Let’s talk about Inspiration, shall we?)
You might be familiar with the magical experience of serendipitous inspiration. I mean, that eureka moment when it seems as though all the divine forces in the universe align together in your favour and the resulting coalition, for whatever reason, decide to endow your conscious mind — or maybe even your subconscious— with ideas or thoughts that you wouldn’t have generated otherwise.
Well, I’ve been there a few times before and boy, is it blissful!
But there’s a problem. Such divine moments have a trait of shying away from us. As much as we’d love to encounter these unsolicited sparks ever so often, they happen quite rarely.
Inspiration is an integral part of any process that isn’t pre-defined and lacks specific rules of operations. The creatives in the house will relate to this better as inspiration seems to be at the core of this field. The absence of inspiration means lack of ideas and subsequently translates into a drought in their output, or at best, mediocre and unoriginal content.
The undeniable importance of inspiration makes it unreliable to depend on serendipitous encounters as the chances of having these occurrences are as low as finding a needle in a haystack. Anybody familiar with these special moments knows that it is possible to go weeks and months without one of such. In a world where quality and original content are in high demand, such luxury cannot be afforded.
Thankfully, it is possible to hack this system of alignment to increase the frequency of this wonderful coalition and experience more of the resulting bliss — better known to us as inspiration.
Creating the atmosphere for Inspiration
Inspiration cannot be forced, but it can be triggered. This requires some level of intentionality and different people go about it differently. The point is that you can intentionally create the atmosphere that encourages the spark of inspiration required for whatever project or task you’re involved in.
The strategies are quite varied and everyone has their way of sparking that lightbulb. Personally, I condition my mind to seek out anything of value in conversations I engage in. This method means I do not have to generate ideas from within all the time. Conversations with the right people, even the trivial ones, have a special way of stimulating your mind and create room for genuine inspiration if you are on the lookout for such. Just like in the ancient art of fire making, the act of “rubbing minds together” is a viable way to create a spark (pun intended)
Productive Meditation
Another way I have learnt to trigger inspiration is by practicing productive meditation as described by Cal Newport in his bestseller, “Deep Work”. Simply put, it is the act of focusing one’s mind on a particular well-defined problem or task while doing something physical that requires minimal mental attention such as biking, walking, driving, or even showering.
I have made it a duty to practice this habit for the past few weeks since I stumbled on it while reading his book. The results are mindblowing. Of all the activities in which it is possible to practice productive meditation, my favourite seems to be showering. Being able to let my mind ponder on the task I’m looking to work on (blog posts, video ideas, etc.) for the few minutes I spend in the bathroom has proven to be that little change with huge results. Of course, it means I have to stay longer in the shower, but that too is something I’m beginning to enjoy:)
Parkinson’s Twist to Inspiration
Parkinson’s law: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”
In my search for inspiration over the years, I have discovered that inspiration happens to be a respecter of Parkinson’s Law, albeit in a different way. The frequency of our commitments to tasks that require inspiration, in a way, determines the frequency of these sparks.
As at the time I launched this blog site, I had just three potential blog posts drafted in my notepad, and I had come up with these three in the space of about a year. Inspiration didn’t come so often as I wasn’t committed to putting anything out. I was just fine with having them lying around in my notepad and the inspiration to write was also comfortable staying away from me.
When I eventually decided to put out my writings, deciding to publish content weekly seemed like a suicide mission. I wasn’t sure I had so much to offer as I only managed to produce three posts in an entire year. But as I set out to put stuff out, everything changed. The ideas started pouring in. In fact, the very first post was generated from idea to publishing in the span of a day! Inspiration saw that it was highly needed and it was kind enough to pay a timely visit.
Now I seem to find ideas even when I’m not looking. Inspiration has “expanded” to fill the frequency required for consistent content output. This is what I term the “Parkinson’s twist to Inspiration.”
The subject of inspiration and how to never run out of it is a subject I am still exploring and I feel like I would be returning to it in the nearest future.