You may not automatically put the words “creativity” and “productivity” together.
In fact, it’s often claimed that the best ideas come when your mind is at it’s least structured, bouncing from one idea to another. Unfortunately, this causes problems if you also have deadlines, meetings, phone calls, requests from work colleagues and emails to deal with.
So how do you stay creative in the real world?
Here are 3 tips we’ve come up with:
- Schedule time for creativity – especially if you have a shared calendar. Protect this time as you would a meeting or an important phonecall.
- Avoid distractions – turn off the phone, email, Skype, put a box on your head if you need to – whatever it takes to get into the zone (Interesting fact: programmers call this “going dark”!)
- Look after yourself: the caffeine-fuelled writer can only keep it up for so long before crashing. Make sure you check your diet, get plenty of sleep and take regular breaks.
