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Ask HN: How do you schedule inspiration?
So I'm a 'big ideas' guy that seems to have 3 kinds of work.
i) Paid work for other people. Task-based.
ii) Interesting projects for other people. Task-based, requiring some inspiration.
iii) Perosnal projects. Inspiration based.
Now this isn't a question of motivation. Motivation is something else entirley to inspiration. My question, as you might have guessed, is more about balance.
Obvioulsy the first category very easy to complete. But it's the other two sections I find hard to work into my schedule. My main problem is that inspiration cannot be scheduled. That's really a killer, as inspiration is crucial for making personal projects genuinely disruptive and cool. The same sometimes applies to category 2, and I find myself needing to schedule inspiration for clients projects that require creativity.
So if anyone has hacks on this I'd love to hear how you balance it all.
- walterbell 12y agoIf inspiration is asynchronous, the best you can do is have figurative pen & paper ready to record when it shows up. By also capturing the time & space context of the interrupt, you can look for unique-to-you patterns that prompt inspiration. Generic tips: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/top-10-sources-inspiration-for-creative-writing.html http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/top-10-source... If you're a visually-oriented person, mind map software (e.g. iThoughts HD on iOS) makes it easy to spatially rearrange photos and phrases into a vision board, offering some structure yet leaving implicit room to generate new concepts. If you want structured creativity, look into TRIZ. If you want unstructured creativity, grab some metaphysics / philosophy books.
- l33tbro 12y agoThis is golden. Thank you.