work – Cornerman

Inspiration, where to get it and making sure you don’t forget it.

Besides the consistency of working on your craft, inspiration is another very important factor. Whatever your craft is, art, music or professions with a creative side to it, inspiration can help a long way in staying active and focussed.
Inspiration is the fuel to keep the consistent process going. For me at least.

It’s just like any other form of training, there will be moments of difficulty, pain and discomfort. It’s all part of growing and sharpening your skills. Balance & rest is important to integrate, as your brain needs time to process and ingrain the result of your constant work. I plan deliberate rest moment, and make sure I plan short visits and trips to cities, exhibitions which I know will spark

This is how I keep my energy levels up and find new energy and ideas for the future.

My week & finding inspiration

This week I have worked mainly on learning Max MSP and I have been going outside in search of inspiration and ideas. Walking around a city and visiting musea does the trick. I try and look at things in detail and allow all sorts of random encounters. Step into buildings I don’t know, visit exhibitions which I want to see or stumble upon. And simply walking round a city and look at loads of things.

But how do I make sure I know what inspired me and why, the feeling I got when watching a piece of art or seeing something cool while walking. I used to rely on my memory and tried and record it once I got home, but I soon realized I could not recall my feelings and what exactly inspired me or what idea a piece of art evoked.

Documenting the inspiration & ideas

I started out taking quick pictures with my phone and a note in my phone for writing down quick short sentences and ideas. Which I then forgot to bundle and be more specific. I worked on documenting the inspiration & a simple template to make it easier to recall the feeling and ideas I had when being struck with inspiration. Without having to scroll trough loads of digital notes and pictures and then try and remember everything.

It’s pretty easy and it’s instinctively applicable for me. It suits my needs very well.

I take pictures, on my phone or camera and mark them if possible, and notate the place, date and title or description of the artwork (if there was an artwork) or other object so I can find the related pictures. I add a few keywords that give a good description of what the inspiration was. I stick to 4 keywords. Which helps when I search for things later on.

I write a short story about the moment, the inspiration and the surroundings. If I have an idea on the spot or later on I also make sure to write it in my notes.

As a template this would look like this:

- Date
- Time
- Place
- Title
- Title of the artwork (if there is any)
- Pictures
- keywords
- Short Story
- Idea it sparked (if any)

I prefer writing in a notebook, and I use notebooks where I can easily add page numbers and so on, I also give my notebooks a number and a name.

for searching into these notes I notate the keywords, the notebook number, and the page numbers into a simple excel sheet. So I can always find the ideas.

Why is it important to me? Well it’s a big part of playing around and putting myself into situations and places which can spark any form of inspiration and ideas. Which leads to a backlog of things I can develop further. There is no pressure when simply walking around and looking at things. It also develops my knowledge of art and architecture in a simple and effortless way. It’s a way to take a brake without breaking the creative consistency when I can’t work on my skills or need a break. It’s an alternative way to be creative without the sole focus on music.

It’s also important to make it a habit, getting outside and reconnect with art and life which for me, is the energy for my creative process. In my process there is always room for finding inspiration, this doesn’t have to mean I go outside, it can also mean just picking up an art book, reading a biography or flicking trough photo books. But I prefer going outside.

By making this a fixture in my creative process I keep engaged with the outside world and have an alternative whenever I can’t work on music specifically. This way I keep working on my creative process and keep the consistency going.

Focus your planning on building habits and routines

Last time I wrote about ways to get insight in how your time is really spent on a weekly basis and how you can get some breathing room into your week. However I did not go into the actual making of the planning itself. This week I will talk about building the planning and what should be the main focus when planning. And no it’s not (always) about efficiency.

Plan with consistency in mind.

We have 1 new goal in mind, something we want to do more and achieve a certain goal in. To get good at something we need consistency in the time we spent on it. So much so that it becomes a habit and is part of our weekly routine. Before it’s a habit , something we do almost automatically, it needs time to first become a consistent part of our planning. And we have to be able to execute a planning.

To make sure this is feasible our planning needs room to breath, not just in time but also purposefully with breaks, rest and recovery space. Only then will we be able to fully work trough our planning. So it’s not about doing as much as possible, but we need to plan for longevity. We need to be able to keep up with ourselves. Consistency is key. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

How do we achieve consistency in a planning ?

We know how much time we spent on things, we also made some changes. Dropped some activities from the list and limited time spent on certain activities. So how do we fit in our new goal ? We have some room, now we partly fill this in with activities towards our new goal. Make sure you choose 3 moments in the week. 3 is the minimum for making something a habit over the long run. Don’t overdo it in hours especially in the beginning. It’s hard work starting something new and will take a lot of energy. So start modest. Let’s say 2 sessions of 1 hour and 1 session of 1,5 hours. Take 5 to 10 minutes break between each 30 minutes. Plan those as well. So how does that look ?

Time	Activity	Duration
8:00 - 8:45	Meeting	0:45
8:45 - 8:55	Break	0:10
9:00 - 9:30	Focus work	0:30
9:30 - 9:35	Break	0:05
9:35 - 10:05	Focus work	0:30
10:05 - 10:15	Break	0:10
10:15 - 10:30	Emails	0:15

Why do we need breaks in our planning ?

We need breaks not just to take a rest and recover, but the most important thing, we need it to let our mind process and digest the things we learned. Rest gives our brain the ability to remember and preserve.

Everyone has a limited amount of energy for doing high cognitive tasks a day. Things like reading a difficult book (or manual), working on solutions to complicated problems and so on.

If you trained yourself very well in these tasks and your environment is at its best (more on this later) this is 4 hours a day. Really focussed work. That takes a lot of energy. To recuperate it means you can’t do this for 4 hours straight without breaks. you need breaks to maintain a high level of focus. And to get out of that chair. So to make those hours count, breaks are essential.

But I work 8 hours a day ?

Yes most people do, and not included time spent traveling. Luckily a lot of work related tasks are not high cognitive tasks. A lot of things are low cognitive tasks preceding the high cognitive tasks. Simply the hours it takes to get a job done.

Finding a solution to the problem is the high cognitive taks, getting the tools out and spending the hours is less cognitive demanding. Yet can still exhaust you without breaks. So when you work, maintain the breaks. Take less meetings. Make sure the meetings you take are to the point, and are not back to back. You need time to process what is said in that meeting and distill the work that comes out of it for you. It might be counter intuitive to say no to people more often. But it will free up your work calendar and it will improve the quality of your output. Thus making you more efficient. See, there is some efficiency to be gained as well.

So in order to save up some energy for your after work activities and your new goal, go and take the same approach for your work planning as well. Take the breaks, don’t overflow your calendar, make sure you focus on what’s important and block time for high cognitive tasks.

High cognitive tasks & their environment.

Things that take a lot of brain power, finding solutions to problems. Learning new skills. Doing the hard things basically, need a certain setting for your brain to be able to focus. the first one being, no distractions. So no phones, no interruptions and ideally no screens. Or no internet connected screens.

Make sure the desk is clean, with just the things you need, and a pen and some paper for taking notes. Yes paper notes, by writing your brain remembers things better. So take any preferred notebook, blank sheets of paper, and start writing. Draw things. Any way that helps you remember the things you want too learn or work out the solution to a problem. And be able to reproduce them.

Set a clock and take a break of 5 or 10 minutes every half hour. You need to practice this. We live in a world of distraction and its not easy staying focused. It takes time. First few attempts might exhaust you.

Weekly planning

Your weekly planning is an overview of important tasks and activities. More importantly plan your rest and preferable take one or two moments in your week doing nothing, making sure you have playtime or just hanging around. The most important thing is breathing room and consistency. Yielding results is far more about continuing working that it is about short periods of hard work on your passion project and then months of no work at all.

And last but not least, have fun !

Book review – Creative Quest

Another book review. Since the whole Corona crisis thing I have been focussing more on reading. Which has been paying out big time. My reading skills are getting better which after my brain damage wasn’t a guarantee that It would become better again.

I still get tired easily when reading but reading now goes faster and I remember somewhat more. It’s also something I can easily cut into small segments.

So yeah, been reading more. And reading some cool stuff as well. This review is on a book written by Questlove which deals with creativity and how you can set your mind in a way your creativity flows. And how to deal with distractions , and make it more of a framework.

Every chapter deals with a topic which creative people are faced with, building your art, managing tasks surrounding making art, getting your art out there and sell it. Networking , staying in touch with people. And so on.

I have music as a hobby and I know this won’t turn into a career anytime some. But everything in the book is applicable to the creative side of other professions whether it be as a software developer, product manager , journalist. Most professions have a creative side to them. And need a mindset and framework to fit that creative process. It’s making sure all the conditions are set for being at your best creative wise.

So I highly recommend this book for basically everyone that feels the need to be creative as a hobby or in parts of their job.