If creativity is your trade, your mind is a limited resource — you need an infinite source of new creative ideas
Your success as a Creator is, assuredly, about creativity. Where do your ideas come from, what sources do you rely on for the messages and methods and measures you suggest to the world, to your audiences and readers? The four walls of your own mind may need help.
My mind vs. The Global Mind
I am a researcher by day and a creator on the side. For the last 25 years, I’ve relied on the ideas, experiences, insights, and perspectives of my research subjects to enhance and color and validate my own creative impulses. The world and humanity are so much larger than my own mind.
Your mind vs. The Infinite
Writing programs and teachers will offer creativity methods and tools, yes. But they often focus on stirring or shifting your own thinking or reframing and recombining the limited store of knowledge and experiences you already possess — and the ones you have probably worn thin over too many retellings.
All you have to do is ask
A powerful, indispensable tool will break you out of your thread-bare mental prison.?That method is the interview, and it unlocks and delivers to you an infinite flow of new, fresh, unusual, unpredictable, and freely available creativity and insights you cannot uncover any other way. All you have to do is ask.
This can be as structured or informal as you want it to be. Do it in person, or do in remotely across the world — have a discussion, just chat, meet over coffee, ask someone to share their story and what they’ve learned, and figure out how to ask compassionate, insightful, and mildly edgy questions. It’s simple, and it will save your life.
领英推荐
Most people love to tell their own stories.?In those narratives, you will find triumphs and failures, joys and agonies, journeys and destinations that you could never dream of on your own. And — all you have to do is ask.
I looked into the faces all passing by, it’s an ocean that will never be filled.?— Jackson Browne
Learn to interview
Learn to reach out to the vast ocean of humanity to spark and inform your creativity, your voice, and your contribution back into that ocean. Your creations and your writing will never be the same.
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I’m Bob Berry — I research and teach User Experience for Creators — because all our outcomes occur only within the experiences we provide the world.
Creative marketer with expertise in developing integrated brand and content marketing strategies utilizing data-driven decisions to achieve business outcomes.
2 年I do get in a creative rut sometimes. Are you talking about interviewing a colleague? I downloaded your 55 page e-book and looking forward to reading it.
Helping Senior Citizens with Tech through UX Research and Personal Support
2 年True Bob, or as Johnny 5 ?? would say, sometimes when we get in a rut we need "More inpuuuut". https://youtu.be/WnTKllDbu5o