I’m feeling energetically giddy again.  I feel a great sense that anything is possible, good, and has promise.  And I want to do everything at once.  It’s energy overload.

This can be tremendously helpful in my creativity, but if I don’t learn to harness it better, I’ll get sidetracked by everything rather than making a quantum leap in impact for one thing.

I’ve been reading Scott Belsky’s Making Ideas Happen.  I get so excited when an idea resonates.  The excitement starts with the thought, “I want to do that.”  And, because I’m fearful I’ll either forget the idea or lose the excitement driving it, I’m compelled to do that right now.  And I’ve stopped reading and started on that.  Then, I’m so excited about that, I want to do this.  And before I know it I’m simultaneously working on this.  Or this.  Or this.

Raw creative energy at its finest, manifesting itself as a thousand-ideas-at-once.  When it hits, it feels like being sidechecked and dragged around the ice by a sweaty, growling hockey player with no front teeth.  When the ride’s over, I’m breathless.  What a rush!  But am I any closer to the goal box?

Figuring out how to deal with this is a lot like asking how to wrangle a lightning bolt.  Here’s a trick that works for me:

Whenever I’m trying to focus on one task that’s generating a lot of other ideas I want to remember but don’t want to process in the moment, I take out a 3×5 index card, or if I’m feeling particularly frisky, a letter-sized page folded in half lengthwise.  Having a narrow width to write on (3″-4″)  seems key, so that I can keep it just to the right (or left, for you southpaws) of what I’m working on.

When I get an idea tangential to my chosen focus, I force myself to simply write it down without acting on it, and immediately return to what I was doing.

Simple, no?  Yeah, try it sometime, bub.

The real magic behind the trick is the immediate return to my chosen task.  By capturing the idea nugget, I mitigate the urge to deal with it for fear of losing it in the deluge of the idea storm.  I can have my daydream moment (or half-hour, as just happened while writing this–I never claimed to be perfect) and get right back (more or less) to the task at hand.

Photo by maggieandcharles.

Over on the Harvard Business Review blog “Managing Myself,” Rasika Welankiwar is discussing various methods she uses to keep her creative genius productively engaged.  When Welankiwar turned to the merits of the self-imposed panic states advocated by Shekhar Kapur in his (in)famous TEDIndia talk, I was reminded of the alarm trigger from Sally Hogshead’s Fascinate.  Either waiting until the last minute, or purposely making your earlier efforts unavailable as Kapur does, can work wonders for that final “get it done” rush of creativity.  I’ve do it myself all the time.

But there’s a dark side to all this thrashing.  As Seth Godin outlined in Linchpin, thrashing is the “apparently productive brainstorming and tweaking we do for a project as it develops.”  The catch: thrash too late and you’ll inevitability delay delivering your value.

In my seminars for artisans, I talk about the “great wall of self-doubt” that stands between the core business processes of Sales and Value Delivery.  The closer to your deadline you thrash, the more likely your alert muse will turn all panicky, giving rise to self-doubt that’s very resistant to acts of completion.  Fail to breach this wall and you’ll earn the reputation as the flaky artist who talks a good game but can’t deliver the goods when it’s time.

An alert muse is a wonderful thing.  Just don’t let her get panicky or you’ll never reach the summit.

Photo by woodleywonderworks

It’s all too easy to crush the creative spirit, both in ourselves and in others.  In a tongue-in-cheek video, Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon offers her top 14 suggestions for doing just that.  My favorites:

#2 Know Your Limitations. Examples: “I’m not an artist. I’m not creative.”

#7 Stop the madness before it can get started.  Crush early-stage ideas with your business savvy.

The reader-submitted comments are just as revealing.

Spend a day listening closely to the messages you’re sending and receiving.  When you catch a creativity crushing thought or statement, stop and take a moment to re-frame.

The Anti-Creativity Checklist

Photo by Andii

Just in case you need some academic justification to start treating your art like the business it really is, a Nova Southeastern University business professor is delving into what made the Grateful Dead one of the most profitable bands in history.

Among the practices the band innovated were:

• incorporating their business early on
• a telephone hotline for fans
• an in-house ticket distribution house
• a profitable merchandise division
• aggressive pursuit of copyright infringers

These may sound like common practices today, but for many businesses of the 1960s and 70s–let alone for bands–the Dead were really ahead of their time.

The story, which appears in the March issue of The Atlantic is definitely worth a full read.

Management Secrets of the Greatful Dead via Lifehacker

At lunch yesterday, I tried Zapp’s Potato Chip’s new “limited edition” flavor, Voodoo.  Citrus-y, pungent, but not really spicy-hot, it was unlike any other chip I’d tasted.  The really interesting  part was the story on the back of the bag:

Voodoo flavor is the result of an accident.  An employee was moving a pallet of spices off the top shelf and dropped it.  While cleaning up, someone stuck their finger into the mixture of about 5 flavors and pronounced it great.

Kudos to the creative person who had enough curiosity to sample a pile of spilled spices!  If they hadn’t, such a unique flavor might well have gone undiscovered.  I just hope they didn’t break the Five-Second Rule.

How many of us work in an environment that encourages curiosity rather than punishes accidents?  For that matter, how many of us take time to experiment when we have an artistic accident of some sort, instead of just chastising ourselves for wasted time, effort, or supplies?

Photo by lepiaf.geo

Running your arts business isn’t easy. Besides creating your art, you also have to be the chief cook and bottle washer, taking care of the many details that keep the business end of things running smoothly. Daniel Isenberg, a former entrepreneur and management practice professor, examines the personal qualities and mind set that tend to be common amongst the successfully self-employed. One thought that caught my eye:

On the average, people who set up their own businesses don’t make more money, although a few do succeed in grabbing the brass ring. But the “psychic benefits” — the challenge, autonomy, recognition, excitement, and creativity — make it all worthwhile.

Learn more about the challenges of business ownership and take his 2–minute Isenberg Entrepreneur Test.

Not saying “no”

Growing up, saying the word “no” usually got us into trouble.  And even though as adolescents and adults saying the word “no” usually kept us out of trouble, we still carry around a deep-seated bias to tell people “yes” when we really mean the opposite.   Artists, especially performers, have a strong need to seek approval from their audiences, and saying “no” isn’t usually a crowd pleaser.  But there are times when saying “no” is the better choice… for your business, for your artistic career, for you own sanity.

Why should you want to say “no” to something?

• it isn’t in line with your long-term plans
• it keeps you from accomplishing more important results
• it doesn’t provide you with learning or growth
• it’s not worth the headache or heartache you’ll feel doing it
• it doesn’t pay you timely

These questions apply equally to potential jobs as well as your daily activities.  When a client calls with a request, don’t just say “yes” automatically.  First, consider if what you’re being asked to do is in line with your business plan.  If it isn’t, turn down the work.

Some film crew friends recently complained that they haven’t been paid for a job.  They’ve spent more time collecting their pay then they did earning it.  Even if the production company eventually makes good, my friends won’t do another job for that company… because strong cash flow is a key component of my friends’ business plan.

Saying “no” to potential customers, to potential income, can be one of the most difficult actions a business owner can take.  But if it’s in line with the vision and written plan you have for yourself and your business, it can be the right action.  Marketing guru Seth Godin offers some reassuring advice:

You can dissipate your gift by making people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying ‘no’ often.  Saying ‘no’ to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.

Learn to strategically say ‘no’ to others and say ‘yes’ to your success.

Treating your business like a hobby and vice versa

Whether it’s choosing the right medium to draw on a particular paper, knowing which f-stop will best capture your vision, or where to breathe in a song for the biggest emotional impact, you’ve spent years or decades honing your core skills as an artisan. Once you introduce money into the equation, you’ll need an additional set of business skills in order to find a market for your art, deliver it to your audience, and collect payments on a consistent basis. So if you really just want to do, make, or perform your art and don’t need income from it, then save yourself the frustration and focus only on your art. Ars gratia artis… art for art’s sake. But if you’re going to feed yourself, clothe yourself, or keep a roof over your head with money from your art, then treat the endeavor for what it is: a business. You’re not selling out; you’re setting yourself up for success.