Focus and be creative
Ivan | Tue, 2009-03-31 21:09
A few years ago I worked at a place with frequent internet outages. This was the first time I noticed how refreshing it can be to be disconnected for a while. People, after a few minutes of frustration not being able to access their profile pages and their email, started to talk to each other. Others managed to really focus on their work for the first time in days. I got more work done in these internet breaks than throughout the rest of the week. This is when I realized how important it is to be able to focus on the task at hand without distractions.
The creative profession is not the typical mechanical job, where being well trained and organized is good enough to perform. Our job requires to come up with new things daily. This is no easy task and it requires our full concentration besides many other things. Any distraction will steer us away from the thinking process that eventually leads to the much desired creative solution. Readjusting from a distraction is not only wasting time, but drains our energy and requires extra determination from us.
Therefore planning for a good creative session is as important as the session itself. Get yourself a good notebook and writing instrument. Find a quiet, boring and relatively comfortable place that won't make you go to sleep. Switch off your phone and disconnect your laptop from email and messaging applications. Clean the desk from junk and post-it notes. Bring a bottle of water, so you don't have a reason to leave your newly found corner. If you can, ask not to be disturbed. And finally, get to work.
If you do creative work at your desk, you may find the application called Selfcontrol created by an artist Steve Lambert useful.
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If you have a Mac!
Vista owners are more productive with their computers!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
http://stevefakeballmer.wordpress.com/
I am not Steve Ballmer pretending not to be me!
Yes, the blue screen is very smoothing to the eye. ;)
So True!
When our internet goes down I get out my Flash Tutorials and make really great headway. I'll get that gadget for my mac but will I have the self discipline to use it?
"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Princess Leia
No self control to get a self control application running! :)
We get a a lot of thing off the internet daily. Info, ideas e.t.c. It's really easy to drift off to some la la land... need a self control app if I have none but the thing is the self control app is only for leopard. I'm no Tiger... too bad... need to meditate with my will power now.
I like the idea of being off-line more often. I would like to see how a internet-free day would look like in the creative department. Or how the communication between accounts and creatives could improve by actually having to get up from your chair to talk to someone. Lets shut off internet, lets stop emailing, surfing, blogging, gaming or chatting, hell, lets even shut off the phones. Lets talk... like humans...
I can't,be disconnected I start to feel lost. I can't even handle a slow connection anymore.
my biggest interruption comes from emails. five different projects with five or more people behind it vying for my attention. And then i find myself forgetting what i was doing in the first place.
I'd be happy to focus on one project for an entire day, but it think i am too used to the ADD way of life.
You can switch between focus for an hour on a project, then as a rest deal with email. I don't think focusing on one project for an hour is feasible or productive anyway.
i rarely call or IM people in my own office. i almost always go walk to their office/cube to talk to them.
a) you can't judge body language on the phone/IM or verbal queues on IM and b) people find it more difficult to ignore you standing in their doorway than a phone call/IM.
oh, and it's a teeny, tiny bit of exercise and stretching out instead of staying in your chair glued to your monitor all day.
thanks for introducing the software. i will download it now.
:)
Might be good for iPhones...