17 Ways to Get Out of a Creative Rut
How to find inspiration when you’re feeling stuck.
We all know that motivation and inspiration comes and goes, but sometimes it can feel like our creativity well has been dry for longer than usual. When you feel stuck in a creative rut, it makes running your business even harder than usual, which isn’t exactly helpful when you’re trying to build an empire is it?! Sometimes taking a break is the best remedy, but let’s face it, that’s not always possible when you have deadlines to hit and bills to pay as a small business. So this post is full of creative prompts and tips for when you feel like you've lost your sense of imagination, and you can't seem to find inspiration anywhere. I’ve also created a free Creativity Reset Guide as a partner to this blog post, with a creativity tracker tool to help you get motivated again. If you want to download that, you can find it here. I hope it helps spark that magic again!
Refresh Your Work Environment
Set your workspace up for success. Whether you have a dedicated office or studio, or you’re working from your living room floor, look around your space - is there any uninspiring clutter you can clear to leave a bit more breathing room? Can you rearrange the furniture in the room you work in, to make the space feel fresh? Is there anything you can add to your indoor space, to spark inspiration? Art, plants, candles, a vision board?
Can you bring some outdoor time or fresh air into your routine? Whether that's a morning “walk to work” around the houses, or some garden time. If you can get outside for a walk, switch up your route, find something near you that you haven't seen before.
Don’t forget that our digital spaces are just as much a part of our environment. How tidy and organised is your computer? Give your phone a spruce up - replace that cracked screen protector, change your wallpaper, reorganise your apps. Do you have an online task manager like Trello 😍 that could do with a clear out? Go through it, or your inbox, and make some space for new ideas to flow.
Knowing Your Creative References
Sometimes we expect inspiration to magically find us without us doing anything to feed it. While ebbing and flowing creativity is totally natural, there are things we can do to coax inspiration out of hiding a bit quicker.
4. What inspired you in childhood? Do you have any experiences, films, TV shows or books that had a profound impact on you?
5. What has inspired you in adulthood? What never fails to light up your creativity? Is it a certain type of music, an artist you love, a place you love to visit?
6. What's something new you discovered recently that really sparked your imagination?
7. What work have you created yourself that you feel really proud of? Maybe it turned out exactly how you hoped it would or maybe it surprised you in some way - often these are the experiences that teach us the most about our taste.
8. Make a secret Pinterest board (or a real life mood board), including all the references above. Don't make any judgements, just collect together anything that comes to mind. Then look at your collection of images. What do they have in common? Revisit this whenever you need a reminder of what inspires you.
A way of looking at creativity is that it's our brains making connections between all of our individual experiences. So by finding what all the things that inspire you have in common, you'll get pretty close to finding your secret inspiration sauce, which helps you find or create more of it.
Commit to Creative Personal Projects
A lot of us very rarely give ourselves time to be creative without any pressure, especially if creativity is part of our work in some way. But this low pressure experimentation is essential to keeping inspiration alive, so let's make time for it. What's something small you can commit to regularly, to give your creativity the pressure-free time and space it needs to flourish? Some ideas could be:
9. Start a creative journal, where you can write, draw or collage the things that inspire you day to day.
10. Do an activity you loved as a child, but don't find time to do now.
11. Complete a new creative online class a week. Platforms like SkillShare are great for this!
12. Watch something that you would never normally choose to watch. Whether it's a documentary about something you know nothing about, or a genre of film or TV you don't usually gravitate towards.
13. Switch up your playlists - find some new music you don't usually listen to.
14. Learn a new creative skill that you've never tried before. Push past the struggle and allow yourself to be a beginner at something.
15. Choose a regular time each week to sign off instagram and look for inspiration offline through books, magazines, or even (eventually) galleries and museums. It's so rare that we allow ourselves the opportunity to stumble across something we weren't expecting to find, and that's where inspiration can hit you when you least expect it.
16. Finally complete something that's been sitting unfinished (or un-started) on your "to-make" list.
17. Track your progress, and your creativity levels every day. Look back, can you see any patterns? The accompanying download with this post will help you do that, sign up here and I’ll send it straight to your inbox.
Don’t forget to give yourself space
I hope these creative prompts have been helpful for you, feel free to download the guide and keep the list handy for the next time you need it. Sometimes though, rest really is the answer. Our brains need space to think and to get inspired, and allowing yourself a break from your work is sometimes the best way to press the reset button, especially when it comes to burnout.
You are your most important business asset, so looking after your brain is not only super important in life generally (obvs), it’s also a really smart business decision. I’ll leave you with my favourite quote in the world by Ira Glass, who sums up the creative pursuit better than I ever could:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” Ira Glass
If you want more advice on creativity, content and blending visuals and sales to help your small business thrive, you can join my free facebook group The Creative Content Clubhouse here.
