Most productivity experts offer a logical, linear way of being productive, that works for logical, linear, left-brain thinkers, but leaves the rest of us creative types feeling frustrated and unproductive because we can’t seem to follow those types of structures with ease. If you are primarily left-brained, you can stop reading now. If you are right-brained or can easily use both left and right brain, these ideas on creating productive flow are for you!
Creativity includes destruction – the possibility of stopping, changing or starting anew.
When we do productivity in a prescriptive way, we remove the possibility of including the creative chaos of destruction that can lead to greater possibilities. Have you noticed that when you make something into a must/should/have to do that the joy totally disappears? That’s because you have stopped adding creative, generative energy to the project and made it into a task where there is no choice and no possibilities and no chance of deconstruction or destruction that could lead to something better. How is that working for you?
Right-brain people mostly hate the ‘have to do in priority order’ list.
Where is the love in a list like that? I have a list – but it’s not a list of have-to’s. It’s a list of possibilities. When you start to perceive your ‘to-do’ list as a set of choices that can lead to greater possibilities for your business, it stops being a millstone around your neck and starts to enable you to generate even more for your business. Take a look at your current list – what can you expand, stop, change, rearrange, create or generate that would allow your business to flow with greater ease? What is easy for you? Can you bring that energy of ease into the projects that you have made difficult in your mind? What if everything could be done with ease? What would that be like for you?
When we ask questions like these, our capacity for having a creative, productive flow in our work increases dynamically.
As creative people, we need to remember that there is always a choice. Whether we do something or outsource it, how we do it and when we do it are all choices. When we exercise this choice creatively, we create a flow that allows us to produce much faster and with greater clarity than getting stuck in the ‘to-do’ doldrums. So what change and choices could you make around the projects on your list of possibilities that would create a dynamic flow of productivity in your business? What if you don’t have to do business in traditional ways? What else could this be like for your business that would be easier and way more fun for you? These questions may sound like a strange way to be productive. Do you know it’s okay to be a little weird in business? That’s how some of the greatest businesses are created. Look at Apple and Zappos – both have very different approaches to business and productivity which work for them. Is it time for you to know what will work for you in your business?
