WEBVTT 00:00:02.848 --> 00:00:09.158 I'd like to tell you a story and in fact show  you a video of a morning that I had recently. 00:00:13.585 --> 00:00:20.587 This is to give an example in practice of several of  the creativity techniques, 00:00:20.587 --> 00:00:26.929 but also the way about one organizes one's time and one's processes and activities in life 00:00:26.929 --> 00:00:30.360 in order to emphasize and to encourage creativity. 00:00:30.360 --> 00:00:35.527 What I'm going to do first of all is show you a video of my morning, and we're going to start with getting 00:00:35.527 --> 00:00:41.663 up in the morning and move through for about the first hour or so of a morning a short while ago. 00:00:41.663 --> 00:00:47.841 So, here's the video and I hope – well, we'll talk through it at the end 00:00:47.841 --> 00:00:52.147 so we can talk through some of the lessons that come out of it. 00:01:01.089 --> 00:01:06.601 Do you ever get that thing when you wake up in the morning and something's been going round your head? 00:01:06.601 --> 00:01:11.029 This morning it was all about creativity and time management for creativity. 00:01:11.029 --> 00:01:16.223 Not that I've been dreaming about it all night, but it's been something I've been thinking about for 00:01:16.223 --> 00:01:22.070 the last few days. And in that bit between first waking and when I actually 00:01:22.070 --> 00:01:27.840 turned on the light thought  about so much in just those few short minutes. 00:01:33.289 --> 00:01:37.902 It probably happens to you in the shower as well; it certainly does to me. 00:01:37.902 --> 00:01:43.715 Five minutes in the shower in morning; my mind's blank, and suddenly all these ideas flow in. 00:01:43.715 --> 00:01:48.158 And from those five minutes in the shower, I'll often go out and spend perhaps half an hour 00:01:48.158 --> 00:01:53.542 writing up initially onto bits of paper what I've been thinking of, and then the rest of the day typing it. 00:01:53.542 --> 00:01:57.437 All of that just because of a few drops of water. 00:02:02.332 --> 00:02:08.249 Washing up is another one of those times when your mind is wandering. 00:02:08.249 --> 00:02:14.129 It doesn't have anything particularly to do, and ideas suddenly pop up; 00:02:14.129 --> 00:02:19.034 things that you thought it before. It's not that the water magically generates the ideas. 00:02:19.034 --> 00:02:25.366 They're things that have been in your head, but you have time to both let them meander, 00:02:25.366 --> 00:02:32.531 also sometimes take a step back – you might have been stuck on something, wondering about a problem, 00:02:32.531 --> 00:02:36.786 and then suddenly you go from a distance and it all goes away. 00:02:36.786 --> 00:02:42.771 So, the day-to-day things are sometimes the best things to turn to when you want to have 00:02:42.771 --> 00:02:45.446 something fresh to think about. 00:02:50.240 --> 00:02:55.420 So, what we'll do now is just talk you through some of the things I did – and this is just my process 00:02:55.420 --> 00:02:59.377 – everybody will be different – from this morning. So, 00:02:59.377 --> 00:03:04.192 I woke up, perhaps spent five, ten minutes before I turned the light on. 00:03:04.192 --> 00:03:08.302 And then I started to write notes, and this is them: 00:03:08.302 --> 00:03:15.244 scrap paper, notes on the back, thoughts about taking a video in the shower, all sorts of things. 00:03:15.244 --> 00:03:21.342 I write on paper first because I find if I go straight to the computer, I start to elaborate things 00:03:21.342 --> 00:03:27.019 too much, and by the time I've elaborated the first  idea, I've forgotten the rest. 00:03:27.200 --> 00:03:32.735 So, this way I capture on paper – and also on paper you can draw little lines, little sketches I find far more 00:03:32.735 --> 00:03:39.293 easily than I can on-screen. Some people find it easy to use certain tools on-screen as well. 00:03:39.293 --> 00:03:46.790 Then I typed it all up. There's a Word document here. I just typed as quickly and as straightforwardly 00:03:46.790 --> 00:03:51.928 as I possibly could what I'd written down. And then what I've done – it's something I've been doing 00:03:51.928 --> 00:03:57.692 comparatively recently – is transferred that  into PowerPoint slides. Now, this sounds terrible: 00:03:57.692 --> 00:04:05.194 'death by PowerPoint' – but what I find with that is I can, per page so they're quite small and cut out 00:04:05.194 --> 00:04:10.338 the individual slides. I'll just cut out one for you now. 00:04:11.247 --> 00:04:16.562 So, I cut them out and make small slides. 00:04:16.562 --> 00:04:21.278 Now the advantage of these slides is they're  small enough that I can see a lot at once. 00:04:21.278 --> 00:04:25.363 Now, I won't show you these ones; I'll put those away. 00:04:25.415 --> 00:04:29.770 But I'll bring out some that I did a while back for a book chapter I was doing. I went through the 00:04:29.770 --> 00:04:37.436 same process – I sort of outlined, having had the ideas, in text, and then... 00:04:38.550 --> 00:04:42.934 made the PowerPoint slide, and here there was never a presentation; there was no video. 00:04:42.934 --> 00:04:46.945 There was no presentation I went through – this was purely in the end to write a chapter; 00:04:46.945 --> 00:04:51.706 cut them out, was able to sort them around, put them into little clumps, 00:04:51.706 --> 00:04:55.630 put annotations on ones, perhaps cross bits out, 00:04:56.130 --> 00:05:00.869 sometimes just cut out a blank piece of paper  and write a new topic. 00:05:00.869 --> 00:05:05.990 Once I was sort of satisfied they were in the right sort of order, tidy them up, 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:10.719 put them into little folds, write something on them, 00:05:10.719 --> 00:05:15.294 and suddenly I have my chapter ready to write. 00:05:15.939 --> 00:05:22.568 But you notice what I'm trying to do here is to make the maximum use of the *fluid creative thinking* 00:05:22.568 --> 00:05:28.217 and yet also then translate that and make it into something that's more structured. 00:05:28.217 --> 00:05:33.237 And this is true whether it's producing a piece of writing, producing a presentation or video, 00:05:33.237 --> 00:05:35.814 or producing some software. 00:05:37.515 --> 00:05:41.678 I hope that wasn't too shocking for you seeing me waking up in the morning! 00:05:41.719 --> 00:05:48.451 We had some real fun making this video, my wife and I; so, I hope you enjoyed the few minutes of it. 00:05:48.451 --> 00:05:53.292 What I want to do now is just talk you through those stages, and this is literally 00:05:53.292 --> 00:05:58.079 about an hour, an hour and a half in a morning and the way things worked through them. 00:05:58.079 --> 00:06:02.446 So, let's start at the beginning with me waking up. So, you saw me waking up 00:06:02.446 --> 00:06:07.123 with ideas buzzing around my head. It  doesn't happen every morning, I should emphasize. 00:06:07.123 --> 00:06:11.202 This does happen relatively often, but as I said, not every morning. 00:06:11.202 --> 00:06:14.311 So, okay, I'm waking up – what about waking up? 00:06:14.311 --> 00:06:17.849 Some lessons are here about what's called  *incubation*. 00:06:17.849 --> 00:06:22.117 And I'll talk more about that in some other videos. 00:06:22.117 --> 00:06:26.526 But incubation is that idea that sometimes things have to *settle into your head* 00:06:26.526 --> 00:06:29.510 in order for *ideas to come* out.  You might have been thinking about something. 00:06:29.510 --> 00:06:32.894 Here, the whole stuff was about time-managing creativity. 00:06:32.894 --> 00:06:37.528 These are thoughts that have gone on in my head for years, some written down, some not. 00:06:37.528 --> 00:06:41.827 The question was how to present them for you in videos. 00:06:41.880 --> 00:06:46.192 So, those had been going in my head, but they needed working. 00:06:46.192 --> 00:06:51.369 And often when you're relaxed, and sleeping can help that process. 00:06:51.442 --> 00:06:55.170 The other thing about it – one is, the *ideas came when I awoke*, 00:06:55.170 --> 00:07:02.689 but crucially also is *being ready to accept creative thoughts and ideas when they happen*. 00:07:02.689 --> 00:07:06.832 Don't try and make them happen – I mean, sometimes you have to do that, to be honest. 00:07:06.832 --> 00:07:11.605 But when they are, *grab them* – don't let them go! 00:07:11.605 --> 00:07:14.261 So, that's critical there. 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:23.051 Then we have two parts of it. Part of it was about going to shower in the morning 00:07:23.051 --> 00:07:28.997 – and I hope not too shocking, seeing my soggy, still tired eyes here! 00:07:30.225 --> 00:07:34.418 And also about washing up. So, these are day-to-day activities. 00:07:34.418 --> 00:07:39.209 They are things that *occupy your mind* in the sense you have to do something, but 00:07:39.209 --> 00:07:45.598 they *don't fill your mind with stuff*. They're blank stages, mind-wandering stages. 00:07:46.038 --> 00:07:50.475 There are lots of these: deliberately going for a walk might do this for you. 00:07:50.530 --> 00:07:54.972 Sometimes just sitting down with a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and doing nothing. 00:07:54.972 --> 00:08:02.410 There are various times. And these mind-wandering times are often incredibly productive. 00:08:02.410 --> 00:08:07.515 If you go to them thinking 'I'm going to have a productive shower!', you probably won't. 00:08:07.515 --> 00:08:12.432 But the very act of having a shower or washing-up, it means again, some of those thoughts that have 00:08:12.432 --> 00:08:18.972 been pushing into your head, you've been thinking over, start to settle out, 00:08:18.972 --> 00:08:23.134 and often interesting thoughts come out of it. 00:08:23.134 --> 00:08:26.682 As for the pressure, the fact that there's *no pressure is absolutely crucial*. 00:08:28.617 --> 00:08:34.123 Then we went on from these stages which were  more of these open mind stages, 00:08:34.123 --> 00:08:40.246 which was more about getting new thoughts together, to a slightly more structured phase. 00:08:40.246 --> 00:08:45.274 So, I went to my desk – and we'll talk more about that; that's a critical change as well – 00:08:45.274 --> 00:08:49.748 and *wrote things down*. So, 00:08:49.748 --> 00:08:54.993 crucially if you've had something that's come into your head, get it out. 00:08:54.993 --> 00:09:00.608 Unless you're – I mean, people are different and a crucial thing I think I've said before is: 00:09:00.608 --> 00:09:04.585 we're all different; we have different ways of dealing with this. 00:09:04.585 --> 00:09:10.781 But get things out; *get them out of your head as fast as possible into some recorded form*. 00:09:10.781 --> 00:09:14.335 Otherwise, you might just lose them. 00:09:15.421 --> 00:09:19.724 I also talked about being *careful* – while I was actually doing the video, about been careful about 00:09:19.724 --> 00:09:25.793 *premature elaboration*. So, that's taking the nub of an idea and expanding it. 00:09:25.793 --> 00:09:32.440 Here, it was about these videos and about moving from the idea of something to actually the words and the details of it. 00:09:32.440 --> 00:09:37.915 But this might be true of designing a new logo for a company. 00:09:37.915 --> 00:09:43.221 It might be about some programming nitty-bit issue in user interface programming. 00:09:43.221 --> 00:09:47.301 It might be a user experience issue – how do you design something? 00:09:47.301 --> 00:09:51.789 But make sure you *capture it as quickly as you can*, before you forget it. 00:09:51.789 --> 00:09:57.726 Now, the reason for not elaborating too early is largely because if you get stuck in elaboration, 00:09:57.726 --> 00:10:02.761 you often forget the rest of stuff. So, get them *captured*. 00:10:02.761 --> 00:10:08.196 Then you can afford to elaborate. Now, I did say I didn't elaborate that much when I went from paper 00:10:08.196 --> 00:10:15.782 to text or to PowerPoint, but actually that is often a place where I start to do that elaboration process. 00:10:15.782 --> 00:10:20.166 But I've already got stuff scribbled down on paper. 00:10:20.166 --> 00:10:26.029 Now, for *me*, I mentioned that I found paper better for this. A lot of people do. 00:10:26.029 --> 00:10:30.419 There's lots of evidence that when we go electronic, we move into a 00:10:30.419 --> 00:10:34.200 very much more detailed mode, rather than a sort of overview mode. 00:10:34.200 --> 00:10:39.043 But it does depend on the individual; it depends on the way you work; it depends on the tools you've got. 00:10:39.043 --> 00:10:48.359 So, whether it's paper or whether it's screen, it's thinking about *making sure that you don't lose that flow*. 00:10:48.623 --> 00:10:54.000 You notice too I wrote things down. And, again, if you're really good at – perhaps you use one of those 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:58.407 screens and you sort of write everything with your fingers, and it all comes out great. 00:10:58.407 --> 00:11:04.654 But I was doing lines and diagrams and things like that. Not, again, I wasn't elaborating heavily, 00:11:04.654 --> 00:11:09.804 but sort of mind-mappy-type things, not just the words. 00:11:09.898 --> 00:11:12.149 Then I cut stuff out. 00:11:12.149 --> 00:11:16.650 And actually, I haven't got any small ones here; I should have ones. I mean, I've got a big picture of a slide here – 00:11:16.650 --> 00:11:20.233 but I cut things out into small slides. 00:11:21.089 --> 00:11:25.447 A number of reasons for that – I talked about some of them as I was doing the video. 00:11:25.510 --> 00:11:30.874 Partly it's about *making these abstract ideas concrete, physical* 00:11:30.874 --> 00:11:37.046 – things I can hold and look at; literally making them objects. 00:11:37.046 --> 00:11:40.593 So, they went from being ideas in my head, to written on paper, 00:11:40.593 --> 00:11:45.017 to in the machine, to now cut out so that I can play with them. 00:11:45.177 --> 00:11:51.227 The crucial thing about my little cutouts – and again it varies on the kind of work you're doing – 00:11:51.227 --> 00:11:57.512 but for this purpose, they're small enough that I can have a lot on my table at once 00:11:57.512 --> 00:12:03.110 and get an idea of the general overview of stuff, so it's that *overview view*. 00:12:03.110 --> 00:12:07.914 But also I can pick them up and look at them. This is a classic from information visualization: 00:12:07.914 --> 00:12:13.212 *overview and detail* – your eyes just do it to physical things 00:12:13.212 --> 00:12:18.168 because we're able to make much more rapid changes by either picking something up or just 00:12:18.168 --> 00:12:22.749 focusing on it, than we can by manipulating things on screen. 00:12:22.773 --> 00:12:27.191 So, again, it's not that there aren't tools that might help you. You might prefer to use something like 00:12:27.191 --> 00:12:33.436 a mind-mapping tool that allows you to perhaps expand a node and close it and then play with the nodes on-screen: 00:12:33.436 --> 00:12:38.295 different ways. But it's about getting these processes. 00:12:38.852 --> 00:12:43.887 Then I *sorted* things. And, again, the fact that they're these small little notes helps me to sort them 00:12:43.887 --> 00:12:48.374 because they're small enough that I can get a lot on the table at once, so I can do it, 00:12:48.383 --> 00:12:52.543 but big enough that I can see what they are. So, I'm getting that overview; I'm starting to – 00:12:52.543 --> 00:12:56.318 I can shuffle things around without making strong commitments. 00:12:56.318 --> 00:13:04.223 If I'm reordering, say, an outline in Word or if I'm reordering slides in PowerPoint, 00:13:04.223 --> 00:13:08.014 you're making it explicit – 'this goes here'. 00:13:08.437 --> 00:13:13.356 On the table, you're doing something that's more *fluid*; 'this sort of goes here'. 00:13:13.356 --> 00:13:17.528 And you might sometimes put something halfway between; you might – you know – 00:13:17.528 --> 00:13:23.472 have a general clumpiness over here, without necessarily specifying the exact order. 00:13:23.472 --> 00:13:28.960 So, that ability to have something that's flexible and yet allows you to create some structure. 00:13:28.960 --> 00:13:32.698 So, you notice I'm using the *two-dimensional space* a lot. 00:13:32.698 --> 00:13:35.784 I'm using the *physicality* of these things. 00:13:35.784 --> 00:13:39.743 Again, it's not that there aren't digital tools that might help you with these. 00:13:39.743 --> 00:13:44.761 And it was very easy for me to add extra things to those paper cutouts, 00:13:44.761 --> 00:13:48.332 add whole new ones or annotate them. And then, finally, 00:13:48.340 --> 00:13:52.277 there was that *putting them into little piles and folding them over*. 00:13:52.277 --> 00:13:58.069 And what that's doing is taking – I've done a structuring job, 00:13:58.069 --> 00:14:02.472 and creating even more overview in a sense I'm putting things together; I did make a commitment; 00:14:02.472 --> 00:14:07.463 I've made a commitment that my pile is now a unit that's perhaps going to become 00:14:07.463 --> 00:14:14.768 a set of videos or set a slides, a chapter in a book, whatever it is that you're organizing. 00:14:14.915 --> 00:14:20.807 But also, by putting the *label* on, that then becomes a single unit that I can look at with others. 00:14:20.807 --> 00:14:24.749 So, I can perhaps then do that large-scale structuring that says, 00:14:24.749 --> 00:14:28.875 'Well, I think that group probably belongs in front of that group.' 00:14:28.875 --> 00:14:33.623 So, again, a lot of this is about giving yourself the ability to 00:14:33.623 --> 00:14:39.205 *control the material, rather than the material control you*. 00:14:41.026 --> 00:14:45.934 Finally, I'm going to talk about the *overall process*. 00:14:45.934 --> 00:14:49.317 So, we've looked at the single stages during the day. 00:14:51.340 --> 00:14:56.333 First of all, a lot of the early stages are trying to make the most of what 00:14:56.333 --> 00:15:02.507 you can think of as *fluid creativity*: that idea is generating, the divergent stage. 00:15:02.742 --> 00:15:10.563 Putting yourself or *being aware and ready to listen*  during the times when that's likely to happen. 00:15:10.563 --> 00:15:16.061 And it tends to be these mind-wandering moments; it tends to be in the shower, waking up, 00:15:16.061 --> 00:15:22.086 washing dishes, going for a walk, going for a run if you're more of a runner, cycling – whatever you do; 00:15:22.584 --> 00:15:27.608 not watching the television, not social media, but things that give you that ability to be open. 00:15:27.608 --> 00:15:31.409 So, *making the most of those when they happen*; 00:15:31.640 --> 00:15:38.617 then *rapidly capturing*, and trying to reduce any barrier to capturing those ideas, 00:15:38.617 --> 00:15:42.372 making as fluid, as simple as possible. 00:15:43.252 --> 00:15:47.528 *The desire for perfection often gets in the way.* 00:15:47.528 --> 00:15:52.422 So, it's about making it *low commitment*, so as I write the things down 00:15:52.422 --> 00:15:56.988 I'm not saying this is the order they belong in, because later on I know I'm going to reorder them. 00:15:56.988 --> 00:16:02.032 So, by knowing I'm going to have a stage later, I can be less committed and therefore 00:16:02.032 --> 00:16:08.727 more fluid, more rapid, less worried – all of these things block any sort of creative activity. 00:16:09.753 --> 00:16:14.279 The other thing you noticed – now, this varies from time to time, from project to project, but this was a 00:16:14.279 --> 00:16:18.422 very bottom-up process. Now, sometimes you have a top-down process where 00:16:18.422 --> 00:16:21.887 you have an overall structure and you're trying to fill in gaps. 00:16:21.887 --> 00:16:27.516 This was one where I had lots of things and wasn't quite sure how to put them together. 00:16:27.516 --> 00:16:31.102 And, again, the way in which you process things will vary. 00:16:31.102 --> 00:16:36.405 So, the things I was doing that morning were much more about individual ideas sparking off 00:16:36.478 --> 00:16:40.098 and then how to build those together into something with coherence. 00:16:40.098 --> 00:16:44.458 There'll be other projects where actually the  overall structure is a clearer one 00:16:44.458 --> 00:16:49.040 and it's a finer-scale one you want. Although actually what I tend to do is repeat a process that's 00:16:49.040 --> 00:16:54.956 not vastly dissimilar to this for each stage down, so I sort of do 00:16:54.956 --> 00:16:59.006 something that's between a bottom-up and top-down; I'm sure most processes are. 00:16:59.928 --> 00:17:05.044 Another thing – the *transcription*; so, there was the writing down, but also once I've written things 00:17:05.044 --> 00:17:10.651 on paper, transcribing them to a computer  is a non-creative process. 00:17:10.651 --> 00:17:14.403 It's not quite the same as having a shower, where your mind is just doing anything. 00:17:14.403 --> 00:17:19.864 I've got to be typing these words, but I'm doing something that's a relatively mundane, repetitive 00:17:19.929 --> 00:17:26.422 or easy-to-do task, but is related and is tied into the thought. 00:17:26.422 --> 00:17:29.817 So, I'm transcribing the things that I want to think about. 00:17:29.817 --> 00:17:34.550 So, it's both something – it's a bit like being in a shower, but being in a shower that's about the topic. 00:17:35.019 --> 00:17:38.563 Again, that cutting out is doing the same: I'm cutting out slides, I'm doing a 00:17:38.563 --> 00:17:42.855 mechanical process – *physical processes are very good for creativity*. 00:17:42.855 --> 00:17:46.894 They make all sorts of nice things flow through your brain; you can get the neuroscience of this, 00:17:46.894 --> 00:17:50.976 but you sort of get all these nice neurotransmitters flying around when you 00:17:50.976 --> 00:17:55.804 do physical processes. But it's not just a random physical process; 00:17:55.813 --> 00:18:01.391 it's one where while I'm cutting out, I'm constantly seeing those ideas and seeing the individual one. 00:18:01.391 --> 00:18:05.994 So, when I come to do the structuring my mind is already doing that. 00:18:05.994 --> 00:18:11.367 And the other thing is I started off in my bed, waking up; I moved to the shower; I was washing up, 00:18:11.367 --> 00:18:16.502 went into the office, sitting down at a desk. 00:18:16.502 --> 00:18:20.831 Different physical spaces often encourage different modes of thought; 00:18:20.831 --> 00:18:25.274 and, again, being aware of that. *For you, they're likely to be different ones.* 00:18:25.274 --> 00:18:28.997 Sometimes, it might be a formal situation, informal ones. 00:18:28.997 --> 00:18:34.340 You might have all sorts of different situations, but 00:18:34.340 --> 00:18:39.523 understanding, beginning to get that sense in yourself that if you want to do a certain sort of activity 00:18:39.523 --> 00:18:44.540 maybe by doing this – it might be that you have 00:18:44.540 --> 00:18:48.794 a laptop for certain things you do and a desktop computer for others. 00:18:48.762 --> 00:18:53.697 So, it might be about the devices you use; it might be about the physical locations, all sorts of things. 00:18:53.697 --> 00:18:56.988 Even changing your t-shirt, but 00:18:56.988 --> 00:19:02.355 changing things and becoming aware for yourself of where those changes are likely to happen, 00:19:02.355 --> 00:19:06.590 because again – I've said it several times; I'll say it once more – *we're all different*. 00:19:06.590 --> 00:19:13.531 So, I've given you a snapshot of a day or a portion of the beginning of a day 00:19:13.531 --> 00:19:17.740 in my life with the things that helped me to function. 00:19:17.740 --> 00:19:21.933 The things that help you to function  will be different; so, part of it, 00:19:21.933 --> 00:19:25.287 some of these might be good things to learn for yourself – you might find they're useful. 00:19:25.287 --> 00:19:33.984 But part of your journey of creativity is learning what works for you and makes you the best possible person.