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Changing the Way Creativity Happens
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POSTED IN: Consistent Creative Action, Positive Psychology, Shaping: Mind, Time, Space.
May 17, 2012 by Jeffrey

Why Morning Routines Fail & What to Do

Image: notsalmon.com
Most attempts to establish morning routines fail. Why? Because of .2 seconds. And an elephant. Break-out thinker Jeffrey Davis explains.

You yearn to rise each morning brimming with purpose of your own making. For 45 minutes or three hours, you desire to hold yourself captive in that creative space defined only by you.

If you’re a team leader, you want your members to dive into that state of effortless and meaningful flow so your team can move forward on its objectives.

You know the pay-offs, right? You’ve read about morning routines from Leo Babauta and every other productivity guru, right?

Well, let me remind you in concrete terms, and then I’ll inform you of what often goes awry – and why. And then let me suggest what you can do about what goes wrong.

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POSTED IN: Consistent Creative Action, Positive Psychology, Shaping: Mind, Time, Space.
May 15, 2012 by Jeffrey

The Secret Stance to Create What Matters

Neruda

1. To Stand & Stare

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
- W. H. Davies

(from Good Poems, Selected by Garrison Keillor)

That’s one question I’m living in these days.  

It’s a stance to take these digit-dazed days, to stand and stare.

This is a non-action action vital to optimal productivity over the long haul. And it’s crucial to the numerous thriving creatives and scholars with whom I work and talk.

I’m less interested in quick creative spurts or in serial creative entrepreneurship for profit’s sake.

I’m more interested in what factors help us shape a meaningful, coherent, creative life over four, five, six, seven decades. Not years. In what helps us craft a life that includes both revenue and purpose and captivating creativity – the kind of creativity that holds you captive plus holds your tribes spellbound.

Case in point: One of my client’s first books comes out with Ann Godoff and Penguin Press in July. The book, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, traces the spiritual life of John Cage, arguably the mid-twentieth century’s most controversial and most influential thinker and artist.

“This is the result of 15 years of work,” the art critic-cum practitioner-cum author Kay Larson recently told me. 15 years! And she’s working with one of publishing’s star editors and preparing to launch an extraordinary tour of talks and events. That’s stamina that captivates me.

I’m interested in what factors help us sustain our creative momentum and make of this one wild life a creative quest.

One of those factors is space.  A Mind Break is a shaped space between create-and-work flows. The capacity to take Mind Breaks and shape space inside and outside – that’s crucial. Why?

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POSTED IN: Consistent Creative Action, Positive Psychology, Shaping: Mind, Time, Space.
May 9, 2012 by Jeffrey

Tracking Wonder Updates (May ’12) – Rest for Optimal Creativity

REST MATTERS. Creative work consumes a lot of energy. Blood sugar burns as you take problem-solving risks and inhibit distracting impulses.

A few “hows” I’ve re-confirmed this past month:

  • How you rest well can distinguish you as a flash-in-the-pan creative sprinter or as a creative long-distance runner.
  • How you interact emotionally with people you serve can deplete you or drive you for more.
  • How you start the day changes everything.

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POSTED IN: Consistent Creative Action, Positive Psychology, Shaping: Mind, Time, Space.
April 18, 2012 by Jeffrey

12 Ways to Shape the Day for Delight & Wonder

Note: Jen Louden, Susannah Conway, and Marianne Elliott requested I and others riff on what brings us each creative joy. This guide is my reply. It started as a personal riff to my self about what’s important and how Thoreau’s and Dillard’s sentiments have driven me for 20-plus years. Hence, the images are personal. And then it became this guide. Enjoy and join them at http://www.creativejoyretreat.com/. They are amazing people.

 

“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts.” – Henry David Thoreau

 “Each day is a god.” – Annie Dillard

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POSTED IN: Creative Innovation, Fertile Confusion, Positive Psychology, Shaping: Mind, Time, Space, Tracking Wonder Conversations.
April 11, 2012 by Jeffrey

Tracking Wonder with Tara Mohr: Your Other Names as a Creative

Tracking Wonder Conversations (TWC)
talks about creative momentum in work and life
As someone who thrives on creating day-in, day-out, you know that creative momentum requires more than “getting things done.” Along the way, you must make space for wonder as your ally. The Tracking Wonder Conversations aim to do just that. Join us for lively twists of talk each month as we speak with scientists, teachers, designers, coaches, musicians, entrepreneurs, writers, and others who flourish in their fields about topics that matter and questions that aren’t always easily answered.

 

 Tracking Wonder with Tara Mohr:
Your Other Names as a Creative

In this premiere episode of Tracking Wonder Conversations, I speak with author Tara Mohr, an expert in well-being & women’s leadership, about the role of knowing thyself as a creative professional and creative practitioner.

Know what matters to you and what you want and how to go about getting it, and you should be able to create day-in, day-out the life and work you pine for. Right?

Umm…except one question: Who are you?  The Greek Delphi adage “Know thyself” is not so easy to follow. At least according to psychologist and author of Stranger to Ourselves Timothy Wilson. In that tidy, seminal book, Wilson lays out a key tenet – that  most of what shapes what we think is important to ourselves, how we act, and the life choices we make is, well, unconscious.

And how do you tap the unconscious? How do you know what’s unknown? Psychology offers one series of routes. But, as we’ll explore today, so does creativity and tracking wonder.

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POSTED IN: Consistent Creative Action.
April 10, 2012 by Jeffrey

Financial Planning for Creatives

Happy Money by Deborah Carlson

Note: The following is a guest article by Luna Jaffe, Chief Executive Officer of Lunaria Financial, a firm that specializes in helping creatives cultivate a healthy, sustainable relationship with money. I love that. And I love Luna’s work. She makes the topic of money sound almost fun with a shade of wonder. -Jeffrey

Most creatives would prefer having a root canal over making an appointment with a financial planner.  The dread of talking about money can lead to avoidance, denial, anger or utter confusion.

How do you as a creative know that you need financial advisement?  And if so, how do you find and receive financial advice that helps you develop competence and use creativity to build healthy strategies and investment savvy?

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April 4, 2012 by Jeffrey

Beyond Creativity Hubbub: Inspiration from Poetry Chapbook Publishers

Image: http://library.sc.edu

At a busy intersection in Midtown, a man well over six feet tall with long wavy hair, tired eyes, a languid French accent, and a lavender suede jacket stuttered to two Asian women. “Oh, you want a DVD Blue Ray?” one of the women said. “Yes, yes, a blue ray, yes, that’s it,” he said as he continued to stutter in what struck me as intentionally broken English. I smelled a con and kept walking toward 34th Street to find CUNY’s Chapbook Festival.

I was curious if we creatives and enterprisers might learn a thing or two from a group you won’t read about in most books on creativity or creative enterprising – small publishers of poetry chapbooks. It seemed like as good a place as any to track wonder.

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POSTED IN: Consistent Creative Action, Creative Collaboration, Creative Innovation, Field Guide: Learning the ropes of your creative field.
March 26, 2012 by Jeffrey

Fling the Beast: Yoga and Creativity Training

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To sit in the mystery of your best self’s offering is delicious and unnerving. You see the vision of who you are becoming and of what you can give. But when the mouth of possibility awes open, you also feel, well, terror creep its little hairy fingers right up the back of your neck.

One way to fling that hairy beast off your back altogether is to lift off. Take gut action toward what you know rings right for your best self. Trust. Let uncertainty exhilarate you toward the great blue yonder of your heart’s desire.

It’s not impulsive. It’s intuitive. It’s confident.

I’m asking you to listen. Not to me. But right now to that great still voice within. To that not-so-small something that says, Look at how you’re unfolding. Isn’t it magnificent? And then respond. Act.

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POSTED IN: Creative Collaboration, Creative Innovation, Fertile Confusion.
March 19, 2012 by Jeffrey

A Bias for Mystery & Deep Curiosity

The day can blaze past in a flurry of to-do’s. We can chase indiscriminately after knowledge and tips and advice so we can shore up our emotions against so much uncertainty.

 

And yet another part of the day also rides the mystery train. How do we get on board?

Lost creator J.J. Abrams tells the story of how decades ago his grandfather would take him to Lou Tannen’s magic store in New York City. One day there he bought a Tannen’s Mystery Box, a huge cardboard box emblazoned with a big question mark. $50 of magic for $15. To Abrams, the box represents his grandfather, a man of endless curiosity.

But the mystery box, Abrams says, also “represents infinite possibility. It represents hope. It represents potential. And what I love about this box, and what I realize I sort of do in whatever it is that I do, is I find myself drawn to infinite possibility, that sense of potential. And I realize that mystery is the catalyst for imagination.”

The twentieth century’s most celebrated person of knowledge agrees: “The most beautiful thing we can experience,” the frizzy-haired Einstein writes, “is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science.”

How do we open that “catalyst for imagination”? How do we nurture that mystery box so it stays open?

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POSTED IN: Consistent Creative Action, Creative Innovation, Field Guide: Learning the ropes of your creative field.
March 7, 2012 by Jeffrey

A Training To Train Your Best Self to Show Up for Your Muse & Your Tribes

I want to tell you about a training. It’s a training to train your best self to do your greatest creative work in the world. And it’s a training that opens the way for you to do likewise for your clients, your students, your teams, your tribes.

You and I know the challenges of living this one wild life creatively day-in, day-out. Obligations drain your time. Distractions suck up your focus. Unforeseen complications frustrate you. And moods derail your once wide-eyed enthusiasm. And then there’s revenue. And having a unique offering for your tribe. And building that tribe.

Where’s the wonder?

The distance and residential training I’m offering this May through September won’t resolve all those matters. It won’t make living this one wild life easy. But I guarantee four things this training will give you:

  • a system and tools that will help you focus, imagine, persevere, and sculpt time to show up for your best creative work when you need to (not just when you feel like it);
  • an incomparable confidence and know-how to create and facilitate experiences for your clients and tribes;
  • the know-how and support to become a thought leader in your field;
  • ongoing support of & mentoring from a tribe of committed, experienced creatives, teachers, coaches, entrepreneurs, and facilitators

But there’s only room for a few of you remarkable people.  And if you apply and register before March 15, you’ll get a nice Early-Bird Discount.

You can fill out the application now and send me an email message that it’s on its way.

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