Ep 13 - What To Do With Too Many Creative Ideas
When you’re overwhelmed with ideas and a never ending to-do list, it can feel impossible to move forward in life, home, work and creativity. In this episode, we talk about a simple strategy to create ease and mental clarity so you can move forward intentionally with your ideas.
In This Episode Keita Discusses:
· The positives and negatives of having a creative mind flooded with ideas.
· How brain dumping creates mental clarity.
· How to sort through your ideas logically so you can move forward with clarity.
Mentioned in this Episode:
DM Keita, @artbykeita on instagram with your process and how this episode helped you.
Don’t forget to leave a review and share with a friend if you found this episode helpful - that way we can reach more painty mamas who would benefit from what we talk about here on the podcast!
00:05
Hello, and welcome to the painty mama podcast! We're taught that artists are poor. Throw kids in the mix and it seems impossible to thrive. While balancing motherhood, creative projects, and building a business along with everything else is hard. I believe the universe gave you your unique talents and children so you could live a full inspiring, creative, beautiful life together. Join me for conversations about creativity, motherhood, business, and finding calm in the chaos. I'm Keita Thomas and this is the painty mama podcast.
00:39
Hello, lovely, and welcome to the painty mama podcast. Seriously, I just want to take a moment to truly say thank you for being here. I know how valuable your time is, and your brain space is. And just; I'm incredibly grateful that you're here with me today. And I don't think it's an accident that you've come across this episode. And I hope that as we talk about what to do with, and how to manage having too many creative ideas, you find some really valuable points that will help you to move forward in your creative life. And don't forget to leave a review if you're enjoying the podcast, it really, really helps me to get our message out to the painty mamas who really need to hear everything that we're talking about here on the podcast, so on with the episode. So as creatives, painters, and makers of all the things; as humans, we experience seasons, we've got seasons of drought, where we feel stuck or dried up in our ideas, which can be kind of paralyzing and disheartening, but we also have seasons of overabundance. And that's kind of what I want to talk about today where you might have too many thoughts and ideas about what to create, which can be equally as paralyzing when you're flipping from one thing to another and not actually moving forward with anything, as your energy feels like it's almost fragmented and pulled in the direction of a million different ideas. Maybe they're living in your head, or on post it notes (which is, in my case, I can always tell when there's too many because I have like a million post its littering my desk), or maybe in five different lists in five different notebooks. And as always, I come to you here on the podcast, other work in progress myself, as I'm also a student of this problem. But there are a few things that I have really found work for me and I just wanted to share those with you today. Just to see if that can also help you as much as it's helped me a lot to kind of filter through and prioritize my ideas, because it doesn't seem like it would be a problem having too many ideas, too little ideas we recognize, but I do find having too many ideas can be equally as stagnating as far as moving forward with my business and creativity goes. So I hope this helps. So I'm also recording this podcast with children in the background. So you might hear their delightful squeals as we're recording, but they are with me because this is life! And this is exactly what we talk about here. Rolling life, work, motherhood, artistry all into one. So I'm living what I'm talking about here on the podcast right now.
03:30
So how does this overabundance of ideas come about? Well, I think it's actually a good thing. Even though sometimes it can feel like it's not a good thing, I actually want to take a minute to say, congratulations because you're in the flow. And you should, if you are in that space, you should really give yourself a pat on the back because the creativity of life is pulsing through you at such a rapid rate. So let's just take a second to appreciate the beauty of your creative brain. The fact that you have so many creative ideas, all flooding in at once is actually a really beautiful thing. And something that is quite a gift that you have. You've opened your heart and your mind to possibility and inspiration which can feel amazing. But it can also be easy to get stuck living there. I find this something addictive about that state where you want to keep it going and keep the ideas flowing because it feels good. But in order to keep the water of creativity if you think of it like a river if you want to keep it flowing, it needs to have some decisions made so that it can free up the flow of the river otherwise that will clog up the flow of it like a like a dam.
04:48
There's a quote by Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic I just want to share with you because I feel like her analogy is better than mine. What she says is "possessing a creative mind after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet, it needs work or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble. Give your mind a job to do or else or find a job to do. And you might not like the job, it invents (eating the couch, digging a hole through the living room floor, biting the mailman, etc). It's taken me years to learn this. But it does seem to be the case that if I'm not actively creating something, then I'm probably actively destroying something, myself, a relationship or my own peace of mind". I just love that quote so much. I think it really illustrates the importance of what I'm talking about, if we don't clear our minds of all of the inspiration, which Yes, it's fantastic. Just like having a border collie would also be fantastic. But if we don't clear things out and give things an intentional place to go, then they're just gonna end up ruining things ruining, and in this case, I think the peace of mind that Liz Gilbert talks about in that quote, is really relevant.
06:03
Sorry, I had to go off and referee the kids for a minute, then, I'm back, though. Yeah, so it's important to get it out and dedicate some making to your ideas. And my number one tip is to dump and sort through your ideas. Don't be afraid to let some of them go so that you can make room to actually work on the best ones. This process of eliminating the ones that you're not that keen about, it really helps you to identify the ones that light you up, and the ones that you have enough passion and fire behind keep working on until you get the dang thing finished.
06:44
As I'm sure you felt before, if you're here listen to a podcast called the "Painty Mama", then I'm sure you have felt this way that I'm about to describe, you've started a creative project, and then you've hit that wall of doubt where your brain starts talking you out of what you're making with thoughts like, "it's too hard", or "nobody's gonna like this painting", or "this is just rubbish. And this was the crappy idea to start with", or "that other idea I had was better. So I'll hop into starting that one", (that's probably my main go to is that last thought!) And then you end up with these things that just sit there unfinished, or, even worse, when it turns into numerous things that sit there unfinished. And it gets really disheartening. So we need to identify the real fiery ones, to help you get over the hump. This has really helped me and that's why I'm so passionate about sharing this with you today. Because this process sounds super simple. And it doesn't take very long, but honestly, it frees up so much mental real estate. Umm, so yeah, what I mean by dump & sort, is literally taking every thought in your brain that is looping around on your like mental "to do" list or "to dream of" or "to make of" list - all of it. Brain dumping that onto a piece of paper, so that you can free up some space. So anything like the creative project ideas, you've got anything to do with the house stuff that's been bugging you, you've been meaning to fix, or, you know, you want to redecorate or anything like that to do with the house, any family stuff, things that need to get done for your family, like doctor's appointments, dentist appointments, all that. And just life stuff, all of it, dump it out doesn't need to be in any particular order just list it list it. And the more you write the more comes. And whenever I do this, I realize how much of my mental capacity (like the RAM, you know, the ram on a computer), it's like being taken up by all these things that are just floating around in my brain on a loop "need to do that need to get to that", and all the energy and all that mental focus. I just always think when I finish the list, I'm like "no wonder I'm finding it hard to concentrate or choose an idea or really move forward with something because I have so many things".
09:18
And I'm thinking if you're probably still listening to this episode, that might sound like you too. If you've just got so many things on your mind all the time. And you're a creative person that's constantly generating ideas, it can easily get cluttered in there mentally. So this is a really great process I found of just clearing it all out in a logical way that helps me to sort through things. So then on to sorting. So what I do is I go through and I sort (and your criteria might be a bit different than mine), but I do like a different colored highlighter dot next to each point to identify: 1) things that have to be done. So I'll go through and I'll be like "what absolutely has to be done?" Like, Is it urgent? Is there a deadline, like, can't get out of this, this needs to be done. That's kind of my criteria number one. So I'll do one color dot for that.
10:13
And then secondly, I'll use a different color to put a little dot next to the things that I kind of use, you can use your sense of regret, like, "I'll be absolutely devastated. If I don't do this before I die"... Sorry, I just had to go off and just remind the kids that Mommy needs a little bit of quiet for a minute. Right? So yeah, so number one, things that have to be done. Number two, using your sense of regret, "I'll be devastated if this never gets done in my lifetime" stuff.
10:47
Number 3, I'll, again, choose another different color. And then I'll highlight the things that will help me to move forward with the things that I value in life. So my values as a person, there, I have a lot of values, I guess. But it's, it's good to kind of know what's important to you. So the things that are important to me, like family, maintaining good relationships with everyone, creativity, moving forward with projects, that kind of thing. So all the things that to you as a person, all the things that that really mean a lot to you, I go through with another one and just say like, this is meaningful to me, this is like in alignment with my values as a person.
11:30
And then the fourth one, I kind of, I get a little of quiet with myself, and I go through the list. And I just feel into my body and feel into how my energy feels about each one of those things. And if there's something that I come across that I'm like, yeah, this is exciting. This is expansive. And when I think about actually doing this particular thing, it makes me feel like, amazing. I'll give that a dot. And then I take all of the random list all of the random brain dump, and just look at the ones that have the most dots next to it. And then I make a new list. And I only write those. Do you see how that light filters out the things that are on the list, they deserve a place to live, they are an idea that you've had, but it doesn't take off all of those things for you? And like I say, you might have a different criteria. But this is kind of my own personal sorting process that I do that I'm sharing with you. So maybe my way will work, maybe you've got a different list of things and something'll come up for you as you do the process yourself. And then, so with my new kind of "master list" of these fewer things, I then really encourage you to just pick one, just pick one that you can work on first. And don't stop working on that one thing until it's done. And make a promise to yourself, whether you need to write it down, like "I promise to do this thing until it's completed". And then you know, give yourself a little heart at the end. (That's what I usually do). And I think just as people, it's really a positive thing. It can only be a really great thing to keep those promises to yourself when you make them just like you would if you were promising something to somebody that you care about. You wouldn't enter into that lightly. So don't enter into this promise lightly. So yeah, just do what you need to do to get it done really and let me know how it goes. I'd love to know about your process!
Thanks so much for listening lovely. I hope this helps you sort through your 1000s of good ideas. I'd love for you to DM me with a picture of your process of how you sorted through your creative brain. As always, you can follow me @artbykeita on Instagram. And you can shop my art at keitathomas.com where you'll also find more episodes like this one. My overall mission is to help art making mamas to flourish in motherhood, art and business and how they can all blend together. So if you'd like to help to spread this message, or send this episode to a friend, leave a review or share it on your social media if you've got something from it. I'd love to encourage more mamas towards a calm passion-led life. And until the next time, have a peaceful, inspiring, intentional week.
