Creative Blocks: Is it just me (or have you dealt with this too?)

Here’s something I’ve discovered over time by researching some of the most creative people on the planet:

The things that sets apart the creative geniuses we admire so much from us are 3 simple tactics!

That’s it — 3 little tactics.

If you’re reading THIS message, we’re more than likely on a similar path.

We have incredibly strong desires to:

Create the next greatest / world’s largest {thing}.
Build a brand that impacts {people} in such a manner only we could do.
Make innovations in {industry} that were not conceivable by anyone but us.
Create a massive community & guide them in {thing} to reconstruct their lives for the best.

Yep — We have some big, lofty, bold, innovative dreams.

Which is going to require some big, lofty, bold, innovative ideas!

BUT it hasn’t been an easy road for me — I’m guessing the same is true for you.

It’s extremely tough dealing with:

the initial excitement and adrenaline of a new idea
the disappointment when the idea doesn’t pan out well
the anxiety of waiting (and hoping) for new inspiration to strike

This cycle is VICIOUS. (Especially the “anxiety of waiting” part)

These are textbook symptoms of someone likely suffering from creative block.

Don’t feel down. EVERY creative person deals with it.

We can’t shake that feeling that we’re just missing that one creative idea that will ignite all the other ideas we’re juggling.

❌BUT here’s the problem:

The best methods for sparking true creativity isn’t taught in ANY school (that I’m aware of)

It’s a skill you HAVE to find on your own.

Less than 5% of creatives find these methods — 95% never ever will.

So let’s consider ourselves EXTREMELY fortunate — we’re about to cover an aspect of creativity & business that I wish we would have had 20 years ago — we’d seriously be billionaires by now (no lie).

Let me let you in on a little secret:

99% of those super creative people are not as GENIUS as you may think.

They simply have a sure-fire system for deflecting all creative blocks, and we don’t — until now…

And with these tactics in our possession, we are about to hit creative blocks head on!

Here’s how we’re going to do it:

⚡Tactic #1: Brainstorm Bullying
⚡Tactic #2: Make Room for Creativity
⚡Tactic #3: Jump-Start a Flood of Creative Ideas

NOW let’s get going:

⚡Tactic #1:
Brainstorm Bullying

Remember the old TV Show MacGyver?

MacGyver was a secret agent who’d always brainstorm ideas to escape deadly situations (like diffusing a warhead with a paper clip)

That’s what brainstorming is for — survival, not creativity.

This act of brainstorming causes you to try to come with great (or just mediocre) ideas on the fly.

This process rarely turns out with anything truly worthwhile.

Brainstorming puts Creativity on the spot.

You’re asking creativity to visit oh lonely you while ignoring those other creatives out there who are ACTIVELY working to create.

The key solution is ACTION.

Creativity rushes to ACTION and avoids anyone who’s just WAITING.

And Creativity doesn’t rush towards hopes and wishes either.

We think we can sit in front of a blank screen/canvas and brainstorm ideas — and miraculously something great will appear.

(Brace yourself for another 80’s reference)

This act of brainstorming for creatives feels more like a scene from “Rambo spraying wildly with an M60 machine gun hoping he hits something”.

Brainstorming gives the illusion that you can “throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks” — that if you guess long enough (or shoot blindly), you’ll luck up on a genius idea.

I’ve found that the “creative geniuses” we look up to don’t participate in brainstorming.

We’ll explore their methods in the next Tactics.

But first — let’s cure this brainstorming issue.

⚡The solution is to BULLY BRAINSTORMING

If you ever dealt with a bully as a child you know the feeling too well — the bully makes you feel helpless, you end up losing and the bully wins.

Ironically that’s the goal here — for you to be the bully, win and leave brainstorming feeling helpless (which it truly is)

And once you’re no longer wasting time on brainstorming, you’ll have more time for the next two tactics.

⚡Tactic #2:
Make Room for Creativity

Steven Pressfield is the author of “The War of Art” — an incredible how-to book about the real enemy of any creative person which Steven calls Resistance.

Here’s Steven unpacking ideas of “The War of Art” to Oprah…

According to Steven, Resistance is ”fear, self-doubt, procrastination, perfectionism, all the forms of self-sabotage that stop us from doing our work and realizing our dreams.”

As Steven puts it — “the “war of art” is not about genius, it’s about work.

It’s not about being inspired (that’s what Tactic #3 is for).

The War of Art is about the work of consistently creating room for true inspiration to actually kick in.

If you haven’t read “War of Art” — you must! It’s mandatory reading for ANY CREATIVE person or business owner.

Now, let’s swipe Pressfield’s DAILY WORK RITUAL.

Steven uses this ritual daily to give creative ideas room to show up unexpectedly and “do their thing”.

💡The Ritual goes like this:

Wake up (early)
Shower
Eat breakfast
Read the paper
Brush Teeth
Make Phone calls
Arrives at office
Makes sure lucky trinkets are all around
Prays for inspiration
Begin to work (around 10:30pm)
Wrap up (Four hours or so later)
Backup work
Power Down (3pm or 3:30pm)

When it comes to the end of his workday, Steven put’s it like this:

“How many pages have I produced?

I don’t care.

Are they any good?

I don’t even think about it.

All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got.

All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.”

💡NOTICE: The goal here isn’t to copy his daily creative routine.

The goal is to simply HAVE a daily creative routine —

⚡Block out time to create EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Whether you consider yourself a “morning person” or a “night owl”, just know it’s more important to sit down and to do the work than to do GREAT work.

This is how you make room for real innovative, creative ideas to come — by consistently doing the work regardless of the outcome.

⚡Tactic #3:
Jump-Start a Flood of Creative Ideas

Now that we’ve made room in our busy lives for creativity, let’s unpack a way to never have to “wait” on creativity again — earlier I mentioned how horrible starting with a blank canvas can be.

Well here’s an easy-to-grasp example of how destructive starting with a “blank canvas” can be — straight from Steven Pressfield:

“You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist.

At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study.

He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and later to the School of Architecture.

Ever see one of his paintings?

Neither have I.

Resistance beat him.

Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.” — Steven Pressfield

If you’re facing a blank screen, canvas, page, etc, and are facing creator’s block , you can actually jump-start inspiration QUICKLY.

How?

Build a swipe file.

BUT what’s a swipe file?

“A swipe file is a collection of marketing and copywriting examples to use for inspiration.”
Corey Haines

It’s a single place where you capture and store anything that makes you say, “WOW, that’s pretty cool!”

Look at it as sampling others’ inspirational works.

For example — the quote above that defined what a swipe file is, came from MY swipe file.

The title/subject line of this lesson came from my swipe file.

As a matter of fact, the 3 Tactics I’m sharing with you in this 💡Sunday Swipe are from notes and ideas I swiped in the past.

And when the time came to write this lesson, I didn’t start from a blank screen.

I gathered the 3 best tactics I’d swiped in the past and started writing from there.

Here’s the swipe files I used for this lesson:

The first swipe file was used in the intro of this lesson.

The last 3 are the actual tactics in this lesson.

Here’s the swipe of THIS tactic:

👆🏾 The screenshot above is literally what I was going to explain in this last Tactic.

The only thing I’d add is my recommendations for tech to build your own swipe file:

For content creators I recommend Eagle App and/or Obsidian .

I use both on a daily basis (with my daily creative routine😉) — they’re indispensable.

If you want to learn how to build a swipe file that turns into your idea factory, click here.

Wrapping up

This was a long 💡Sunday Swipe, but one I believe is essential for ALL of us to see our ideas flourish.

If this helped you, don’t be afraid to reply and let me know.

If it didn’t help, (keep it to yourself) 🤣 — just kidding, let me know what you want to know more about.

See you next Sunday.

Peace and Love,
Jesse “The Idea Factory” Young El

PS:
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PPS:
Don’t forget — “The War of Art” is mandatory reading! Get your copy here.

PPPS:
If you still hadn’t read my award winning Hackernoon article — take a few minutes and get some nuggets on how to rake in more cash & improve your quality of living with merchandise!