Overcoming creative block

// Creative Block Diagnosis

I see ‘Creative Block’ as a few things - the first (and the most terminal of all blocks - Stage One Creative Block) is having no ideas at all. You’re creatively brain dead and you cannot function - this is virtually impossible to achieve for me as my brain is always whirring but I know that others get completely stuck and therefore just give up. Fear not - a remedy for Stage One will reveal itself below.

The second and slightly less severe block is having a resemblance of an idea but then not having the brain power or motivation to move it to a fully fledged project - this is the most common form of Creative Block for me.

I have the actual idea - I’ve seen a video I could create or an image post I want to produce but I just don’t have the motivation or creative power to actually get started.

Ben McKinney emailed me this week as he’s been trying (in vain) to get his newsletter started but he continually fails to actually start. As you can see, I’ve officially diagnosed Ben with Stage Two Creative Block.

The final and least severe of Creative Block is the most commonly known Stage Three Creative Block - otherwise known as Procrastination.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking - isn’t Stage Two and Stage Three the same diagnosis and you’d be wrong.

You see, I am a fairly well trained Creative Block expert (having suffered with this terrible disease before) and whilst Creative Block Stage two and three may look similar - Stage Three is actually a conscious choice and Stage Two isn’t.

// Stage Three Creative Block - Procrastination

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "procrastination" as "the action of delaying or postponing something." This definition captures the essence of procrastination as the act of putting off tasks or responsibilities.

But the important thing to note is that you can decide to put tasks off and you can decide to not start something - this is a choice and therefore it’s easy to. My kids are often diagnosed with procrastination in our house as they will often quote the immortal line “I’ll do it tomorrow” and guess what, tomorrow comes and go’s and that bin they were going to empty in their room is still full.

You see, Stage Three Creative Block is an easy fix - it’s laziness in the shortest sense and if you get up and complete the task, you’ve cured yourself.

// The big one - Stage Two.

I’ve spoken about my struggles with Creative Block before - in fact, when I started this newsletter many months ago (we’re closing in on one year of successful weekly writing) I struggled to find the next steps to creating something.

The first few editions of the newsletter were stunted and the writing style was a hangover from creating carousels on Instagram - the writing lent towards short, snappy and often disjointed listicle styles but once I’d pushed through, I was able to write in a more cohesive and thoughtful way.

The problem with Stage Two Creative Block is that you just can’t see how to get started. Hopefully you can see the difference but lets take it back to my kids again - with Stage Three, they know where the bin is, they’ve been told to empty the bin but they just didn’t want to do it.

With Stage Two Creative Block - I’m effectively telling them “Empty Something” and they have to work the rest out for themselves - is it a cup which needs emptying? Is it their bowels? Is it their room of all its contents? The brain power needed to decipher my instructions just isn’t there and so, they give up (not that it takes my kids a lot to give up but thats another story)

It’s what Ben McKinney has, it’s what I struggled with when I first started my newsletter and it’s what I struggle with now when trying to figure out how to start my next video project.

It’s not that I don’t want to do the project, I just don’t know what to do next for the best.

// Small Chunks.

Quite often - Stage Two Creative Block is a result of a secondary issue - it’s a complication and you can find yourself exacerbating (love that word) the issue because you’re worrying about what is coming next.

The issue with actually starting something, like this newsletter, is the realisation that you actually have to continue it - you have to produce another and another and the worst thing is - you don’t know if you can do that.

What does episode 74 look like?

But you can’t worry about that - you’re overthinking the situation because all you actually need to produce right now is episode one.

You’re overwhelming yourself with the thoughts of creating 74 issues - the workload involved in creating 74 issues at once would be astronomical. This is the 41st blog post that I have written and had I worried about what episode 41 was going to look like when I started, I would never have got going.

Breaking down your tasks - your creative project into smaller, more manageable chunks means you’re more likely to succeed. It certainly worked for me. I was concerning myself with logos, design, getting an email funnel sorted, content and finally, the platform but the one thing that worked for me was to break down the big task - focus on the biggest one first (the actual email) and then focus on the other stuff afterwards.

Tip One - Set Small Goals: Break projects into manageable tasks to reduce overwhelm.

// Environments Matter.

In one of my early newsletters - I detailed out how I go about writing these newsletters and in the early days, it did actually span a couple of days.

I would create over the weekend and have everything ready to publish on a Monday evening (as I used to play football) but in the last few months, my process has changed significantly and I now write these emails every Tuesday morning.

The time (right now, as I write this) is 0605 and I’m sat on my living room sofa with ambient music on and typing furiously.

But this works for me - I have a quiet time and I have a deadline.

Your creative environment does matter - where and when you create something should work for you because without that supporting framework, you’re going to be distracted, not creative and more importantly - you’re more likely to fail to create.

Don’t worry about where and when you should write in the early stages because you just need to focus on getting that first bit of content written and the rest will follow but slowly, over time you should begin to see how your pattern will optimise itself and you will become a creature of habit.

For me, I love my early Tuesday morning starts and this morning, I couldn’t wait to get up and start writing.

Tip Two - Change Your Environment: A new setting can stimulate fresh ideas.

// Talk it out (the cure for Stage one and two)

I love being creative and when I sit with others, I just see things in a different way. This is why I veer away from Procrastination as a diagnosis in most cases as the enthusiasm and excitement to create completely cures me of any procrastination.

Being able to talk out your creative ideas is one way to cure both Stage Two Creative Block (the one like procrastination but not really) and Stage One Creative Block - the dreaded brain dead creative block.

If you’re void of ideas, you don’t know what to create and you’re completely stuck then I guarantee that sitting and talking to other people will cure you.

You just need to allow yourself to have that 5 year old making lego moment. When you plonk a small child in front of a large box of lego - they will often utter the immortal words ‘yeah, but what should I build?’ - my middle boy would always say this when we’d want a few minutes and we’d use Lego as the way to nab those precious minutes.

As parents, you come up with the standard - “build a house or a car” response but then they bring you a tank which is designed to fly, combat an evil superpower and also is able to water the plants.

It’s allowing yourself to have a suggestion and then building on that suggestion in a creative way - never take what others tell you as the way you should do it because then it’s not your idea but you should always take someone else’s creative guidance as a path towards where you need to head and then start.

It’s what we did as kids with that lego box and it’s what we should do today with our creative ideas.

(For reference, my now 12 year old boy this weekend built a fully functioning Mecha-Kong working hand from Lego).

Tip Three - Talk It Out: Discuss your block with others; new perspectives can spark solutions.

// Finally - Imperfection beats all.

When I look back at my first blog - I think it was really poor but at the time, I fretted and worried about it so much and I tried to make it perfect.

That perfection just doesn’t exist because no matter how much effort I had put into writing, it just doesn’t look the same as the written content that I put out today and this won’t look like the written content that I put out in a year. Every time I write, I find a small percentage of improvement and I try to get better and better.

I write a lot from my own perspective and I write in the way I would take (which is why there are loads of brackets and side notes - I’m forever adding these into conversations) but I wouldn’t have known how to do this without that first blog I wrote.

Just starting is the route to perfection.

I know it’s the easiest advice to give and the hardest one to follow as I bought all the writing course, I bought Ann Handley’s book, I read hundreds of articles on how to write newsletters but damn, no amount of reading or prepping was able to prepare me to actually WRITE something.

The oldest example I can give is the example of reading everything you can about how to play football like Cristiano Ronaldo - how he strikes the ball, his workouts and how he plays but unless you get your kit on and you actually try to kick that ball, you’ll never know the work and effort that goes into it.

Tip Four - Embrace Imperfection: Allow yourself to create without the pressure of perfection.