Having taken the decision to focus more on developing my freelance business, one of the areas that I’ve had to take a close look at is my working processes.
I live in a small 3 bedroom rented flat and am not at a point where it would make any sort of financial sense to look into renting either my own or a shared office space. Working from my bedroom does present a few problems, the major one being the fact that it does not provide the kind of working environment that I have been used to.
I’ve spent most of my working life in offices doing administrative jobs. In these environments, there has always been very few distractions – restricted or no access to the internet etc. The nature of the work means that the emphasis on minimising distractions is right to ensure that productivity is kept to a high – distractions only reduce the amount of time spent focusing on the work at hand.
When it comes to creative work though, how far should you go in taking steps to ensure that you do not become distracted when you’re working?
Like a lot of creative people, I tend to find that my best ideas are often the ones that come to me when I’m not working. I am not at my most productive when I just sit down with a pad and pen and try to force the ideas out. The reality is that the majority of our influences and creative sparks are generated by the world around us, inspiration comes at unexpected times and often from unexpected sources. For this reason, I deliberately build time to be distracted into my working day!
Have a look at this article from Freelance Advisor. While their key message might be about avoiding feelings of isolation and de-motivation, I think there is a lot of sensible advice that can be transferred to stimulating the creative process. The final sentence sums things up quite well:
“One of the biggest advantages of working from home is that, unlike your office-bound associates who have to be in the building during the working day, you have the freedom to choose where you work. And working from home doesn’t mean you always have to work at home.”
A friend of mine was telling me about a design studio he worked in while he lived in South Africa. Every Friday afternoon, the team took their work to the beach, the change of scenery helping to stimulate the creative process.
The major (non-financial) benefit of working from home is that you can take time to decide exactly when and where you are at your most creative and build your working processes around them.
Some of my favourite things to do while working from home:
- Social Networking – reading a few of my favourite Twitter Feeds (@designfollow is a particular favourite), checking what my friends are up to on Facebook.
- Internet Surfing – checking the latest from the BBC, NBA etc.
- Going to National Trust places – I love to get out to a beautiful gardens with my camera, my bible and a lot of space to think!
- Painting – not something I do as often as I like/should.
- Playing my Guitar – There’s nothing like singing a few songs while strumming the guitar to relax you.
I also ensure that I always have a great soundtrack for my working day. I love music and having something playing in the background always helps my creativity.
Sometimes when you’ve got a deadline looming it can be quite hard to force yourself to take a step back, to stop directly thinking about what your working on and allow your mind to wander and make subconscious connections between unrelated subjects and the brief at hand.
A few years back I got a box of Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s “Oblique Strategies”. The idea behind them is that at a point where you are struggling creatively, you pick a card and just do whatever it says, regardless of what it is. Here are a couple that I thought were quite pertinent:
- Take a break
- Go outside. Shut the door
- What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate
- Do nothing for as long as possible
- Think: Inside the work, outside the work
While a lot of people who work in administrative roles (like I have) talk about burning out because of the shear volume of work they are undertaking, I find that I burn out because of the volume of direct thinking about a project. I need to take time out to do something different, be distracted and come back with a fresh set of eyes (something that I find is key to the success of coming back to a brief, post-distraction, is not to tidy things away pre-distraction. It’s hard to look at things with a fresh set of eyes when in fact you are looking at something different to before).
Like most things in life, the key is to find a balance – distract yourself enough to ensure that you are getting sufficient inspiration from the outside world, but not so much that your work-ethic and, as a result, your deadlines and, therefore, your relationship with your client, are adversely affected.
I hope that reading this post has helped to distract you someway to whatever your trying to achieve creatively!
