Implement these 4 things to start your creative journey today

Implement these 4 things to start your creative journey today

There’s a feeling deep inside.

A feeling that you were meant for more.

Your life is on autopilot right now. You may be studying or working full time and that feeling of wanting to create something is tugging at your heartstrings.

The unlived life within is trying to escape.

You know you have time to dedicate to such things, but there are too many distractions getting in the way.

You want to get started on a project but you’re lacking the confidence. You think that your ideas aren’t good enough and there are too many steps involved to get started.

Procrastination wins again.

This is not a life you want to live.

Wake up, go to school/work, come home, watch TV, and sleep. We are living in a programmed world, we all have our routines and our schedules, and we just go about life on autopilot.

Occasionally you’ll plan something fun on a weekend, but you need to get through 5 days of monotony before enjoying yourself.

The problem with these routines is your mind has been programmed not to be creative. Whenever an idea or a creative urge pops up, it’s met with a lot of resistance. It goes against the flow of the world we live in.

It’s like trying to swim against the current. The rest of the world is moving with the flow of the water, but the moment you want to try something creative there is a current pushing against you.

It’s hard to be creative in a world that doesn’t encourage creativity.

But there are ways to make it easy.

It takes practice and perseverance.

That’s why I’ve devised this simple 4-step system to get you swimming upstream and against the current.

This is what worked for me—in the middle of COVID, working 9–5, feeling unfulfilled and wanting to produce something out into the world.

I broke down my creation process into four steps. With consistency, I managed to build a social following of 35k across Instagram and TikTok.

It took less than a year.

I never thought I would be able to create something that people enjoyed.

“My ideas aren’t good enough”, I kept telling myself.

But, with persistence, I overcame this doubt and you can too.

You’ll also experience:

• Your dopamine levels spiking daily.

• A feeling of significance and purpose.

• You’ll feel like you are on this planet for a reason.

• Confidence in knowing your ideas are valued.

And if you’re consistent enough maybe you can turn your passion into a career.

Maybe you don’t want to create on social media, but instead create something at home, like art, or writing a novel.

That’s fine. The process and benefits remain the same.

Firstly, Gather your Ideas

Your first step in this process is to create a system to gather and store your ideas.

Capture every idea.

Even if they seem silly.

I use Apple Notes, but you can use any tool you like: Notion, ClickUp, Email, or Notepad.

The intention is that the process should be seamless. Whenever an idea or thought comes to mind, you need to be able to write it down quickly before you forget about it.

I like Apple Notes because it is simple. I can write a new note very quickly without having to click many buttons or mess around navigating to the destination of where they are stored.

Ideas strike at any moment so you should be ready to capture them at all times.

As I’m going about my day, reading, writing or watching TV, sometimes an idea pops into my head, it’s at that moment I write down what I’m thinking.

Write out the thought or question and just let it sit in your notes; if you have more to write about it, do it. If you only have a one-sentence idea written down, that’s fine. Leave it there.

We will review our ideas later, the whole point is to just capture it so you can think about it in more detail later.

Continue going about your day or doing what you were doing.

Don’t overthink this process.

Secondly, Create these 2 Systems

If you want to create, you need consistency, you need systems, you need routines.

We’re going to break this into 2 parts; reviewing your ideas and working on your ideas.

Try to find time to dedicate to these 2 areas every day. It’s ok to skip a day every now and then.

Review

Set aside 30mins — 1hour a day to go over the ideas you have written down.

Choose 1 and spend time thinking about it, elaborate on the ideas, add more context to it, and do some research to further build out the idea.

Make sure you dedicate the entire time to focusing on this idea, cut out distractions and set a timer if you want. I use pomofocus.io

This may be difficult at first, sometimes, you may sit there and not have much idea on what to add or write.

Setting a timer puts a little pressure on you, so again try it.

Alternatively, you can try a free-flowing internal monologue. Which is literally just typing out all the thoughts that come to mind over a topic.

Let the words flow out, even if they don’t make sense and even if you are writing about writing. Sometimes, you just need to turn on the tap to let the water flow before it gets warm.

Action

After a couple of days, you should have enough drafts for your creative content to begin getting to work.

Set aside another 30mins — 1hour a day to play with your ideas

Some examples;

• Suppose you’re writing a video script. Then, start recording and speaking to the camera.

• If you’re writing a blog post, start editing it and schedule it to go live.

• If you’re planning to draw something, take the idea you’ve written out and start sketching out your design.

• If you’re a musician and spent time writing out chords or musical ideas, pick up your instrument and start trying them out.

Use this time to focus and play. Play with the idea you’ve created. Don’t expect this to be a final published version.

Have fun with the idea, and more ideas will come to mind; don’t expect it to be perfect.

Eventually, this step will evolve into “publishing” but if you’re just getting started. Have fun and play.

Thirdly, be present

Spend 10–20 minutes a day, not doing anything.

If you’re interested in meditation, try that — I recommend mindfulness. But you don’t have to.

Simply spending 10 minutes a day just to sit in silence, not looking at your phone, your computer or even reading.

Maybe grab a cup of coffee or tea and sit there.

Sit with your thoughts and process them; think about your day and what you want to do. Or think about things you’ve worked on already.

This allows your mind to settle, new connections to be made, and more ideas will emerge.

Additionally, limit your distractions.

You need to cut out distractions in your life if you want to grow and build your creative journey.

Staying consistent with your routines is challenging, you need to train your mind to be present and stop distractions derailing your momentum.

The biggest momentum killer — Social media.

This thing will derail your progress if you’re on it daily. Even the act of checking for a few minutes not only distracts you in the moment, but you’re filling your head with new input.

You haven’t got much space in your mind for everything. Your conscious mind will be full of impressions and distractions the more you consume garbage.

So, limit your consume to good sources, which leads us to the 4th step of the system.

Fourthly, Good consume

Consume is the act of pulling in information. From sources like books and media, from external input around you, like scanning a room and looking at all the things around you. Percieving your surroundings.

As I mentioned before, Social Media is a distraction and therefore, it’s not good consume.

If you want your creative enginge to keep running, feed it with good fuel.

 That good fuel is good consume. That good consume is books, podcasts, audiobooks, blinks, YouTube videos related to your hobby or creative passion.

Spend 30–60 minutes daily absorbing information to fuel your creative engine. Find artists or mentors who have written books or created media on your hobby.

You need to keep learning and growing in your passion. Learn from the experts.

The more consume input the more creative output.

More ideas will come to mind as you’re consuming. This step will feed back in your gathering step, completing the cycle.

The more consistent you are with this system, the faster and smoother it will run. In a matter of weeks, you’ll have created some great content.

Summary

• Gather your ideas in your systemised tool

• Routines — 1 hour

• Review your ideas — 30mins

• Start playing with them — 30mins

• Practice being present to clear your mind — 10mins

• Consume good content to fuel the engine — 10mins

This process is a cycle, if you’re doing it for the first time, start from the first step. You already have ideas in your mind, you just need to extract them.

Start tomorrow.

Write it down somewhere right now on a piece of paper that you’re going to start with this system tomorrow.

Open your calendar and schedule the chunks of time.