Since I started writing these blogs, I am in the habit
of writing them on Mondays and using the rest of the week for making corrections
and looking for a suitable photo or for making one. Until now I succeeded to
write a blog every week, unless I had a good reason not to do it. Nevertheless,
I wondered whether it is an effective routine, for sometimes it’s quite an
effort to produce a text. Now and then I simply fail to have ideas, even though
in the end there is always a result.
On the Internet you can find many advices how to
improve your creativity. Often they are an “open door” for me (which is a Dutch
expression saying that something is obvious). “Define the problem”, I found on
a website. Yes, of course, but that’s often just the problem, although it is
not bad to call attention to it, for I think that one of the main causes of
having a writer’s block is that one simply doesn’t know what to write about.
Therefore the question what the problem is and whether it is well defined is
always the first thing I ask myself, when I have problems with my creativity.
Also the other tips on the webpage of PowerHomeBiz.com
(see below) are not new to me, but I think that especially this tip is
important: Alter your routine regularly. It’s one reason I always read books on
different themes. On the other hand,
I cannot say that my trips and travels help me much to improve my philosophical creativity, although they
do help to improve my photographic
creativity, for when away from home I make always my best pictures (see for
instance www.henkbijdeweg.nl).
On a page of Psychology
Today (see below), I found a tip that is not really surprising but I had
never thought about it: Optimize your peak time. At certain points of the day
you are being best in this, at other points in that, so be creative during your
most creative hours. How stupid that I hadn’t thought of it before. Although I
must admit, that for practical reasons you cannot always do what you want to do
at your “best” moments: How would your boss react, if you would take a nap in
the afternoon during working hours? Anyway, I wondered what my creative peak
time is. The result is a bit surprising for what does the web page say? “Most
adults perform their best right as they begin to slump in terms of wakefulness.”
So I have to take a nap, or almost, in order to write down my most creative
ideas! It’s a bit contradictory, for how to type my ideas, when I fall asleep?
But okay, my next question is then: at which time do I fall asleep? The answer
is: “At around 2pm, sleepiness tends to peak.” It’s true; it’s also my
experience, but it is also my experience that my creativity is at its top about
three hours later, when I am fully awake again. But I shall not object for
psychologists say it.
Since I pretend that my blogs are critical, or at
least that most are, I was also interested in my critical peak. This appears to
be at the end of the morning: “If you get paid to think critically, try to get
most of your work done in the late morning, right after a warm shower.” So,
it’s a bit a problem for me that the best moments to write my blogs have
different peak times, not counting the fact that I do my physical workouts always
after I have mentally emptied my mind, so at the end of the afternoon or early
in the evening, and it’s always after these exercises that I take a warm shower
(and become sleepy, indeed).
But as we have just seen: The PowerHomeBiz website
advices to change your routine now and then, so why not to give it a try and
make a new routine: I’ll go for a bike ride or do another workout in the
morning, then I take a warm shower, and after a short lunch I become sleepy and
can express my critical creativity. But then I ignore the fact that “the
afternoon (12pm-4pm) is prime time for distractions”, as the Psychology Today website says, and this
would involve that I would just then have to do my exercises and be creative.
Moreover, my body doesn’t like to exercise in the morning, for it’s stiff. The
upshot is: Man is a barrel filled with contradictions.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-work/201212/5-big-discoveries-about-personal-effectiveness-in-2012
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