Last week was the first week for the first Code Academy design class. We have a great group of students who come from a wide range of backgrounds in business, development, and design.
One fun and lively part is the sketch challenge the students get every class. The idea is to make sketching a habit and to reduce the distance between mind and paper as much as possible. During our discussions of it, I remembered the concept of Morning Pages, which I’d first heard of after going through a process talked about in The Artist’s Way years ago.
The Artist’s Way is a series of lessons completed, ideally collaboratively, with a group of people who want to improve their creative thinking. There are a few things that I still remember from the course that really made an impact:
- Write in a journal every morning as soon as you wake up. If you don’t know what to write, just write “I don’t know what to write” over and over again until something comes to mind. Once you get into the habit you become very good at expressing yourself without overthinking things. Blogging can help here, but still requires filtering for your audience – it’s good to have something that’s just you, straight from the brain.
- Plan an artist’s date with yourself once a week. This is 2 hours of alone time where you do something that inspires your creativity. This could be visiting a museum, or drawing on your sidewalk with chalk. The important thing is that it’s time with your creative mind.
- Pay attention to the impact that others have on your creativity. Do you have a naysayer that shoots your ideas down a lot? Do you have someone in your life who’s constantly messing with your schedule (dependents not included) and affecting your ability to find your focus? We all have drama, but it’s impact on your creativity is often underestimated.
There were plenty of other sparks in the book, but those have stuck with me the most. Not that I’ve stuck to doing them (I’m not a morning person so the journal was the first to go). But an artist’s date now and then – now that’s a good idea. What would you do?
