On a daily basis, I research on different creative realms, predominantly - photography, street photography, good practices from successful creatives from different domains Over a period of time the innate analytics mind in me try to ponder patterns, and insights from this autodidactic database of creative learning.
One of that insight I’ve came across different realms of creatives is “Restricting yourself to nurture creativity”. There are numerous references of this phenomenon across different realms and by a varied set of creative visionaries.
Restricting yourself could mean many things -
Make rules for yourself, where you create a time block where you are not allowed to do anything but create. Neil Gaiman, the best selling author, creator of books, films and short stories, talks about in an interview, about restricting yourself to blocks of time where he created a rule for himself to do absolutely nothing or write, he is not allowed to read a book, watch tv or play games. He has to either do absolutely nothing or write.
Shoot using a fixed focal length lens for a prolonged time in the order of months or even years. For photographers out there, this might often be counter intuitive. Especially amateurs, If someone tells a beginner photographer that you have a better shot at being creative if you just use your 24mm prime lens than using that versatile 24-70mm lens, which covers a good range of focal length, he/she wouldn’t be able to fathom any of it.Ralph Gibson the prolific photographer,Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, and acclaimed author of famous photo books have used a 50mm for almost 5 decades. He has published books( such as Quadrats ) with photographs taken with a single focal length of 50mm and pretty much standing within a fixed distance from the subject.
Using restrictive tools for the trade: it could mean just shooting on a monochrome camera. For example, acclaimed black and white photographer and founder of the Street Photography International(SPI), Alan Schaller advocates shooting with monochrome cameras and opines that removing the option to shoot in color liberated his creativity. The monochrome series of Leica M cameras the artist uses - do not have an option of color pictures, it liberates your mind of finding or thinking about colors altogether.
Make boredom your friend: Seth Godin, the famous American author, talks about a time when he went into a western desert to get bored so that he can produce new work.This helped him eliminate the allure of various distractions. He also famously blogs every single day and talks about how writer’s block doesn’t really exist. Once you are a professional, you need to show up and do the work, even on days when you are feeling bored or not so creative. Make boredom your friend to urge the creativity in you.
Remove the allure of perfection: In the modern world we have myriad lots of tools to create. In the case of writing for example, our intuition would suggest writing on word doc or any modern editor would give us the flexibility of superior editing, re-writing and finishing. However writing on a piece of paper, crossing things out , re-writing e.t.c would free ourselves of getting a perfect page but instead opens up the parachutes of creative writing. Additionally there are various studies which corroborate the link between the act of writing and memory and creativity.
