What do you do when you run out of ideas?
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Music and links from this episode
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Captive_Portal/Throwing_-_EP/03_Not_Locrian (Not Locrian by Captive Portal)
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Captive_Portal/In_The_Air_The_Remixes/14_Beautiful_Reciprocal_Half_Mix (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
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Captive_Portal/Throwing_-_EP/03_Not_Locrian (Not Locrian by Captive Portal)
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Captive_Portal/In_The_Air_The_Remixes/14_Beautiful_Reciprocal_Half_Mix (Beautiful Reciprocal (Half Mix) by Captive Portal)
For a line by line rundown of this episode go over to askadesigneranythingdotcom/ep126