The Dichotomy of Creativity and Structure
This week I have had a real struggle to come up with an idea for the topic of today’s blog. I have a notebook with lists of ideas for posts, but none of them were giving me the creative spark I needed to build a blog around. Eventually, I had to ask my husband for some prompts and it was his wise and learned suggestion that I simply write about having a creative block.
Genius.
The inspiration spark ignited and here we are.
So why the mental block this week?
If you follow me on any of my other social media, you will have seen that I was about to attend my very first craft fayre on Sunday. This meant that the majority of my focus the week before was on preparing for that event. As you can imagine, I was quite nervous about it, especially as the time of the event changed from 10am – 4pm to 3pm – 7.30pm and I knew that this would have some impact on the number of attendees to the fayre. Add to this the weather on Sunday and the event was quiet, but still, a success as it was definitely a learning point, especially in terms of the layout of my table and how I can improve it and I enjoyed it, despite the heat.
Ah, the heat. This has been the main reason for my struggle with creativity this week. For one, I haven’t slept well at all. But the main reason has been that it has been too hot to sit in the office, which is where I spend a lot of my time as a small business owner.
But why has that affected my creativity? Surely I can be creative anywhere?
This is absolutely true. To a certain extent. And in some ways, I have been very creative and have started developing lots of exciting new product ideas which I will be working on soon and sharing as soon as they’re ready (see the photos at the bottom of this post for one finished item!). But the main reason for this block is definitely the lack of structure I have had this week due to not being in my office.
And therein lies the dichotomy – it is difficult to be creative without some structure and yet it feels like this shouldn’t be true as structure and creativity feel like opposites.
Every month, I print out a monthly planner and 4 or 5 weekly planners. I then fill in the monthly planner with events, appointments, etc, both work-related and personal. The weekly planner is then completed every Monday with what I will do that week. I have a schedule for what I will focus on each day. For example, Mondays are when I create and schedule all of my social media posts. Of course, these are flexible, as for last week, preparation for the craft fayre took over.
This structure allows me to make sure that I am spending time doing the essentials, such as accounts (boo!) but I also build in time for research, pattern development and training. Training can include anything, from learning about pattern design to developing my photography skills and knowledge of social media. And it is often, during those times of research and training that I am at my most creative – inspiration might come from looking at interior design trends, listening to a podcast on business or reading my emails thoroughly (I receive many newsletters from various people/companies who I would definitely call an inspiration).
And as the inspiration hits, I write it down in one of my plethora of notebooks – each one dedicated to a different aspect of my business – which I can return to in order to fully develop or occasionally discard.
By having this structure in my week, I am confident that the admin and routine tasks that I need to do are done. This means I don’t have to worry about them at other times, allowing my brain a certain type of freedom to be fully open to new ideas instead of being preoccupied with these day-to-day tasks – the quintessential ‘did I leave the oven on?’ or ‘What will I post on Instagram this week?’ scenario is gone because I’ve already dealt with these things. Freedom.
Has this week been wasted because of this? Not really. As I said, I have been quite creative with regard to new ideas around crochet, but I haven’t been creative with my business and these are definitely 2 very separate and distinct areas. Neither is more or less important than the other but they’re both vital.
As mentioned above, I will be sharing my new ideas as finished items over the coming weeks and months (mainly because they’re mostly still ideas at the minute!).
Until then, here is one of the new ideas I was working on last week and I shared on social media as a work in progress.
I finished this over the weekend.
What do you think?
