What is creativity? Where does it come from?

It just flows, I can be sitting on the couch and an idea pops in my head. So I grab a device, phone iPad, or laptop and start writing it down. Heres an insight into how my brain works...

I was asked recently, how do you come up with this stuff? How are you so creative?

My initial response was, it just flows, I can be sitting on the couch and an idea pops in my head. So I grab a device, phone iPad, or laptop and start writing it down, or drawing or rapidly iterating on a thought.

Not every idea makes it, or turns into something, but you never know when inspiration will hit you. Most times its when i’m bored, or doing nothing, sometimes its when im walking, other times a shower, or going for a drive. So in an effort to share my creativity flow, I thought I would document the process.

This might be boring, this might be one of those ideas that goes nowhere and is a complete waste of time, but who knows it my inspire someone else to develop a skill set or create their own product or idea.

So here goes. I have always loved the colour green, something about nature and being in the bush has always drawn me to the colour. Thats where I started the journey. Creating a T-Shirt line, or is it a brand I don’t know yet. I had an idea, a few years ago about starting a brand “Kesla tours”. Using Teslas electric cars, to do sustainable tours around NZ. With the ultimate goal of having the cars, self drive my guests and enjoy the scenery at their own pace, on their own experiencing the safest and best views NZ has to offer. Having the last name Kesseler and mixing my passion for Tesla together (part of my Ikigai) I came up with Kesla. I started a brand exercise I learnt I high school in Art Design. Rapid iteration of graphic ideas. I started up keynote or powerpoint for you PC users and picked a black background with a green font. The ideas started flowing out of my brain, playing around with my brand Cryta’s at first then seeing where it would go.

Cryta's

Looking at fonts that stood out I settled on Helvetica Neue. The bottom one in this image. Though too much green I needed a contrasting colour. Along came Mr White.

I then thought of my latest post, and I coined the phrase, be LEANgendary. Hmmm I thought that would be good on a T shirt. The hope is that it would spark a question from people seeing it, to ask the person wearing it, then I could lean into the concept, being lean is legendary, what is lean? What does it mean? Boom. It’s a talking point, its an introduction, its something different.

Not that I enjoy networking, but it’s interesting to see how or if it plays out. Theres alot of thought that goes into logos, slogans, ideas or phrases. For example, I have a tattoo on my right arm, and its location and language was deliberate. I deliberately wanted a small portion or tail of the Japanese characters to be below my sleeve line. it sparks interest, it shows you a little tease, sparks curiosity, or shock when a Japanese person reads “Fu Rei Ku” on my arm. Then, when i’m asked, and only then do I tell the story behind it.

So developing and brainstorming my ideas, I quickly jotted down with various designs, based on the same colour scheme, and started building on what I have been blogging about for years. The little things, being plus 1% better, choosing discipline over motivation. I started churning back thru all my posts to see what I have discussed, my views, and documenting them in a brain storm. This then turned into hey why don’t I put these on my T shirts? Ok a couple of days later and some designs, i’m launching a few T shirts on the back of this new idea. This has now quickly turned into why don’t I do brand around Kesla? Kesla Motivational? Kesla Discipline? Kesla Motivation? Kesla LEANgendary?

The ideas kept flowing, but in the middle of these ideas, another idea might pop up. Hmm I have been delving into my ikigai over the past few months, finding my purpose. I choose not to share my personal ikigai directly in my post, but discussed the concept and the ideas around this way of thinking. During this brainstorm my mind started wandering off to, I love Japanese culture, Japanese design, Japan, its history and its language. So I started up my second brain and started developing ideas on blog posts, as I wrote this post, I quickly jumped into my second brain and pulled out this list from my earlier brain dump

Japanese culture

- forest bathing

- wagyu

- ikigai

- wabi sabi

- kaizen: continuous improvement

- tea ceremonies

- kimonos

- Omotenashi: hospitality and selflessness

- tatami mats

- raw food

- kintsugi

- onsen (hot springs)

Who knows what will happen or come of it, but it gives you an insight into how my brain works, it feels a little schizophrenic, don’t worry im not, my brain just goes a million, and its where the inspiration comes from. It could be a picture as in below.

Here’s one I viewed earlier in the morning at 545 to be precise. I could see myself retiring here, or building something along this idea. I love onsen hot pools, it’s one of my best kept secrets / experiences, and it’s amazing how you feel after onsen.

Then all of a sudden my brain switched to another idea…I had a YouTube video playing in the background, half listening to it, I learnt about keyboard shortcuts of a different kind. Snippets. I started playing around with these on my computer, and learning how to type faster, how to be more productive, how to increase my efficiency.

BAM! Another idea hit. I was teaching a colleague this just last week, one of my secret time savers at work. A simple concept, but hang on, why am I sharing some of this stuff for free? How can I monetise my IP my knowledge, my expertise. What is my passion? What is my thing I can give to the world? I keep coming back to my ikigai. I love being efficient, I love being in a lean state, I love finding a better way of doing things, I love Kaizen, continuous improvement.

Boom another the idea, I could look at writing a course to help people and bring value for a small fee? Now don’t get me wrong I have been putting out content for nearly 2 years now, 90 posts to date, and nearly 50 in draft in the background, including this one, and all for FREE. I firmly believe you have to provide FREE content, though there has to be some sort of return at some point, or do I just keep putting out stuff for Free? Is that my niche? My T Shirts do bring a small retune and have sustained themselves, but I cant say i’ve made a profit, but could I do a course? or a video on how to do something? A document ? I don’t know yet, ill figure that out along the way, but I have made a start.

How can I diversify and bring value to what I do, and create a side business. This might have been the magic moment to start looking and documenting my ideas, into a value based course. Second brain….here we go again.

Now this all happened over the space of a couple of days on a weekend, in between socialising, scrolling the net, watching YouTube, gardening, spending time with the kids, and my partner. My brain doesn’t stop, it’s always on, but it’s always thinking up new ideas, and developing ideas. Who knows where it will end, and how, or if it ever will slow down, but I have learnt one thing through this process. Documenting and using a second brain has helped control the huge data dump that I experience on a daily basis. Journalling and writing it down has been useful, and I can always revisit this stuff at a moments notice. Apple notes is great at retrieving corpus amounts of data with its search and tagging functions.

I hope this gives you an insight into how my brain works on a daily basis. I hope this brings some value on how to be creative and how to capture it.

If you want to learn more, please leave a comment or ask a question? Share you ikigai, share your thoughts, you never know where it might lead. Look at this post. It was inspired by a subscriber asking me where does this all come from??

The Wrap

And that’s it for this week!

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