Creative Minds Managed

Order from chaos- productivity techniques for creative types

“A creative mind is a disorganised mind,” someone once said. I think. (I can’t remember where I read it, and I’ve lost my notes…)

Add to that the umpteen buzzing distractions which swarm around us today like digital bees and it’s a miracle we actually get anything done at all.

Fortunately, minds more organised than ours have come up with tools and techniques to help. Taking inspiration from things as diverse as videogames and Zen Buddhism, they can help us make order from the chaos of our minds and avoid being distracted by every shiny thing which flies past.

…now, where was I?

To make any routine or lengthy task appealing to a creative mind, it has to trick us into thinking it’s fun – or as least like the dreaded ‘w**k’ word as possible.

The following methods manage to hoodwink my mind into thinking its skipping merrily through meadows and building castles in the air. Perhaps they’ll help yours do the same…

GTD? WTF? OIC

I’ve used David Allen’s Getting Things Done method for a number of years now, and swear by it, to the point of being a GTD bore.

The technique has the ultimate goal of having you reach that Zen-like “mind like water” state: where every nagging to-do and thing you have to remember is filed, indexed, stamped, debriefed and catalogued, allowing you to actually get on and, y’know, do stuff..

And it works. Whilst it can take some getting used to, once it all clicks you’ll find everything from your project tasks to your shopping list is in there, only popping into your head when you need it to.

Whilst Allen’s original method was all paper-based, a plethora of online tools and apps now exist to help implement it. As my office tends to look like the aftermath of a New York City tickertape parade at the best of times, this is important. (If you’re interested, I use Toodledo and Pocket Informant for the iPhone/ iPad).

So whilst I still find myself wearing odd socks with depressing regularity, GTD makes sure I never forget the important stuff.

One tomato, two tomato, Printable CEO

Whilst GTD is great for managing the high-level view of everything that’s going on in your life, it’s not really designed for the nitty-gritty or the actual work itself.

Fortunately, a collection of PDFs inspired by videogame reward systems and a little ticking tomato are here to help.

David Shea’s Printable CEO tools are all paper-based. Whilst they may add to my clutter, they do provide a compact, efficient and – most importantly – fun way to record time, progress and tasks.

Designed for the freelancer who sometimes wishes they had a (nice) boss telling them what to focus on, the Printable CEO tools are all about scoring your progress, feeling a sense of reward and treating tasks like baddies in Super Mario World.

And what about that tomato? The Pomodoro Technique is all about treating time as a friend instead of the enemy. By chunking up your daily work schedule into 25-minute slots and 5-minute breaks, then using a kitchen timer to count them down, it aims to focus you on the task in hand and ignore distractions.

This one is ideal for those who dip into Facebook every 2 minutes; or who end up spending 3 hours on a task that really only have warranted half an hour of their precious time. And whilst the timer doesn’t need to be shaped like a tomato, it all adds to the fun if it is (as long as you don’t eat it).

Personally, this technique is perfect for me, as 25 minutes is about as long as I can go without a cigarette.

Screw work, let’s play

So, these tools and techniques can help turn daunting projects and tasks into some sense of order and assist in making tracking your time a pleasure rather than a chore.

They work for me and whilst I can’t claim my mind doesn’t suffer the odd tsunami every now and then, I do enjoy trying to beat my weekly task ‘high score’, and the ticking tomato is always there to make sure I don’t get distrac—
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This post was written by Keith D, freelance web designer & photographer. Find out more here.