eBusiness Weekly
Robert Gonye
As 2020 begins, you might be under pressure to build strategies, create campaigns and pitch new ideas quickly to start your first quarter off right.
The pressure to create can cause both stress and fears of failure which can be a barrier to growth. Furthermore, it can stand in the way of your motivation, or also prevent you from coming up with new or unique ideas.
When that moment happens, don’t panic. Remember, this happens to everyone, and especially sales and marketers who need to churn out hundreds of creative campaigns a year.
To help you, here are six tips for staying creative under pressure whether at work or at home.
- Pretend you’re working
on behalf of someone else
The stresses of knowing that your creative ideas could go wrong and make you look bad can stop you from thinking in creative ways or pitching unique ideas that others might not consider.
When your fears about your career are getting in the way of your thought processes, pretend you’re coming up with ideas for someone else, such as a client.
Pretending to work on a project on behalf of another person sounds like a strange tip. This mind-set is a proven research method to produce more creative results. When you’re producing work that will be attributed to you, you typically put more pressure on yourself to get it perfect, which can restrict how creative you get. When you think the work will be attributed to someone else, you’re more likely to take creative risks.
- Just start outlining
If you’re trying to produce creative content, such as a video script, or design, don’t let staring at an empty page intimidate you. Just get started by drafting an outline for possible content or campaigns.
A great strategy for achieving that can be if you are really feeling uninspired, just get the bare bones of the piece down on paper, and come back to it later. Once you have something semi-ready to publish even if not the well-written piece, the pressure should subside, allowing you to dive back into it a few hours later with fresh and innovative ideas for how to add flair.
- Work when you
feel most creative
On top of jumping into an outline, figuring out when your pique productive times are and scheduling your creative tasks during them.
For most people they work best in the morning, snooze notifications, put your phone away, and close my email tab, so you can focus during those two to three hours when you are feeling most creative.
- When you’re absolutely stuck, walk away from your computer
If you try everything and feel like your mind is absolutely fried, it’s time to take a break. But, do not spend time getting distracted on the internet. Instead, take a walk or get out of your office for a few minutes.
Yes, it might seem scary to take a break away from your desk when you’re dealing with deadlines, but this can help you swiftly come up with new ideas and motivate you when you return to creating content. When you take breaks to give your mind a rest or move through a stuck point in your work, try to get up from your desk, walk around, or sit outside for a few minutes. It’s less distracting and easier to get back into work mode once ready.
- Get eight hours of sleep
When you have deadlines coming up, it can be tempting to think that staying up late and skipping a few hours of sleep for just one or two nights will help you get more creative work done. However, mounting research says otherwise. Hence why it’s important to get some sleep. Not only are you less productive when you work at night, but a lack of sleep can also choke creativity. Not to mention, sleep issues can be detrimental to your health.
Regardless of when you sleep, developing a habit will help you stay on track so you aren’t wide awake and worrying about your deadlines at night.
- Record your creative ideas
when they hit you,
then review them later
Great ideas can happen at any time: in the car, while cooking, during a walk, or even when you are falling asleep in bed. When something interesting pops into your head, record it.
Journal it or use a voice recorder or voice assistant to record your creative thoughts when they come to you. If you are using a voice assistant, you should instruct it to remind you the next day. Google has a good app which does exactly that. For example, you could say: “OK, Google. Remind me to create an app that can translate my notes into English at 9am.”
The views given herein are solely for information purposes; they are guidelines and suggestions and are not guaranteed to work in any particular way.
Robert Gonye is a Business Growth Expert and Influencer. He writes in his personal capacity. Comments and views: [email protected]
