3 Ways to Reclaim your Creativity and Productivity

the gap is closing between what you can dream and what you can make in the past there were so many barriers to entry gatekeepers holding the keys technology holding us back and our limiting beliefs telling us it's not possible now we can self publish we can make without limitation and our minds have opened to unlock our unlimited potential nothing can stop us now hi I'm Matthew and Cena and in this video I'm going to share my thoughts on the future of creativity I'm going to highlight our biggest challenges moving forward and share some new tools I've picked up so you can supercharge your creative brain and take control of your future in full disclosure Adobe is sponsoring this video so I can share my thoughts with you on the subject I've been a creative professional for over 15 years in my time as a designer animator in content creator I've seen our industry change rapidly and evolved dramatically the tools are better education is easily becoming accessible online and the time it takes to go from idea the tangible solution is faster than it's ever been it's the greatest time to be alive as creative pdbs so how do we take advantage of all this momentum how can you become a contributor to the future instead of a victim to it I flew out to New York to see what the industry leaders at Adobe's 99u conference had to say I go to a lot of conferences unfortunately most of the ones I attend are full of inspirational work and stories but lack any real actionable knowledge I can apply my experience at 99u was not what I expected it was actually full of highly valuable workshops which gave me a ton of radically new ideas to implement into my process and at our workplace the theme this year was create a future when I first heard this I thought right away technology while there were some interesting talks and emerging tech the most important message I heard was on the role that creatives play at this very important time in history but first let's start by talking about the big challenges we're facing in this rapidly changing world and what might be holding us back from our full potential challenge number one the robots are coming in fact they're already here in one of my sessions with Brian Collins he said that he's seen a lot of early demos for artificial intelligence use in the design field this AI can quickly do the task of most junior designers which is to create tons of iterations this means the role of designers will change dramatically in the near future no it doesn't mean we're all getting replaced rather it means that types of skills we need to bring to the table will need to be very different Brian Collins said we have to do two things in this new future and I'm paraphrasing one we have to dream up a future that is bold ridiculous and unexpected and two we have to bring our human touch to everything we do today the robots were programming are only good at recognizing patterns and performing the tasks we tell them to do but as creative human beings we have a unique ability to do things robots cannot we can connect the dots between wildly different things we can express love and emotions and we can dream up things that don't exist yet for that reason we have to constantly break away from convention and push ourselves to stretch and flex our creative imaginations which brings me to the next challenge we face challenge number two we should be innovating not iterating over the past decade we've seen a rapid development in technology which has massively disrupted industries Netflix and blockbuster uber and taxis Amazon and bookstores ecommerce grocery stores well Amazon and everything and there are many more industries to count and many more to come I know it sounds terrifying but how do we prepare for disruption i sat in on an amazing workshop given by the former head of innovation and creativity at Disney Duncan portal what I learned is that we have to think big no really vague you and we have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable the problem is most organizations and businesses operate with the agenda to make incremental improvements rather than massive change that's because as we grow older we become more and more reductive and rigid in our way of thinking by the time we're working adults we've become precondition to eliminate possibilities before we even explore them we become risk-averse instead of risk takers and that's the core of the problem we're thinking too small and disruption is coming our way if it hasn't already we have to become expansive thinkers and practice growing our imagination Duncan shared some good tools on how to do this which I'll share later in the video challenge number three were distracted if you're still watching this video at some point in it you probably got distracted your phone buzzed an email popped into your inbox or you got a bright red notification on your screen we are the most distracted generation that has ever lived at 99 you I went to a presentation given by cognitive neuroscientist dr. Sahar Youssef in her talk she shared countless studies that have shown the detrimental impact that some of our favorite technologies have on our lives specifically on how it affects our creativity and productivity here are a few statistics that were pretty alarming to hear in the modern office setting the average person gets distracted every 90 seconds a survey showed that we only get about three and a half hours of productive time out of an eight-hour workday and multitasking it's a myth it actually results in taking twice as long than if you were to just focus on completing one task at a time what's the result of all this well we can't focus on solving big complex tasks our creativity and innovation goes to waste and we're tired all the time operating on the edge of burnout I know I know things look grim and I just spent the last five minutes being a downer my bad the funny thing is I'm highly optimistic about the future that's because during the ninety nine new events along with learning about the big challenges we face I picked up a bunch of new tools to address them here's how we can reclaim our productivity and expand our creative minds so that we can have a valuable place in the future tool number one focus Sprint's our brain is our most powerful asset it is the processor of all of our creativity yet these days we are drowning in distraction so how do we regain our productive time introducing the focus sprint I learned this concept from dr. Sahar use of stalk at 9:00 you what is the focus sprint it is a 90 minute chunk of uninterrupted distraction-free concentrated work the goal is to achieve sustainable peak performance so you can focus on your core priorities effectively and let your body and brain work efficiently over the long term step 1 turn off all distractions go to a quiet place close your doors or go to a place where no one knows you like coffee shop turn off all your notifications close your emails hide your phone from sight and if you can help it step 2 assign a goal for the screen be realistic and create a goal you'd like to accomplish in the end of the Sprint the second part of this is to break down your goal into subtasks for example my goal was to write the script and my sub task or to spend 30 minutes on the outline in 15 minutes filling in each section step 3 set a timer for 90 minutes and go the first time you do this it will be awkward and hard to start you'll immediately be tempted to reach for your phone but stick with it because once you build momentum it will keep growing step 4 rest for 20 minutes in the 90 minutes of sprinting your brain ascends into a high-performance mood this increases your stress and your brain needs to go through a healing response to give your brain some downtime to replenish dr. Yusuf suggested going for a walk and getting some vitamin D in the Sun you could close your eyes for five minutes shutting off all stimulation or you can stare at something green which apparently calms you down all of these will help lower your stress levels and prepare you for more sustained focused prints throughout the day step 5 repeat try and perform as many of these focused Sprint's during the day by breaking up your day this way you'll have sustained energy and focus throughout your workday I've been personally going through a Productivity slump lately I feel like I've been very busy yet when I measured my output at the end of the week seemingly nothing significant was accomplished so I tried to run a focus sprint the moment I got home and had amazing results I made room for three sprints in one day and got so much accomplished I'll be continuing to experiment with this and optimize it for my routines and habits tool number two better brain storms for expensive thinking think about your last group brainstorm session there was probably a few people in the room one person is taking notes while several local people in the room are shouting out ideas most of which gets shut down immediately by the pessimist in the room and by the time the session is over everyone is tired the ideas are uninspired and usually nothing happens post brainstorm because the idea was unclear it's unfamiliar let me know in the comments below if you have ever experienced this before so how do we run a brainstorm session that results in big expensive thinking and is captured in a well-defined way how can we learn to innovate instead of iterating step one start your brainstorm by setting a well-defined challenge to tackle the more specific you can make it the more innovative your ideas will be while maintaining the practicality of its application step to break up the room into small four-person groups one person facilitates the conversation and records it while the others are participants in the brainstorm if possible try and invite in a naive expert someone not from your department or company this will add some unorthodox thinking into the mix step 3 play hot potato with the idea the facilitator will start by asking the first person to throw out an idea after they give their answer the facilitator moves on to the next person to have them add on to the idea a note here you cannot shoot anything down in this process if something doesn't sound feasible during the brainstorm that's probably your poor imagination kicking in for the brainstorm shut off that pessimistic voice and instead adopt the language yes if meaning you must add to the previous idea to help define it more rather than diverging or shutting it down this hot potato brainstorm helps ideas expand and grow rather than shrink and diminish step 4 document the idea in a tea sheet at the top is the title of your idea to the left is a concise summary of the concept that clearly tells you what it is on the right should be a quick sketch or mock-up of the idea by documenting it this way you have just created a complete idea something that feels real and tangible because it has a title description and image to illustrate it with this it'll be much easier to relay and communicate your ideas to others here's an example of some of the results from the mini brainstorm session Duncan had at the event the challenge here was how might we create a new chocolate ice cream product for Valentine's Day geared towards adults it will come in the shape of three chocolate condoms in a strawberry raspberry and orange flavor they will be average in size they will be contained in a red metallic box which will be heart-shaped they will be sold at eight dollars insect shops and department stores year around [Music] using a brainstorm framework like this will help you disrupt your normal river of thinking get 100% participation from the group and you'll come up with ideas that might seem off-the-wall but I'll help you think about what's possible rather than what isn't tool number three beautiful boredom think back to your childhood when we had no devices lots of free time and only our imagination to stimulate us how many games did you come up with how many stories did you invent for your toys or your environment come back to now why is it that our best ideas come to us when we're brushing our teeth taking a shower or driving our car that's because in all of those instances then and now we were bored undistracted and could allow our subconscious brain to work when we give our brain the time and space it can thread together seemingly unrelated ideas together and come up with some of our most inventive ideas so similar to the focus Sprint's we want to create an undistracted space the key difference here is there's no clear objective other than being bored step 1 turn off all stimuli hydrophone turn off your notifications music screaming just get as far away for your digital distractions as possible step 2 be bored go sit at the park or in your living room go have lunch just go out there and do something that doesn't involve stimulus from your devices step 3 let your mind wander wherever you're at just be observant let your mind connect thoughts and string together narratives of your surroundings you'll be surprised at how creative your mind can be when you adopt a childlike wonder again step 4 document it keep a notepad and pen or pencil nearby when something enters your mind jot it down sketch it out then let your mind drift off and wonder again while this idea isn't anything new it became very interesting to me once I heard the artist Kyle T Webster share his stories about invention while being bored specifically his story about beet juice it was one afternoon he had just finished his lunch and he was staring at his plate one day completely bored and he looked at the unusual pattern left behind from his beet salad he thought to himself hmm that's an interesting texture he took a photo of it and turned that texture into a brush for Photoshop he put that brush on sale online and sold a hundred thousand dollars of that digital brush I couldn't believe it and yes selling photoshop brushes is actually a thing to think this idea would not have come to him if he was just there killing time occupying his headspace with his smartphone and Social Feeds Kyle would have missed out on $100,000 opportunity it got me to think how many hundred thousand dollar ideas have I missed out on because I don't give my brain the space to be creative to be bored this was a huge lesson for me to hear so I've been applying boredom into as many moments of my daily routine as possible whenever I feel the urge to fill my free time with screen time I keep my phone in my pocket and just remain present and those are the three tools you can use to help focus your creativity since implementing these into my life and process I've seen some pretty amazing results the main thing I learned from all of this is we should step away from distractions as much as possible and be more intentional with our time I just want to thank Dobby for flying me out to 99u it was an amazing place to learn and gather insights from some of the most innovative minds in the planet I'd like to leave you with this one closing thought creativity is at a high point where we go from here is completely up to us we have everything at our disposal to create any future we dream up so it's our obligation as designers as creators as innovators to make it I hope you enjoyed this video if you have any thoughts about the future of creativity or where we might be going or any of the tools that you might enjoy from here let me know by leaving a comment below as always don't forget to Like comment and subscribe because it really helps us out we'll see you in the future

Channel: The Futur

Views: 208,751

Rating: 4.9682298 out of 5

Keywords: the futur, futur brand, disrupt design education, chris do, business of design, how to, focus sprint, beautiful boredom, kyle t webster, adobe, 99u, dr sahar yousef, t-sheet, distraction, boredom, subconscious mind, creativity, productivity, increase productivity, personal growth, how to be more creative, how to be more productive, personal development, life hacks, self development, career tips, kyle's brushes, creative inspiration

Id: ybaom7OVtIw

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2019