Creativity and focus are essential skills for any thought leader who wants to challenge the status quo, innovate, and inspire others. But how do you cultivate and maintain these habits in a busy and distracting world? Here are some tips to help you stay creative and focused on your goals.
One of the best ways to nurture your creativity is to dedicate a specific time and place for it. Whether it's early in the morning, late at night, or somewhere in between, find a slot that works for you and stick to it. This will help you create a routine, avoid interruptions, and signal your brain that it's time to be creative. You can also use tools like calendars, timers, and apps to block out your creative time and track your progress.
To fuel creativity sometimes you just have to stop and do something else. Focus your mind on doing something different. Go for a walk in nature, meditate for an hour, wash the car. In my podcast episode with Neil Jurd he said you should do something that’s one step away from productive. Great way to describe it!
Another habit that can boost your creativity is to expose yourself to different sources of inspiration, information, and perspectives. You can do this by reading books, articles, blogs, or podcasts on topics that interest you or challenge your assumptions. You can also network with people from different backgrounds, industries, or fields of expertise and learn from their insights and experiences. By seeking diverse inputs, you can expand your knowledge, spark new ideas, and avoid getting stuck in a rut.
Creativity is not a linear process, but a cycle of exploration, experimentation, feedback, and iteration. To stay creative, you need to be willing to try new things, test your assumptions, and learn from your failures. You also need to be open to feedback, both positive and negative, and use it to improve your work. By experimenting and iterating, you can discover new possibilities, refine your solutions, and overcome challenges.
Focus is the ability to concentrate on the most important tasks and ignore the distractions. To stay focused, you need to have a clear vision of your goals and priorities, and align your actions with them. You also need to be realistic about your time and energy, and delegate or outsource the tasks that are not essential or aligned with your strengths. By prioritizing and delegating, you can free up your mental space, reduce your stress, and achieve more with less.
Focus also requires rest and recovery. To stay focused, you need to take breaks throughout the day, and recharge your mind and body. You can do this by doing some physical activity, meditating, listening to music, or doing something fun or relaxing. You can also use tools like the Pomodoro technique, which involves working for 25 minutes and taking a 5-minute break, to improve your productivity and focus. By taking breaks and recharging, you can prevent burnout, boost your mood, and enhance your creativity.
Finally, one of the most important habits for staying creative and focused is to develop a growth mindset. A growth mindset is the belief that you can improve your abilities and skills through effort, learning, and feedback. A growth mindset helps you embrace challenges, learn from mistakes, seek feedback, and persist in the face of obstacles. By developing a growth mindset, you can foster your creativity, focus, and confidence, and achieve your goals.
To stay creative and focused, you need to get in the habit of being creative every workday (so that creativity becomes an unconscious reflex action). But you also need to allow yourself to be uncreative and unfocused sometimes during your day. You can't just be nose-to-the-grindstone all the time. You'll burn yourself out that way. You need to take walks (or do something else to unplug) so that you can hear the unconscious parts of your brain. And you need to have diverse creative inputs (books, art, whatever) that help stimulate new ideas.
From my experience, creativity finds us in the most unexpected places and times. So I suggest they we are always open to trying need things that push us outside of our daily routines. That we talk to people that have a different view of the industry or the current world issues, for example. Read a lot, and be open to always learning. Those are practices that don’t take much time and bring amazing benefits to creativity.