Corwin Hiebert Managing Creative People + Creative Projects

Picture of a lamp post in Central Park, NYC. I'm an awesome photographer.

I think we think to much. As creative entrepreneurs we overload our minds with information and we spew out to much information. The images, visuals, concepts, words, lists, charts – the production of ideas requires a ton of mental effort and I wonder if we’re too quick to embrace this rapid exchange of cerebral racket. But it’s all good – right? It’s our job after all. But is it not a little overwhelming sometimes?

Generating intelligent and useful ideas can be a ton of work! The tasks of making those inspirations a reality is a grind. But lately I’ve been wondering what would happen if we could train ourselves to think more simply? What if we could quiet our minds, or at least block out the extraneous mental noise, and process our creative tasks more succinctly.

Side note: I’m amazed how often true inspiration comes when I’m “thinking” in the margins – in other words – great ideas or plans rise to the surface for “Project A” when I’m supposed to be working on “Project D” or during the more domestic parts of life (running for the subway or folding laundry).

A few days ago I did an email interview with Elianna Lev (Granville Online Vancouver) and she asked a simple question which totally zapped my brain – it was so mind-blowingly simple that I froze. My brain stopped working. The question was: Can you round up six words to explain what CREATIVEMIX will be? What?! I have two pages of talking notes for CREATIVEMIX! I’m very well prepared to answer any question thrown at me about the vision, the audience, the speakers, the exhibition, our place in the arts community, our role in the business community; I’m ready to answer every question with a disgusting amount of information and flare. Six words?! Holy crap! That’s a tough one.

Her question came in last Friday so I politely asked if I could take the weekend to think about it – she agreed, which turned out to be dangerous. I proceeded to obsess about those 6 words for two days. I mulled. I chewed. I did everything I could to wordsmith all the keywords/phrases. I looked into the whole 6 word story thing. Nothing. Blank. Crap.

Monday morning came and it was time to deliver, I needed to get this to her. So, I put my fingers to my keyboard, I engaged the segment of my brain that is totally willing to produce crap and I just started to type. In about 30 seconds I came up with seven 6 Word Stories to explain what CREATIVEMIX is all about – here they are:

* Like Expo ‘86 for your brain.
* The Stanley Cup of Idea Making.
* Ideas on display. Collaboration in action.
* Idea makers. Collaborators. Don’t Make Crap.
* Ideate. Collaborate. Lone Ranger no more.
* Create in community. Going solo sucks.
* Be creative. Be successful. Live the Dream.

I typed without thinking, seriously, there was basically no connection between my mind and my fingers. I simply let my fingers do the barfing/typing. The truth is that my first 6 words could have easily been: donkey crap. crayons. my toaster smells. I dropped them in an email and hit send. Done. Whatever. I had resigned to the possibility that she’d probably say “thanks for your time but I’m going to write about a different, less stupid event”.

It turns out Elianna loved all of them and decided to publish the whole lot. How funny is that?!

This process has reinvigorated me. I really do want to simplify things in my work life, and the work life of my clients. I suppose there’s a metaphor here, like what we see from well-rehearsed athletes, where we can ‘practice’ to the point that the action becomes automatic. However, I don’t really feel I’m there – this instance very much felt like an exercise in stupidity. But it got me thinking more about working with my mind in such a way as to not get lost in the noise and information. Keep it simple stupid – that kind of thing.

I  read a very interesting book a couple months ago that you may want to check out. Dan Roam’s napkin drawing concept is a great book that I highly recommend. I don’t have a review in me right now but I highly recommend it. The basic deal is: solve complex problems with simple pictures.

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