Creativity is not magic. It’s a process. And like any process, it can be understood, optimised, and repeated.

The four stages of the creative process

1. Preparation Loading up on inputs; research, references, examples, context. You can’t make connections between ideas if you only have a few ideas to connect. If you’re looking at ideas for posts, look at contemporaries and see what they are doing. And things they do you don’t like are just as valuable.

2. Incubation Stepping away and letting your subconscious work. Believe me it works. Sleep, walks, exercise – these are not breaks from creative work, they’re part of it. If you’ve prepared correctly and have a load of new input from stage 1, this takes care of itself. 

3. Illumination The idea arrives. Often when you’re not trying like in the shower, on a run, waking up. So have a system to write them down, again without filter, just dump and sort through it at the end of the week at a set meeting of daily. I have a little notebook I write everything down in little black notebook and I come back to them later.

4. Verification Testing the idea. Does it hold up? Does it serve the objective? Can it be executed? Reviewing each idea will give you a list of ideas that are achievable that you can start on, and some other ideas for the bin. 

If you spend some time every day just immersing yourself in some creative ideas and inputs, then writing down what comes to you as it comes to you, you’ll find it happens with increasing velocity and quality. Your brain will be refining and improving it’s process providing you with good creative ideas for content and marketing. Looking up brands (any industry) that you love, competitors, providers you aspire to be like. Immerse yourself.

The creative confidence problem

The biggest barrier to creative output is not a lack of ideas. It’s the fear of producing bad ones.

Every creative professional produces far more bad ideas than good ones. The difference between them and everyone else is that they produce the bad ideas quickly and without judgment, so the good ones can emerge. That’s actually one of the three rules we have here at DISBRANDED. Bad ideas are necessary to get to the good ones.

Building a creative habit

• Set aside time for creative thinking every week
• Keep an idea capture system (a notes app, a notebook, a voice memo)
• Consume broadly – books, podcasts, art, design, film, outside your sector
• Give yourself permission to produce bad ideas on the way to good ones

Exercise

Set a timer for 10 minutes. Write down every possible creative idea you have ever had for your business. Big, small, realistic or unrealistic. Write it all down. Have you thought about a video series with your customers? Starting a podcast where you interview participants? A new logo idea?

When the timer goes off, circle the three most interesting ones.