Motivation

I don't know about you, but the freezing temperatures have
given me a case of the winter blues, making me less motivated than I typically
would be on a sunny, warm day. How can we continue to be motivated and fight
those winter blues?

For me... the answer is TED talks. Dan Pink's TED Talk about motivation got me thinking, hence getting me motivated. What
keeps you motivated and how do you motivate your colleagues during these short
winter days?

A banana nut muffin

It happens to the best of us. You sit down to start a project or feature article...or a blog entry for the Communicators Forum and you get stuck. The blank page or screen is the biggest dam for creative juices. How can you get them flowing? 

Just start writing. You could just get out what you want to say and agree to come back later and fix it or you could just start with a stream of consciousness. 

Get up and go somewhere else. Maybe if Charlie had moved his typewriter to a less dismal location, inspiration would have hit!

Exercise! A quick walk around the block or a trip to the gym might give you a bolt of creative energy from just getting your blood circulating to your brain. 

Look at something completely unrelated. Watch a short TED Talk, open book of images, or read an article about a new science discovery. The point is to break out of the subject matter you are dealing with and come back to it with a new perspective. 

What other tips do you have for getting un-stuck? Share them here and help your colleages! 

 

New Year's Creativity Resolutions

Whether you're a firm believer in making New Year's resolutions or not, the start of a new year is always a good time to reflect, and think about the future. And hey, don't think New Year's resolutions are just for your personal life! Resolutions and goals can have a positive impact on your work environment, as well. My biggest job-related goal for 2013? Find time in my daily routine for creativity to seep in.

For me, this means spending 15-30 minutes a couple days a week to diverge from my daily grind and look for inspiration elsewhere. This could take the form of a walk outside on my lunch break to get the creative juices flowing, browsing blogs or publications that I find to be written well (I do a lot of writing and editing as part of my job), or even trolling Pinterest for some visual stimulation. Why? Because when your brain is focusing on something stimulating and not necessarily related to work, ideas can seep in that affect your work or process that you otherwise might not have stumbled upon. It's all about mixing up those brain pathways, folks.

This need to unplug from day-to-day tasks something I've been thinking about since I attended the panel "Real World Creativity" at the 2012 Communicators Forum Conference. The panelists (Beth Perro-Jarvis and Mary Van Note, two delightfully sassy women from Ginger Consulting) suggested (or rather, forcefully encouraged) we find a small window of time, whether it be daily or weekly, to get creative.

What are your work-related resolutions or goals for 2013? Do you find time in your work life to look elsewhere for inspiration?

Designing in three dimensions

If you've ever thought about designing in 3D but didn't want to invest in the software Google (rather, now Trimble) will let you do it for free! Sketchup is a terrific program that will let you model and design in three dimensions. It is fairly intuitive and there are numerous tutorials available to help you learn. It's easier than you might think.

SketchUp Intro: http://www.sketchup.com/
Tutorials: http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/training/videos.html

Once you've created something neat you might try using these tutorials to make your designs look more realistic.

Rendering Tutorials: http://www.alexhogrefe.com/tutorials/