Be More Creative-How Mapping Tiny Landmarks In Your Creative Journey Can Help You Be More Creative

However creative or prolific we are, one thing that many creative people find difficult is to acknowledge and appreciate the great progress we make in our creative work.

When it comes to watching other creative people, we actually find it quite easy to keep track of what they’re doing, and how much they’re progressing.

We can remember that only 6 months ago, our friend Catherine had never even heard Salsa music. Now she’s out every Friday night living it up in the Salsa clubs, and wowing the crowds with her natural style and smooth moves.

We can recall how our Design colleague Ben was at an all time low creatively just a few weeks ago, and now after a personal creative breakthrough, is producing some of the freshest most exciting designs since his days at design school 10 years ago.

So why DO we find it so hard to recognise - and more crucially to VALUE – our own creative progress?

The obvious reason is that we have less objectivity.

Because we’re with ourselves 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it’s more difficult to stand back and get that perspective we get when we’re away from other people for periods of time.

Another reason is we tend to be less kind with ourselves about our achievements.

When we do create something amazing, we brush it off with casual comments like: “Yeh it’s pretty good I suppose, but anyone could’ve done it, it’s nothing special.”

So how CAN we get better at recognising our progress, giving ourselves more encouragement and being more creative?

A great technique to use is to have a Tiny Landmarks chart.

This is a chart that can be as simple as a sheet of A3 paper pinned up on our wall, where we note our “Tiny Landmarks” – the small but significant achievements in our creative lives, and the day we achieve them.

But calling it Tiny Landmarks, doesn’t that belittle our achievements, you might ask?

No, quite the opposite. As we talked about before, often we dismiss our creative achievements as not being important or significant. So we get in the habit of not acknowledging ANY of them, even though we're striding forward.

By allowing ourselves to record “tiny” landmarks, as well as major ones, we can see how we gradually and steadily build on our efforts, step by step, day by day.

Here are some example of some Tiny Landmarks you might record:

- 1st finished poem

- 5th published article

- 1st review in an art journal

- 3rd painting completed this year

- 1st blog entry to get a comment

- 1st commissioned portrait

- 10th piece of jewellery sold

- 1st A3 collage completed

- 1st 1000 words of new book written

- 3rd consecutive day of creating for an hour in the morning

- 1st song completed on new album

- 1st public performance of a poem

There are thousands of possible others. They can be as small as you wish, remember each step is a significant one.

At the end of each month, look back at your landmarks chart and see how much you’ve progressed.

By seeing the areas you’ve progressed with, this technique can also help you plan for how you want to develop your creativity in the future.

You can see which areas you’re naturally strong in, and which areas you might want to dedicate more time, energy and learning to.

Using a Tiny Landmarks chart is a brilliant way of tracking your creative progress, and as a result helping you be more creative.

Start yours today and see how effectively it increases your creativity.

Want to learn more about how to be more creative? Then sign up to "Create Create!" - Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin's free twice monthly ezine - today, and get your FREE copy of the “Explode Your Creativity!” Action Workbook. Head on over now to www.CoachCreative.com