Creative Focus - What The Story Of Antonio's Restaurant Can Teach You About Being Creatively Focused

Do you struggle to focus on just one creative project at a time?

Are there creative projects at various staged of completion scattered all over your workspace and beyond?

Let me tell you the story of a chef named Antonio.

About 3 years ago, Antonio, after working for over 20 years as a chef in other people’s restaurants, achieved his dream of opening his own. Antonio was a highly talented chef and had glowing reviews about his food wherever he’d worked.

So naturally, Antonio wanted to bring his best dishes to his new restaurant and give his customers the most delicious food. He also believed in giving the customers as much choice as possible, so his first menu at the grand opening of “Antonio’s” featured no less than 47 different dishes.

The opening was a resounding success, and just a few months later, Antonio’s was packed with a full sitting night after night.

For Antonio though, running the restaurant was proving tough.

His 47 dish menu meant he had to keep in stock a massive range of ingredients. And since he insisted on using fresh ingredients, as well as being expensive, a great amount was thrown away if certain special dishes weren’t ordered for a few nights.

There was another problem. As Antonio was a highly creative and ambitious chef, he loved nothing more than coming up with new dishes and his special twists on old favourites. But because he was so busy trying to cook such a huge range of dishes, he never had time to try anything new.

Though his restaurant was packed night after night, Antonio was actually losing money, as well as being totally exhausted. Trying to prepare so many different dishes to such a high standard was taking its toll. And this was only a couple of months in.

Antonio knew he couldn’t carry on this way. He had to get take some radical action to get focused.

He took the very brave step of drastically culling his menu. He cut the near-50 different dishes down to just 15. 5 starters, 5 mains, 5 desserts.

Antonio took his best and most popular dishes and built a new streamlined menu. The impact was almost immediate.

Two weeks later, Antonio’s restaurant had become even MORE popular.

Because of the new simplified menu, his customers were starting to find their favourite dishes. Then they’d recommend these to their friends.

Before, Antonio’s would get recommendations, but more general ones about how good the food was. Now people were saying things like “You’ve just gotta try Antonio’s Spaghetti Puttanesca, it’s the best I’ve ever tasted” and “You haven’t experienced Manicotti Florentine until you’ve experienced ANTONIO’S Manicotti Florentine…”

The simpler menu also meant Antonio needed to keep far fewer ingredients in stock. Which meant less wastage, and therefore more funds to invest in even better quality ingredients.

Antonio could now once more satisfy his creative urges and desire to learn more.

He’d have friends and family over to try new recipes every few weeks. Each month, Antonio would add the best 1 or 2 of these new dishes to the restaurant menu, but replace dishes already there, keeping his simple 5 starters, 5 mains, 5 desserts menu intact.

This way, he kept all the benefits of the streamlined menu and customers coming back to order favourite dishes and telling their friends. Plus, introducing a new couple of dishes each month gave people new reasons to come back, and it satisfied Antonio’s ambitions to continually create new dishes.

Antonio’s restaurant became a fantastic success because he took his creative abilities and got focused.

It meant everything he produced was more enjoyable, and created with more care. And it freed him up to experiment with new ideas 1 or 2 at a time, then introduce them gradually.

How can you learn from Antonio’s story?

How does it relate to your creative life and the way you create?

Just imagine what can happen when get your creativity focused in a way like Antonio did. How would that change how, what and when you created?

Finally, what one tip from Antonio’s story can you start to apply to your creativity today?

There are many ways to increase your creative focus. I invite you to take a positive step to be more creative today by downloading your free copy of the powerful and practical "Explode Your Creativity!" Action Workbook at http://www.CoachCreative.com

From Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin