Image by Keith Chapman.

Word of advice: If you do anything creative (and that should be everyone) be sure to stock up on journals. A journal can be a nice Moleskine, a Baron Fig, a composition book, a giant sketch book, a stack of scrap papers stapled together, within an app on your phone, Evernote, or a pile of multi-colored Post-it notes. It really doesn’t matter. In fact, I use several of the above simultaneously, usually for different purposes.

If you are having a creative block, a nasty problem in front of you to solve, or feeling invincibly creative, you will benefit greatly by logging ideas (even the prematurely self-judged bad ones), complaints, problems, solutions, research, doodles, and random facts, quotes and general goofiness. Even if it seems absurd, stupid, ridiculous, impossible, or embarrassing write it down anyway. If nothing else you will make room for better ideas by purging the “bad ones” onto paper.

I really recommend a bound paper journal with a nice, easy writing pen that feels good in your hand, writes smoothly, and encourages you to keep using it. I use journals at my job and have for decades as an engineer and designer. Looking back, I’ve had some crazy ideas but some have turned into products and popular products at that. Seeing the incubation of ideas on paper turned eventually to product is one of the most satisfying things I’ve experienced. I recently took to journals for my hobbies, side projects and art as well. It has made those hobbies and art much more fulfilling. In fact, I wrote my first novel, Sushi Wars: A New Roll, entirely in Evernote because it kept distractions to a minimum and I was able to create notes immediately from my web research and story issues.

The benefits of writing journals are numerous but there are, admittedly, a few challenges that creep up. There is the dreaded false start. You buy a nice journal or you simply get a pad of paper and… fail to start writing in it. It sits there staring at you pristine, unopened, clean, blank, and perfectly smug. Do yourself a favor and bust through the seal and dirty that first page immediately. Write anything. It doesn’t matter. Just dirty it.

Another challenge seems to be continuity. You dirty that first page (and maybe that was easy for you) and you’re writing in it for a few days, maybe even a few days in a row and then life creeps in and you skip a day or two or twenty. Now you have a well-intentioned journal with only 3 dirtied pages. Pick up where you left off even if the entry is “I have no idea where I left off.” and go forward.

I use journals for product design complete with bad sketches and barely legible writings all in pen. I list research topics I want to get to and benign to-dos and action items from meetings, the more utilitarian side of journals. Where my journals really shine though is in solving seemingly unsolvable problems or combating dead ends (i-dea-d ends?!?!) and fighting through the monotony of the same old ideas rising to front of mind. I sometime doodle to music to free things up. Let your mind wander with pen in hand and you will quickly stumble onto ideas so good that you won’t understand how they actually got embedded in you in the first place.

My process includes writing about the problem or goal first and scoping out the issues completely either by drawings or words or a combination of media. Then, I typically doodle in the margins around the issue using symbols or pictures associated with the problem or goal. I find this drives the issue into a deeper level of understanding and likely stirs some subconscious fires and redirects thoughts and energy at the issue. Then I start listing actions I can take to step towards the goal or solution even if ever so slightly. It may simply start with “I have no ideas. I’ll have to research the term _____ on google just to get started.” I will keep listing actions I can take until I run way deep into crazy land and keep going until I’ve exhausted the crazy in me. Next, I look at the list and the doodles and I pick the best of them, even if they set camp up firmly in crazy land. I refine those few select ideas and concepts and iterate on them. I equate this process much like sanding a piece of wood. Take the rough edges away a little at a time and eventually you will get a shape that starts making sense. I keep repeating this process until I land on a fully actionable idea that is doable, makes sense, and strikes me as novel, innovative, or, at the very least, mildly impressive. If I haven’t been able to get there yet, I keep sanding. Some ideas take weeks, months, even years because i shelved them. But here is the important thing. I shelved them in a journal that can be picked up later, years later, and revisited. Then I find myself in a different place with new experiences and can quite possibly find a solution, iteration, or creative element from the original problem or goal that I can use.

Just keep writing, sketching, doodling in many, many journals with your ideas, concepts, and get your crazy on paper. Go nonlinear, go stupid, go without rules and see what happens. You’ll feel quite creative and hopefully feel much happier. I always do.

Now go. Create.  ~ The Mission Creative