Take the artistic route to escape your frustrations
▶ Doodling and drawing are a creative ways to get out of a rut and freshen up perspectives
Iwas in a creative rut the past couple of weeks – at a point, where you overwork yourself so much that checking your email, or even discussing work, becomes a massive bother. I hate that state of mind and if you are an entrepreneur as I am, then you know that being in a state of flux for long periods can really affect your business, especially when you have many people depending on you.
I needed to free myself and I did something that I hadn’t in a while – the only thing that liberates my mind – I painted. It has been a long time since I held a brush and so I was a bit rusty to begin with, but it didn’t matter. The motive was not to create the masterpiece worthy of hanging in a museum; relaxation and pulling myself out of limbo was the only thing on my mind.
I got sheets of paper, some acrylic paint and a timer then challenged myself to produce artworks in under half an hour every day.
The goal of this exercise is to distract yourself, take your mind into another world and focus on something different from your daily chores.
What happens next is utterly rewarding. By the second day, I was less stressed and more excited to go back to my work. In fact, I was inspired to tweak my website, as well as experiment with new ways of creating visual content.
It was so much fun. I felt like my old self again. I didn’t limit myself to my morning painting challenge with paint and paper, but also bought myself an Apple pencil and started doodling on my iPad whenever I needed to be inspired or found myself stuck in a traffic jam or in a waiting room.
Why take up art?
You might wonder why you should even consider taking up art as a hobby when you can jog, meet up with a friend, or tune your bike whenever you need to get out of a rut. A study by Jackie Andrade from the University of Plymouth in the UK has found that doodling or sketching away can free up short and long-term memory and also increases attention spans. Moreover, in the business world, we are used to seeing and analysing text-based content, so when we take away ourselves and expose our minds to more visual creative content, it can help us think differently. In her book Growing Up Creative, author Teresa Amabile talks about how fostering a creative environment helps children think outside the box.
I have personally found that whatever artistic approach I adopted, whether it’s oil paint or doodling, or just playing around Photoshop trying to merge images together, it all gave me the same results: it freed up my mind.
The best time and place to be artistic
That would be whenever you’re frustrated or just want to focus on something different other than work. Don’t think about the work produced, just the fact that you’re doing it. You know how children just grab a sheet of paper and crayons and go at it without thinking about the results? This is how you should be. I wonder why we even stop doing that when we grow up. In fact I’ve found that doing this exercise with kids joining you is even more relaxing. Just sketch, doodle or paint. Get your hands dirty and enjoy it. As for the location, it doesn’t really matter really. The last time I did it I was on a road trip and sketched away happily on my iPad.
Should you have a subject in mind?
No. Because once you do that, you will be occupying your mind and the goal is to free it up. You can, however, do something else, which I have been doing especially when I’m stuck on a problem. You can put the problem down on paper, trying to sketch it, for instance. This will help you to assess it better, and you can jot down different solutions. This often helps me to see the problem isn’t as big as I thought, and that I was overestimating it.