…of things, thoughts, and happenings.
Paying Focus and Attention
Creative people must learn to
- Pay attention while creating a focus.
- Collect ideas everywhere you can.
- Take notes and review them.
Paying attention is crucial in generating ideas.The pilot slang term for that, according to Micheal Michalko, is getting tone. When a fighter pilot says “I’ve got tone” it means they have the target on radar lock. Imagine that thing you see in movies when the missile is locked on a moving object.Remember how it follows the object no matter where it goes? When the object jumps, it jumps, when the object swerves, the missile swerves. That is getting tone. Your focus must be locked to your goal securely but it is a necessity to pay attention to your experience as well.
We tend to live life experiencing tremendous amount of information, scenes, and happenings that sometimes we tend to move towards life with our eyes glazed. The “looking but not seeing” syndrome.
Set an IDEA Quota
If I tell you there are fifty words here, you will find it. And maybe more.
The Idea Quota Exercise is a challenge for you to work on and achieve. Be specific in what your goals are and the timeline you have to follow. If you are a writer and is planning to write a book (or not), set a quota of say, three chapters a week. If you are a photographer, aim for a shoot a week. If you are a travel junkie, aim to travel twelve times a year. If you do pottery, set a goal of producing pottery every two months. If you are a singer, make sure you sing at least three to four times a week. If you wish to be a blogger, you blog at least every other day.
It’s like setting up a pattern for yourself to follow….and for others to familiarize you with. When you say you’re a professor, people will assume you are teaching. If you say you are a photographer, they will ask how long have you been taking photos and how often. A regular pattern of you doing what you are supposed to be doing also builds confidence and credibility <— but that’s another topic to tackle.
Now, where was I?
One idea, no matter how silly, will give birth to other ideas and so on and so forth. This exercise of setting an idea quota is a practice to stretch your mind. It’s like a word game. You are told that in the puzzle there are fifty words to find, your mind will look for it until it’s found. The mind has been told of a specific goal and it will work to achieve that goal. If you have set your mind to become a major loser by telling it that it will fail in everything it will do…most likely, it will fail because that’s what it is aiming at. That’s the goal you directed it to. That’s why it is necessary to identify your creative pattern first.
Set a specific quota and oblige yourself to follow it.
The first five ones will be difficult. You may start feeling no connection to whatsoever that you are doing. For example, you’ve decided to get a career in event organizing. If you wish to come up with good events, will yourself to produce unique concepts of events every two weeks. The first event that comes to mind will always be the ones you have experienced and seen. Remember them. Jot them down. That is the first step to becoming a good event organizer. Then write the parties that you want to attend but have not had the opportunity. Write why you like them. Combine. Write the things you appreciate in the parties you have attended and add details you wish were there to make it cooler. Start with the music, then the ambiance, what kind of food? how about parties where you can sing on the stage if you want to? how about parties where all who attend gets to ramp like a fashion model? Jot them all down, no matter how far-fetched. then arrange them. and then read them again. The more ideas you generate, the more chances you are to come up with something unique.
Thomas Edison set a quota of minor inventions every ten days and major inventions every six months. He exercised his mind and his workers’. He holds a record of 1,093 patents.
Forcing yourself to achieve your quota will help your mind work and will push your body to engage. A working mind will generate ideas. The first ideas will always be about the obvious, as they are the ideas that your mind are so familiar with. The better ideas come when you are have exhausted the obvious and you are forced to think beyond what you are familiar with.
How can you think beyond what you know?
One word. Research.
The irony in coming up with original ideas, is that you have to be familiar with other ideas first.
You want to blog about fashion? For God’s sake, research about other fashion bloggers. What makes them so great. What things do they do that interest people. What are the things they are doing that you don’t think is ok. What type of conversation they engage their readers. What topics do they love to talk about. What is lacking in their articles. What designers do they rave about? Check their fashion sense. Is it similar with yours? Study them. Imitate. Innovate. Add some, deduct a little, and perfect yourself by learning through their mistakes.
There are so many things to learn in the world. And genius requires rigid learning.
Go through the motions of the role you wish to become.
Research doesn’t only mean scouring information in books and online portals. You have to learn by acting it as well. For example, if you want to be an artist, go through the motions of being an artist. Take art classes and or workshops, go to galleries and look at other works of art. Engage in artistic conversation. Learn from the discussions of other artists. Find a mentor to teach you what good art is. Start to imitate until you find your signature. Be a your own test case. Mimic until you understand what a true artist really means. They say artists are crazy, then act crazy for once and see if you like it. You may not become the next Leonardo da Vinci but you will, at least, become more adequate than the one who neither has the intention nor practice. If you act like it, you will eventually become it.
There is no definite way to know how far your intentions and actions will take you. If you come to think of it, our world offers no guarantees in our lives— only opportunities to play with. Reaching for the sun, doesn’t necessarily mean you can steal it from the sky, but you won’t end up with mud in your hands either.
When you have influenced your mind that it is creative it will start to behave creatively.
If you expect it to produce great ideas, it will work towards it because once you have believed yourself to be creative, that you are someone who can do better than what you are doing in the present, you will begin to see the value in your ideas. Eventually, as you learn more everyday, you will develop the persistence to implement them.
So get busy.
What is your creative pattern?
What’s the difference between creative people and not? Self-perception.
Creative people think they are creative and non-creative people think creativity is beyond them.
When you see yourself as a source that has no creativity in the bone, you organize yourself in a way where you personally discount any creative opportunities—just by dismissing the possibilities that you may come up with something creative today.
So how do you see yourself?
Below are three slates. One has a squiggle, one is blank, and one has a dot. Which one are you?
Most people would choose the squiggle. Some the Blank sheet.Few would choose the one with a dot in the center. Continue reading→
Maximizing light with Lito Sy
Camera Club of Davao recently organized a workshop by Lito Sy in Gap Farm last Feb 5, 2010 where more than twenty photographers, including myself, were invited to attend. In this workshop, he shared the basic behavior and characteristics of light and how to control it in when doing a portraiture.
Baseco, the land of no names.
After commuting via bus, jeepney, and tricycle, I arrived at the infamous place called Baseco in Tondo, Manila. The big trucks, the crowd, even the way the shacks are placed are not foreign to me. It maybe my first time in Baseco, but it is not my first time to visit a crowded impoverished community like this.
Doesn’t matter if its the first time or the nth time, places like this will always be overwhelming. It is something that one just cannot be immune to, no matter how many times one visits informal settler communities.
I saw half naked children playing on the side of the street oblivious to the dirt, pollution, and stench. Mothers cooking their meals outside their humble abode. Endless sari-sari stores selling junk food and drinks. Gambling teenagers. Shouting fathers. And a sleeping dog with a cigarette in his mouth.
I trudged on a cement trail that probably witnessed countless evolving lives of the residents. The mute witness of the routine of the people who relentlessly fight to live their lives the way they only know how…survive.
The trail of garbage also seemed endless, just as the problems of these people were.
As I walk pass them, I thought, “one has to get out of this place if one wants something right to happen to them” But who am I to say that what they have is not good? Why did I initially find it so bad? They have a home to go home to, friends to call upon, and families, though struggling, seem to make the best of what they have.
I have met families who have houses but cannot seem to buy the warmth it needed. Fathers who’ve lost their sons in video games and drugs. Mothers who fill the void of being needed by shopping useless gifts that their children take for granted. How can one have everything they wanted and end up needing so much more than the impoverished family living in the squatter area?
They waved and smiled, and trustingly posed for the camera, never hesitating even if the one who is taking it is a stranger… They laugh at little things, get delighted at small gifts they find in the garbage along the shore, so easy is laughter to them, I noticed…They do not burden the stranger with any sorrow that is lodged between the armpits of their lives.
Before finding my way on this trail, the president found his way to the tribunal where he would recite his State of the Nation Address. But his was prepared in red carpet with countless guards to protect him. With people in their best dresses, better than the best Sunday dress the people in the slum area could ever have. Women in beautiful gowns and elegant jewelry that people in Baseco would have to work for all their lives..and would die trying…before they could even own one…if they ever get to own one.
The president delivered his speech and life went on in the slums.
And I’m thinking to myself, how extravagant the preparations were made so that the president can deliver his less-than-an-hour speech. How elegant the dresses the people who attended it. How tight the security, when these people live without having to lock their doors…because there is no door.
Why there are no celebrations to show the courage the squatter folks have. No dinners to commemorate how industrious and creative they live their lives amidst financial difficulties. But romanticizing poverty is not right either because nobody deserves an endless cycle of hunger and fatigue because the system that’s supposed to protect and help them is unfair. The ability to struggle and survive amidst corruption and systematic poverty is not to be applauded. They do not need to be celebrated. What they need is change.
Opportunities to be heard have been denied to them so many times because they were in this side of life where their voices, no matter loud, are not heard. The president’s speech means nothing to them because the programs does not reach them. One can always hope that this will not always be this way. Someone, hopefully, with enough power, will raise a question and the government will have to answer. Hopefully soon…sooner, I hope.
