I have been bursting with creative ideas
and enthusiasm the last few months. I think a major reason for this has been
progress following on from some fantastic courses.

But there’s another side to living with a constant stream of potentially exciting creative ideas.

Which one to pick?. How many to do at once?. And especially important for me right now: What do I need to complete it?

I’ve realised I run the risk of beginning many, many projects, and leaving many truly lovely ideas languishing unfinished. Just to give you some idea, I have an e-book, a novel, a knitted gift, a sweater for myself, a travel writing idea, a new place to sell things idea and about six or seven potentially viable “knitted things to make for sale” ideas whizzing around my head.

Clearly I can’t do all of these, and do all of them well, at once. And there may be a few that I actually just need to let go of, or add to a ‘someday, maybe’ list. So I am on a mission to FINISH things. I am looking for focus, order and time management.

As a divergent thinker I am great at right brain work -brainstorming, fabulous ideas, creative avenues people may not have dreamed up yet. But I need to couple that with “left brained”, convergent thinking to capture those creative ideas in a real and systematic way and bring them to fruition. (By the way I think the right brain/left brain thing is a bit overstated – the two halves are linked and work together all the time! I’m just using that as it’s a common way to explain the concept and the styles of cognitive function I’m discussing.)

This point of convergence and fruition is sometimes where my creativity and energy dries up. The idea that was so very exciting finds itself in a dusty notebook or lying half finished in a sad drawer out of sight. Does this sound familiar?

Something that works for those who love systems and organising is to create some steps or filing systems or a spreadsheet or flow chart to get the job done. My husband is one of those people. He is highly creative – but at the same time, if there’s anything from any realm of his life or work that can be put on a spreadsheet I can guarantee he has done it. And much as I admire this approach and see how it keeps everything running for him, I have tried it and find it doesn’t entirely work for me. (To be fair, my accounts and workflow ARE kept in this format and it helps.)

What I find works for me are visual and verbal cues. The simpler the better. In the past I have chosen a theme word for my life. All areas of my life. They run together – I don’t do compartments very well. For some time my theme was:

Integrity

This covers more than you might think at first: Speaking the truth to others. Being honest with myself. Making decisions based on true values and gut feeling – ditching ‘shoulds’ and social convention where necessary. Integrating – a linked concept. Seeing holistically. Looking at the bigger picture. There’s more but I expect you get the picture.

So how does this tie into what I was just saying about balancing divergent with convergent thinking and getting things finished? It’s about picking a new theme, or touchstone, or word to work with or apply in ALL areas of my life. The new word is

Completion

You can probably already see that this word can be unpacked and contains many helpful ideas that can be applied in all areas of life: Coming full circle. Coming home (to myself). Feeling whole and complete in the here and now. Recognising that wherever we are, there will always be ‘more to be done’ – seeing life cyclically rather than as a linear project. Celebrating goals achieved and stages moved through In a concrete sense, finishing projects.

I have started to free up energy and time for all these lovely new ideas. This is quite a long post, but I hope it’s given you some food for thought. I’m not suggesting having a ‘theme’ word is right for everyone. But it works really well for me – having those concepts wrapped up in that word at the forefront of my mind and working with them daily yields results.

Do you have a theme? How do you organise your world – visually, systematically, verbally?