I often feel like I have a backlog of inspiration and ideas that are all muddled up in my head, just waiting to be put on paper. I’ve found that needing / wanting to create something of significance, however, can tend to result in a certain amount of procrastination on my part. One of the habits I’ve been working on this year is creating daily. I know that the more I produce, the easier it will become.

I recently experimented with this habit through Change Labs, a program hosted by my friend Leo Babauta, to test out some habit ideas for his new book. As part of the program, I committed to creating a page per day in my design journal. At the end of each day, I’d email Leo a photo of my work and this helped me stay accountable.

Creativity can show up in a lot of different ways and I believe that it exists in everyone. Fostering personal creativity can be challenging though, so I wanted to share a few of my takeaways from the experiment.

Start without a result in mind.

When I first started the habit, I struggled to sit down and effortlessly produce. I kept associating the practice with my other projects and the expectations I had about what the output should look like. During the second week, I changed my approach to focus on starting without an end result in mind. (more…)