the moment before you step on stage to present, so be sure to play with your goals while you work.

Start Early – Procrastinating your start time is one of the worst ways to trip up later and fall behind. The earlier you begin, the better you’ll feel when the clock only reads 10:30 am and you’ve gotten halfway through a deadline. Absolutely no one said it better than Mark Twain: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.

The Here and Now One way to trip up your creative process is to spend time imagining your next steps. How will you edit the piece? Where will you upload it? What tie should you wear to the presentation? Will anyone cry? Let go of those worries for later, and stop yourself when your mind starts to wander into “planning” instead of “working.”

Breaking through a creativity block is less about waiting for the muse to strike and more about hunting down the muse yourself…or at least hitting your goals by the end of the day, muse or no. With a few squats and some revised goals, we know you can do it. Press on, soldier!

Question: How do you battle creative block? 

 





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