Todo-lists vs. the creative habit

It happened to me on several occasions that I mixed up todo-list style working mode and creativity working mode, although every single time I was convinced that I did things the right way. In order to boost my creative output I have put several creative items on my daily todo-list and hoped that somehow getting things done and creativity would magically match. Not so! What happened, in fact, was that while checking off my todo-items I would postpone the creative items on the list. They would be postponed to the next day and then to next and so on. Since I have scheduled different creative endeavors on different days, you might already guess what happened. I got my regular tasks done but all the creative items kept piling up. Looking at this pile did not really inspire me to do anything creative at all. In fact, it scared me off. To conclude, during these experiments I haven’t achieved anything creative at all.

In the meantime, however, I have come up with a different strategy to get my regular things done and increase my creative output as well.

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Seeds for the blank page – how to always have ideas for creative work

It has happened to me quite frequently that I have allotted a certain time of my day to be creative and then, once I sat down, I was just out of ideas. I sat in front of my blank, empty page and simply did not know what I should write about. And the more I forced myself the more some kind of inner block hindered me from having any ideas at all. This is, of course, only too well known for many artists.

The opposite also happens occasionally:  you have an idea in your mind, and you simply must execute it, there is no other choice – you are literally burning with it. Its time has come. But this is not what I’m writing about in this post. Continue reading

Using your extendend memory

I have recently re-read a private memorandum of events that happened some time ago in my personal life. In this memo I wrote that “those two events will always stay intertwined in my memory”. Well… I didn’t take into account how quickly my memory of those events faded. If I hadn’t written them down for one, I wouldn’t even know about them any more. Both events have completely vanished from my active memory. It is not that I didn’t remember them when I read about them: the re-reading served as a refresher for my mind, the events are present again. But: I would not have been able to recall even one of them, left alone both and remember that they were intertwined without this refresher. Was it long ago? Maybe, it depends on your definition: about one and half years ago. And at that time I felt and believed that those events were pretty big in my life.

That showed me one thing very clearly: our memory is extremely faulty.

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How to profit most from your learning efforts

Non scholam sed vitam discimus.
Not for school, but for life we learn (translated from Latin).

In school you are taught that you don’t learn for school or for the teacher or for the parents, but you learn for yourself and for life. But you don’t really understand that then, I surmise – at least I didn’t, although I always pleased whoever asked me by giving the right answer: “for myself, of course”.

But in the end, it is absolutely irrelevant for whom or for what reward you learn something. This may sound like sacrilege for the thoughtful and enthusiastic educator who wants his disciples to understand the value of self-guided learning, but bear with me.

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