Strategy as Creative Escape

I escaped to a special place today and have been sinking into one of my favourite creative activities - business design.

I know, it’s not crafty or particularly whimsical to most and but it feels really good to me. I can lose myself in the momentum of it, coming up with ideas that build on one another and connecting dots that seemed completely separate while also easing some angst by being productive.

Immersing myself in the work of problem solving hits all the elements of flow for me (clear goals, balance of skill and challenge, unambiguous feedback, focused concentration , sense of control and feeling of effortlessness), and I find myself losing time in the best possible way.

This past month has been filled with new people, new workshops and tests for The Creativity Campus. It’s been fun and tough and it’s shown me my current model needs some tweaking along with my focus and my schedule.

In my work with founders over the years I’ve seen some common traps and opportunities now, with some satisfaction, I find myself falling into them.

Right now the trap is following the shiny things and the opportunity is the amazing number of things to test.

 Doing some reflection followed by this start, stop, continue exercise was just what I needed to turn my flow and creative energy toward this shiny thing trap. In short - I need to stop getting pulled into work that’s not playing to my strengths, start putting my experiences to work telling the story of this business and continue having conversations and building  relationships with the amazing people who buy into the power for creativity as a force for connection and resilience.

So what about you? What tools or tricks do you use to get back on track when you find yourself chasing shiny things? And how does your creativity come into play?