3 Ways to Make Your Best Work Ever
If creative work is being demanded from you in any arena, whether clients, work or school, you are at risk of going through the motions in your creative process. I know I am, and once you get into a groove, bad creative habits are hard to spot. Recently, I realized I wasn’t actually making the best work I was capable of making, I was making the best, most efficient work I knew how to. I can honestly say there’s a huge difference.
Here are a few things that have been helping me do work that is closer to the best that I am capable creating today:
1. Take Your Time with Your Process
This one is huge. We all have deadlines, so this can be hard, but it’s so worth it. Instead of getting a creative problem and then cranking it through my creative process like a machine, I’m trying to take a moment to breathe. You don’t always have this time, but where can you make more time for this? Taking your time is the difference between stunning and mediocre. Just remember to slow down, maybe even take a step back before cranking another creative project through the machine.
2. Inspect Your Process
The more you go to the drawing board the more habitual the process is going to look. Habits aren’t a bad thing, some can be super beneficial, but when something becomes a habit it basically becomes your autopilot, and that’s why habits can be dangerous. Look at your creative habits, where could you use a tune up? Are you skipping the thumbnails, sketching, ideation, experimentation? Are you rushing the execution? Where are we cutting corners?
3. Experiment with and Add to Your Process
I’m not talking about experimenting within your art here, although that’s important in its proper place, I’m talking about the process. Are there things that you have just accepted aren’t you that you should give a shot? Have you never really been a sketchbook guy and you need to take that for a test run? Try things that have the potential of enhancing your creative process. Sometimes you need to forget what you think you know about your process, you might be surprised by what you didn’t know.
This has been really helpful lately, and it’s definitely helped me create some of the most fulfilling work I have made in a really long time, maybe even ever.
What did you do differently when you made your best work ever?
(Source: artdirections)
