Do you ever feel that sometimes you’re truly “switched on” creatively? And not just for an hour or even a day. But for a period of weeks? You’re developing ideas and creating things with ease and joy. You feel on fire, delivering great creative and marketing concepts to your company.
You secretly tell yourself that, wow, I have “creative momentum.” But what is creative momentum? The Deforest Group creative team decided to explore this and share with you how to get inspired.
What is Creative Momentum?
Creative momentum is defined as the flow-on effect from the creative zone that carries over into multiples days, weeks or even months. The payoff is the creation of great work.
You’ll notice that you’re able to almost instantly fall into the creative zone, almost without noticing. There’s a sense of ‘this is the way of being.’ We feel satisfaction and joy about creating great work upon great work. You can’t put a wrong foot forward, and every design, layout or photo is genius.
How Can YOU Gain Creative Momentum?
That is the serious question. Creative momentum as we see it is creating our best work from our present and our past. So perhaps the more important question is, how do you get to a place where you are capable of doing your best work?
Doing Your Best Work
The research by our team shows that doing our best work comes in between learning curves and right before large plateaus. Most creative professionals have experienced (hopefully) multiple times in their journeys where they felt they created their best work (so far).
During this period where we are doing our best work, we have the most potential to have creative momentum.
Influences of Creative Momentum
Perhaps understanding the influences that lead us to creative momentum can help us understand how we can find it. Because this is an observation of our team’s research, rather than a proven fact, we felt that listing these influences that we discovered is the best way forward. Creative momentum influences are:
Absence of stress and ability to create with no pressure.
True unattachment to the result of the creative project.
Ability to problem solve almost subconsciously.
Strong art direction but also the flexibility to pivot when needed.
Creating for the purpose of joy itself.
The absence of learning new skills or ‘pushing the envelope’.
But we found that having all of these things at once is hard to achieve, so don’t stress! We’ve all likely felt these from time to time, but when they all align – it’s the holy grail.
How to Use Your Creative Momentum
The most important thing to know about momentum comes from Newton’s First Law of Motion – An object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion stays in motion, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
So, when we have creative momentum, it’s very easy to continue that momentum. It’s much harder to gain momentum if we feel ‘stopped’ creatively. To help you extend the momentum you have comes with developing a new pattern of behavior. Put aside one creative day a week, or even half a day. Schedule it. Make it a habit and continue to fuel the creation of your best work.
Most importantly, understanding and acknowledging this momentum will come and go throughout our journey. Savor it while it lasts. Look forward to it again if it disappears. Are you interested in teaming up with a group of pros to help you develop that “creative momentum”? Click here to get in touch with the Deforest Group team!