8 Billion people are currently facing creative block. Yes, creative block is something every person faces. This is a phenomenon where you cannot come up with the right set of words, movements, or visuals. For most people, creative block is referred to as thought blocking or thought disorder.

Although the severity of lack of thought is negligible compared to creative people. As creators, you have to come up with new content on daily basis. So, if the creative block is severe enough then it could dearly cost you your career. As daunting as it sounds most of us are capable enough to come out of it if we follow a certain direction and find an epiphany.

Creative block is a common occurrence for many creative people. So, how do we eliminate or reduce our chances of getting creative block in the first place?

• Always achieve the Real Perfection
• Starting is not the biggest challenge
• Mental Flow of Thoughts

In creative field, what is perfect? Can anyone define perfect? I can.

Perfect is something that is done in a certain amount of time, money or skill.

• A call stating your address and state of injury is perfect for 911.
• A logo designed under 1 hour for a free gig done for your fellow local salon parlor is perfect if they have none.
• A video recorded on a smartphone with poor audio quality is perfect for warning people about incoming danger.

The definition of perfect always has to have a time, money, or skill factor built right into it. Otherwise, you won’t be able to know what perfect is.

The Taj Mahal took 22 years to build. But you won’t be able to know what it would look like if it would have taken 44 years to build. Because king Shah Jahan decided it was time to call it perfect at that point.

Similar to that, if your creative work doesn’t have those factors you won’t be able to call it perfect at that moment looking at your work.

Achieving perfection for an indefinite amount of time leads to high doses of creative block.

That’s why in most companies you would be able to find some project timeline specified or estimated.

Even how project timelines are applied there can be different feelings generated in your mind. Underwhelm, Overwhelm, scary, etc. (I will create a specific blog about project timelines in the future so stay subscribed).

Moral - Start any work with the intention to complete it within a specific time & budget. Real perfection is achieved only if you manage to complete the project on time or before time.

Creators think that starting is the biggest challenge but on contrary to that doing it continuously is the biggest challenge.

Scenario 1 - If you observe yourself, your most amount of creative block happens right in between the process when you fill stuck in a particular place or cannot find the breakthrough moment. Not starting the project in the first place is called “procrastination”.

Scenario 2 - Content Writers tell me that I have everything in my mind that I want to convey but I just cannot start with the intro.

So, now you know when the creative block happens. Now let’s see how to eliminate it. For both the scenarios the answer remains the same.

Your thoughts and ideas don’t flow in a linear direction. You cannot pull out a string of thoughts from your mind and trust that your thought will follow a straight path.

External factors would be

• Someone started talking on call in the background
• You hear the sound of laughter
• Your phone notifies your latest Netflix episode is live

Internal factors would be

• You jump from thinking of editing food shot → battery level → adjusting sound effect → empty stomach → food craving → looking at time → where will I go for vacation → Music festival → Hill Station → Which date….
• You had a fight with your partner where you wanted to surprise your partner which turned it into a mess.

These external & interval factors are somewhat eliminated using focus time using headphones & DND on phones.

But you need more.

Answer is you don’t control your thoughts. Crazy theory, right? Let me explain.

Let’s take an example. You are currently trying to build on the revisions that the client has shared on your work. You are stuck to begin and have wasted more than 4 hours now.

Solution 1

• Ask yourself what colored clothes the client was wearing.
• Red like an apple.
• What does the word apple mean to you?
• Juicy fruit, Minimalism, Engineering Marvel.
• Now ask what the client mentioned in the revised brief.
• Ok, breaking these two things would give me an outside edge.
• Let me explore it for 15 mins, even if I know this is not the right direction.
• 15 mins later, nope not the right direction. Told you so.
• Wait, wait, wait.
• Idea #1
• Idea #2
• Idea #17 Still got one more day.
• Idea #31 Achieved real perfection.

Moral - Your thoughts need some activation energy to build momentum in reaching the solution you are actually looking for.

Solution 2

• Take a walk for 15 mins.
• Stair at something green.
• Take a sip of your drink.
• Plough through.

Solution 3

• You are a creator, create your own solution

You know your creative block more than anyone. The solutions mentioned above might not even apply to you. But don’t be worried about it. The objective of this blog was to make you aware of the creative block so that you can tackle it in a way that you feel comfortable.

If you like my explaining style then do tweet me your method of resolving creative block. I never faced creative block in my career for any significant amount of time to hamper my work. I was able to achieve that because I always followed some form of boundary and achieved real perfection.