About the "Art of Creativity"

Sensitivies:
- seeing good in mistakes
-being receptive to new ideas
-intuition

Attitudes:
- opening mindedness
- child-like naivety
- confidence

Methodologies:
- daydreaming
- challenging yourself constantly

Mental Skills:
- being receptive; listen openly and well
- mental flexibility
- humor

Intentions:
- pushing self into new routine constantly
- playfulness

Exercises:
- sleep on it
- brainstorming with others
- letting self go physically
- letting self go mentally
- change something about your routine
- see something common in a new way
- reaching the ‘in between’ state (theta waves)


For theses few days in between Saturday and Wednesday, I chose to do the “change something in your routine daily.” It’s sort of funny because this whole week I’ve really had a problem with being creative for an assignment that is due, so when I read the article, I felt like “yes, this is exactly what I need.” I just wish that I had longer to practice so that I could reap bigger rewards from it.

Sunday:
I was feeling really frustrated and restless because I had been trying to think of a few creative ideas for my ComDesign project for hours, working with type and brainstorming (or failing at brainstorming) in my sketchbook. I felt totally stuck. Normally when I get to this point I end up taking a fifteen minute nap, as that sometimes helps get my mind back in gear. Instead I chose to go on a spontaneous jog. It definitely fell under the category of letting go physically, and it gave me a break mentally. By the time that I was halfway through with my run I could feel that my mind had switched gears from trying to work out that problem, to just existing in the moment. It felt good to have a break and just concentrate on how my body was working and feeling. It was feeling very really, as opposed to brainstorming, which feels like you don’t even need a body because everything is in your head. When I went back and cooled down, it was a lot easier to get more work done, although I didn’t have an “eureka” moments.

Monday:
Monday night when I was making dinner, I was thinking about the article and how they talked about changing recipes as a sort of exercise. I’m a poor college student, so I don’t have that many ingredients or ways to change up my cooking, so instead I decided that while I was making dinner I was going to try to use my left hand as my primary hand, and switch things up that way. I definitely couldn’t just go through the motions of cooking like I normally do. I had to really concentrate, especially for when I had to drain the pasta using my left hand, because if I didn’t pay close attention, I definitely would have burnt myself. It was similar to the run in the fact that I had to switch mental gears and concentrate on something that was happening “in the now.” It also physically felt different from my normal routine. I hardly ever try to use my left hand for anything.

Tuesday:
The day was wearing on, on Tuesday and I realized I hadn’t done anything out of my routine yet that day. Since it was getting around to 9:30 and I was in that horrible “I have to come up with some outstandingly creative idea before Thursday, but I’m terribly stuck and have no way to just magically come up with an award winning idea,” frustrated mental place, I decided that maybe something I could do out of my normal routine was to actually unwind before I go to bed. Normally I stay up till at least midnight or so just doing homework and trying to work out creative problems. I never really let myself slowly come down from that to go to bed, instead I normally just stop what I’m doing and trudge to bed to pass out. I took Tuesday night to let myself get away from that mental place. I let myself play a round of Left 4 Dead, a video game, and let my mind get away from those creative problems. It worked because I had to concentrate on what was going on, on the screen, plus there was a little human reaction coming from my fellow players. It definitely helps to socialize after you’ve been stuck inside your head all day. After I finished that, I felt much more relaxed, but not quite tired yet, so I let myself have another luxury I haven’t done in what seems like forever, which is I read a few chapters of the book I started reading during the summer. By the time I was ready to go to bed, I was very relaxed, and I actually found I fell asleep a lot easier, because I wasn’t trying to consciously still work out all those creative problems.

I’m not quite sure by what you wanted for “visual documentation” of this, especially since it was supposed to be mildly spontaneous, but may I can add to this post later?