How to Never Run Out of Ideas
By Levina Kusumadjaja
One of the greatest fears of a creative: running out of ideas.
Just reading the sentence above would probably make you flinch a little bit on the inside. This struggle to overcome this fear is real, because no creative wants to ever run out of ideas. Without ideas and inspiration, you won’t function because they are the very things that drive your work. But there is a twist to this fear, because... what if the truth is, there will always new ideas, new things, and new inspirations that we can discover in the journey? Is that even possible?
Always take a learning posture, there is always something to learn from someone else.
One of the things you can do to never run out of ideas is to always be learning. Get into the habit of taking notes and being curious—at every conversation, every event, and every routine activity. Turn an ordinary morning coffee into an observatory study on nature. Use your weekends to dive into other people’s culture from books, virtual tours, and their local TV shows. Remind yourself everyday that you will never have arrived, you will always be a work in progress. And this is a good thing, because it means you can always be better from the day before. If you are always learning, you will never run out of ideas.
Be a sponge.
Another thing you can do to never run out of ideas is to serve others in your learning process. Be a sponge—absorb, clean something, squeeze out, then absorb some more. For a sponge to be “impactful” and “useful”, it needs to go through this constant cycle of absorbing and squeezing out soap and water. We’re not much different, because we grow and create impact when we serve others, not when we absorb knowledge.
You will never have arrived, so why not start sharing what you’ve learned now?
It is important always be learning, but the impact comes once we put our learning into practice and invite others to dialogue and process our learning with us. Our community and people out there will have a chance to respond and be impacted by us once we share and invite them to process the ideas with us. This teaching journey will become another personal learning journey as well, because you learn so much when you teach others.
There are still so many things we can talk about in regards to staying inspired and creatively energized. However, I hope some of the practices I’ve shared in this article are helpful for you to no longer be afraid of running out of ideas, and focus on growing instead. Embrace the abundance mindset and embrace your fellow creatives. There will always be more than enough ideas for every creative in their lifetime.
Cheers!
Levina
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About the author:
Levina is a writer based in Indonesia. Because of Melinda Livsey, she recognized the power of brand strategy for every creative. She is sharing about her learnings as she goes to help creatives have fun in their growth and journey of building brands. Connect with her on LinkedIn and say hi!