Flabby Creative Muscles? We’re Here to Pump You Up!

Do you suffer from Creative Atrophy?

I’m like 93.7% sure Creative Atrophy is a real medical term*; caused by not using your creative muscles enough. People with boring jobs, corporate conditions that limit their imagination, or decreased innovation levels can lose muscle tone and develop creative atrophy.

Creativity is a muscle and will atrophy or fade when you don’t use it. And while we may be designers, not every part of our job is exactly “creative.” Our job becomes routine, habit. Once we start doing something one way, we get comfortable –like taking the same route to work each day, even if there is traffic. Change is hard, as they say. Few of us take the time to innovate our routine and fewer still innovate for the fun of it.

So you need to break habit, do different things, think from multiple perspectives to get that creative muscle pumping again. It’s kinda funny, I’m asking you to break out of your routine to be more creative, by creating a routine for yourself to focus on creativity.

Which Creative Routine is Best for You?

Need Peer Pressure?

It’s proven that working out with a friend is beneficial. Fewer skipped workouts, you hold each other accountable and you can push each other further.

Create your own creative routine (or meeting). These meetings have many names. We use the term Innovation Lab, but it honestly doesn’t matter what you call it – only that you do it! Establish a weekly/bi-weekly team meeting with coworkers or friends in the field. The benefit to doing these meetings in-house is that it fosters team building, team collaboration and, if you all take turns driving the meeting, even leadership skills.

Ideas to get your team started:


Find Your People
Workshops and Meetups are another great way to get your creativity on. Typically they are scheduled on a recurring basis, so you can get into a routine of attending some. I recommend Meetups that encourage more hands-on exercises. In Seattle we have a really great Meetup, “Design Thinking & Innovation Collective,” that gets everyone involved. Be aware of events that are just passive speakers, while they may prove interesting and perhaps inspirational, remember you’re not going to be flexing your creative muscles.

 

DIY (Do It Yourself)
Don’t want to rely on others to “spot” you –just put daily to weekly mini-exercises on your calendar.  Setup 5-15 minutes a day to learn and practice on your own schedule with resources like:

These are quick exercises that can be done on a daily basis, are easy to fit into any schedule and rely on no other dependencies so that you can really start building up your creative muscles.

 

How Flabby Are Your Muscles?
Do you or your team have a creative routine? Any ideas you’d like to share on how you workout your creative muscle?

*I’m a Designer Jim, not a doctor!

ORIGINAL POST: May 28, 2016 Moz UX Blog

Jada WilliamsComment