Catch the magic of an idea...

Increasingly over recent weeks I've come across the idea of less being more and what prevents someone from getting creative projects done is often not what we obviously think.

There's much made of creative blocks, writer's block being the most common example. But rather then stemming from sitting faced with a blank sheet of paper and terrified that an idea will never come, maybe a more common and more restrictive scenario than this is having TOO MUCH to work on.

I'm sure all of us have experienced an overload of ideas in some way, our heads in meltdown, new thoughts and variations bombarding us with such intensity that rather than note them down or try to develop them, we simply want to switch off, deflect them and give our little heads a break!

But then the paradox is that these could be the times when we are most richly creative - whether coming up with solutions for a particular issue or creating a new piece of work - and we may fear that switching off now will result in dozens of great ideas slipping through our grasp and being lost forever.

Different people deal with this ideas overload in different ways. An interesting method I've come across recently, and one that's beginning to be very useful for me, is to have a notepad always to hand, whether a paper one or a page in a word processor, just to jot ideas down when they come.

Then when that flash of inspiration comes, we can note it down then and there, then - and here's the crucial part - CLOSE the notebook and continuing doing whatever we were doing before. Then we build up a notebook full of powerful ideas that are there to be drawn upon when needed.

This can take some restraint! The natural urge is to follow the idea, flow with it and develop it instantly, dropping everything else in the meantime.

But if we lived like this we'd never get anything done, instead constantly being in that uniquely exciting first tiny steps stage of having an idea we've never had before, hurling our resources into it until another mind-blowing idea comes along 5 minutes later!

Sound familiar?

So try this technique and see what happens.

Catch the magic of a new idea in a notebook and keep in incubation until it's time to let it flourish and grow...