Hello..? Operator..?! 5 Ways Our Creativity Can Get Lost in the Switchboard

By Dan Goodwin

In the busy frantic switchboard that is our creative mind, it’s easy to get lost in the confusion of so many wires and connections all competing for our attention and needing redirecting.

So much that often we end up feeling like our heads inside look just like an old-style telephone switchboard, a mass of multicoloured wires hanging out all over the place and after a while we don’t know what’s connected at all anymore!

So here’s 5 ways our creativity can get lost in the switchboard, and what we can do about it when it does:

1. A crossed line.

You’re trying desperately to communicate a certain feeling or idea with your latest creative project, but not able to get the message across to the viewer or reader. Of course art is down to an individual’s interpretation, but in the many circumstances where the creator is trying to portray a direct point or message, this interpretive ambiguity is not good.

Operator, what can I do? Clarity is the most important criteria here. Decide exactly what your message is and what response you’d like people to have, whether it’s for a new website, a piece of music, or a company logo. Then use all of your creative skills and methods to project your message as clearly and memorably as possible. Stand up and be counted.

2. Trying to take too many calls at once.

Even the greatest creative genius can only take on a finite number of different projects at any one time. Many creative people, whether artists or entrepreneurs, share the common trait of bursting with new ideas almost constantly. They also tend to share the equally common trait of starting a huge number of projects and then not seeing them through, either because they become too challenging, or a new, apparently more exciting project comes along.

Operator, what can I do? In a word: focus! Just for a short period of time, set yourself just one project to work on, and give it your complete creative energy and commitment. Start with a week or a month, and dedicate all your creative time to just that one project. At the end of the agreed initial period, review and see whether you want to dedicate more time to that project. You may surprise yourself at what you can achieve with focus even in a matter of weeks.

3. Stuck on answerphone.

Everything coming out of you creatively sounds like a pre-recorded answerphone message. You feel on autopilot, a machine not a person, writing the same words, using the same characters in your novel, taking the same photos in the same way, painting the same landscapes in the same shades…

Operator, what can I do? Write in a form you’ve never written in before, use materials you’ve never considered using, listen to a CD you wouldn’t normally dream of picking up. Do all you can to jump start your originality, reignite your curiosity and restore the unique human voice at your creative switchboard.

4. Lines are always engaged.

You can never get through to your true creative self, and produce the work you want to. There are hundreds of connections being made but never the right ones, or on the right channels. You find it difficult too, to convey what you mean to others, and are losing sense of how to communicate with others, and with your creative self.

Operator, what can I do? Take a break. Try a different approach. Go out in the countryside or somewhere completely new to you. Take a notebook with you and just observe. Write, sketch, draw all you see, hear and feel around you. Get back in touch with your senses, and all the tiny details of life that too often pass you by. Return with new eyes and new hope.

5. Disconnected.

There’s not even a dial tone at your creative switchboard, the power’s down, the wires all hanging out with nothing to connect to. You’re feeling uninspired, detached and disinterested, frustrated that you can’t seem to reconnect to your creativity and no-one else understands.

Operator, what can I do? Try rediscovering what it was that first made you write, or cook, or paint. Think back to your original passions and inspirations, the things that made you feel excited, passionate and alive. Meet up with some old creative friends or find some new ones, share once more the art, film, music that first moved you. When was the first time you just KNEW that you had to create and this was the form you had to create in?

For each of these issues, try different things and see what works for you. It’s only by experimenting and then responding to the results we get that we can learn and evolve as creative people. •

© Copyright 2006 Dan Goodwin.

03/23/06