HOW TO encourage your creativity

Is your brain logical or creative? If you are reading this, I dare say you lean more toward the logical side, or like me, sit evenly on the fence of both. I admire those that are super artistic, that see shapes and colours and feelings in the beauty around them, but that just isn’t me. I feel as if I am linear, straight lines and edges, squares, even sized shapes that make sense, that’s me.

I recently took a test at www.higherperspectives.com to determine whether I was more creative or more logical, since I feel that since I have been blogging I have been more creative. I was suitably surprised with the result which suggests I am an equal portion of both. Which made me think, can your life circumstances/your world view change whether you are more creative or more logical?

In work, I am entirely logical. I do not have time or space to get emotional and fluffy. I need to provide advice based on seasoned analysis and research that allows my stakeholders to make informed decisions. In all other things non-work though, I am definitely the ‘dreamer’ with my head in the clouds, the ‘introvert’ quietly reading alone (and enjoying it!) and the photographer taking a million snaps of one thing so that I can capture its true beauty.

When it comes to nurturing creativity though, I’ve found that there are many sources of inspiration both in real life and digital that allow us to experience creativity comfortably. For me, I am enjoying challenging myself with my photography, trying new skills and techniques, and as is often encouraged in photography courses, climbing up high or laying down low to capture different perspectives of your subject.

Sometimes however, we can get stuck, and getting stuck whilst annoying, is also okay. Here are some tips to encourage your creativity, whether you’re just starting out and exploring your creative side, or looking for something different:

• Look at the type of art and creative outlets you enjoy. If you like photography, look at photographic images and find themes you enjoy that correlate to your world view. Jot down ideas of images you’d like to see or could potentially create.
• Use Pinterest. It is a phenomenal tool in visually representing things to us as consumers (because we are all ultimately consumers of something). Making mood and theme boards is important in finding what you gravitate towards, in brain storming ideas and helping you see what it is you vision.
• Go for a walk. Go to the beach, the rainforest, the bush – anywhere. Just be outside and look at the signs and imagery around you. Even graffiti can be a compelling art piece and has been inspired by someone’s creativity and message to the world around them.
• Do something different! Break creative ‘rules’ (i.e, like the rule of thirds in photography). Think outside the square, and try something you normally wouldn’t.
• Create something you wish was already around. For example, if you’re looking for the perfect template for something, make it yourself with your own parameters and for your own uses. A lot of entrepreneurship and invention happens this way!
• Do the opposite of what you normally do. If you’re a writer, take part in a photography challenge depicting a word or phrase, and vice versa. You’d be surprised how many ways (the same as the use of synonyms in writing) there is in visually representing something.
• Take time out – clear your mind. Read a book or meditate. Sometimes you just need to let your mind wander.

What steps do you take to encourage your creativity and remove creative block? Have you tried any of the above and what were the results?

HOW TO: Stay organised

Organisation for me is such an important thing. I don’t have children, but I do live on a hobby farm with my husband and our animals and we work normal jobs and run the household equally. Not only do we have to be productive with our time, but organised with our resources.

There are a million and one pins out there in the world of Pinterest for downloadables and printable labels for organising all aspects of your life with tidy, colour coordinated stickers and labels. Even yesterday as I was browsing in Kmart waiting for my photos to print, I found a huge array of interesting new stationary with ‘kitchen stickers’ and the like for sale.

Whilst I love stationary, love it, I don’t have use of it. I’m one of those who loves technology far more – I’d rather have my kitchen pantry sorted in an excel sheet than visually glorious with matching stickers. (but both significantly make those uber mild notions of OCD in me very happy!)

And being organised can refer to so many things. Are you organising your life, your workload, your pantry cupboard? Are you a visual person? Do you need lists on the fridge or whiteboard, or do you prefer them privately on your phone?

Being organised I believe is linked intrinsically to being productive. Procrastination is the evil of both results. I’m doing it now as I write this. I am listening to stories from the Tony Robbins unleash the power within event because I know I will want to engage and pay attention instead of writing this post, even though I am interested in writing this post. So, despite how much effort you think you’re putting in, you can always veer slightly off course.

So, here are a few ways to keep organised and productive that are not conducive or specific to one thing. I believe we can use these examples as starting points to elevate and further develop our productiveness in other areas of our life. The thing is, these items are not specific to achieving certain goals. That’s the advantage of learning about organisation and being productive – you can apply common principles amongst many different aspects of your life and still achieve results.

10 things I learnt about Pinterest (and why I still use it!)

Let’s face it, we’ve all been there. We’ve all been subject to the Pinterest frenzy, when you first stumble across it or your friend introduces you to it, it suddenly becomes the most brilliant idea you’ve ever thought of.

We’ve also all seen those posts (namely through Reddit) where people post expectation versus reality type comparison images of something they’ve seen on Pinterest and tried to replicate and that has miserably failed.

Despite that, I still love Pinterest and love using it to manage theme boards and plot my own creativity. It’s not saying that I need to 1 for 1 replicate something seen on Pinterest, but more often than not I am able to come up with my own ideas about how I want something (i.e a reno, cake decoration, sewing project, etc).

Here are 10 things I learnt about Pinterest (but still keep using it!)

1. Some people are just way more creative than me. Some people aren’t, and that is totally fine.
2. Pinterest does an excellent job at creative mood boarding. I like being able to save things for review later.
3. I dislike the number of adverts when you try to open another blog or page through the inbuilt web browser. Because of this, I don’t often click through to blogs.
4. The world of photography is a beautiful thing.
5. Infographics are totally an excellent way to convey information on how to.
6. Pinterest is a great source of inspiration and motivation.
7. Pin It buttons are fabulous for blogs, especially when the post is picture heavy (like a recipe or example of how to do something) because you can choose which image you’d like saved to your board.
8. Reviewing early pins or boards I haven’t pinned to in a while is a lot of fun! It helps remind me what mind space I was in at the time and how I’ve grown since.
9. Pretty imagery and typography are always better received than poor quality variants.
10. It’s a very easy way to consume a few spare hours if you have them.

You can follow my Pinterest boards from the Home page link. Now, I probably should go back to whatever housewifey thing I was doing before…