CHAOS SUBVERTS CREATIVITY
I’ve often taken pride in the fact that I can be forgetful and disorganized. I simply chalked it up to plain old artistic flightiness. Whenever someone told me to get my head out of the clouds, I’d just hold it that much higher. Late to meetings? Who cares! I’m creative! I can’t be expected to be on time! Write things down? Fooey! If I can’t remember it then I guess it was never meant to be!
For much of my artistic life I’ve fought the beast of disorganization. And up until the last year, I never worked real hard to combat the monster. I believed that being less organized meant I was being more creative.
As you might imagine, this is absolutely NOT the case. Being less organized just means you have more chaos in your life; and most wise artists will tell you that chaos is the antithesis to creativity, not the other way around.
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF ORGANIZATION
At The 99 Percent, Scott Belsky really got me thinking about this idea in terms of what it does to my bottom line. Being disorganized significantly cuts into the amount/effectiveness of what I produce. Good ideas are just ideas until they’ve been executed into existence. To execute anything well you simply must be organized.
I wish I could say I have this whole organization thing down. I may always struggle. It may always feel like work to me. At the very least, I’ve decided to stop pouting about my apparent inability to organize and start actually getting it together. Over the last year, I’ve found these tools to be invaluable in my attempt to simplify, streamline, capture and execute:
- Action Book - BeHance’s solution for GTD. This has been the single most helpful thing for me. You’ve got your action steps, your backburner, and your dot-matrix. Who can ask for anything more?
- Field Notes - This is my idea capturing machine. In reality it is just a little notebook, but it’s perfect for capturing ideas throughout the day. I prefer the graph paper insides.
- iPhone - Email, text, web access AND you might not know this, but you can also use it to make and receive phone calls.
- Evernote - I do a lot of my idea scratching online and usually get lost in a sea of random links. After some sage advice, I recently signed up. We’ll see how it goes.
CREATIVITY x ORGANIZATION = IMPACT
For those of you who struggle in this area as well, be assured that the work is well worth it. After just a few months trudging along I’m beginning to see dividends. I’m less stressed, I have more ideas, and I have more space to execute them. My creative bottom line has been cut into far too many times to go back to being an artsy, smug, disorganized artist. Hopefully you will protect your bottoms as well.
So stay organized kids, it’s messy out there.
