Ask Ali: So many ideas, so little time
After the huge response to the blog that I wrote a couple of weeks ago on Painter’s Block, a couple of questions popped up that run alongside some of my ideas of how you might think about carving through your own head to get to the creative part of it.
One of my lovely All A-Board Artist members posed a really interesting problem that she is having, it’s the antithesis to painter’s block but similar to it in so many ways, what about when you are about to sit down and be creative but you have too many ideas and so it stops you from doing anything at all. You walk away from your creative space, still awash with things you might want to do, but disheartened because you don’t know where to begin.
Now this I can definitely relate to and so you can see that I have called this post ‘So many ideas, so little time’ as I often sit down at my desk, full of inspiration, only to walk away because my precious time has been taken up by a head full of chaos. Here are a few suggestions of the things that I do to get me over this problem, they don’t always work but often they help enormously.
Buy yourself a lovely notebook or diary. Be frivolous with your purchase and let it be pretty or snazzy, something that you would love to give to a friend but this time the gift is for you.
Every time you have an idea or you see/hear something inspirational, write it down in this book. It could be a whole project, a few words, a dream…no matter what, get into the habit of noting it even if you are desperate to do it straight away. This is now going to be your ‘go to’ for all your thoughts and before you say it, this is the part that doesn’t have to be organised or make sense to anyone other than yourself, it’s there for you to draw from, particularly if you suffer from a block as we chatted about in the previous blog post.
Be organised. Some very wise beyond her years person once said to me, be as organised with your free time as you are with your work time (thank you Jazz) and so my advice is that when you get a moment, organise in the best way you find works, some of your ideas from your notebook into your free time.
The way I do it is to diarise it. I go through my diary and when I have a block of time that I know I will be sitting down to be creative, I have my ideas or a note of where I can find my ideas, written in my diary so that I am focussed.
BUT!!
4. Be flexible. When you sit down, it doesn’t have to be on that allotted time, on that allotted day as that is far too restricting, but you will have much more of an idea of what you have been thinking about recently and so skip through your diarised ideas and choose the one that is most appropriate for your time in that moment. Swap them around, scrub them out, pick one from a future date, whatever you feel like.
What does this achieve?
Most of the clutter that goes around my head in it’s moth-like fashion, is ALL of the ideas I am thinking of and so this dissemination of writing them in a book to make them more concrete and then actually suggesting times to myself when I can get to them, filters them into what is important to me. If I just allow them to drift in my thoughts then they all vie for my attention, making my head hurt and leaving me feel panicky and bewildered.
I’m not saying that this will definitely work for you as a method but hopefully it might help you to get what is in your head down to a substantial and practical idea, ready for your time when you can get to it.
Let me know what you do to get over this problem in the comments below as I always love to hear your ideas, Ali