Creativity happens over time

Cre­ativ­i­ty often hap­pens to me over time. When­ev­er I have some­thing cre­ative to do, with my stu­dents or in my writ­ing, it helps me to sched­ule enough time over sev­er­al days or months (for writ­ing) to be able to have times in which I can address my ideas — not just in one sitting.

There have been stud­ies about how the brain will work on ideas “behind the scenes” and I’ve ben­e­fit­ted from that. I’ll start a project sev­er­al days or weeks before it’s due and give myself time to return to it sev­er­al times with new ideas sim­mer­ing inside of me.

It also gives me peace of mind when I have some­thing cre­ative I need to do (ex. Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion for shar­ing my books with a new audi­ence).  My brain has a chance to mull over the ideas from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives by “brain­storm­ing” … and also to incor­po­rate new ideas based on “life” inter­ac­tions which may enrich and add res­o­nance to the orig­i­nal ideas I had. JNC