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Creative universe

Published at 2022-04-10T10:09:11+01:00; Updated at 2022-04-18

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Prelude

I have been participating in an annual work-internal project contest (we call it Pet Project contest) since I moved to London and switched jobs to my current employer. I am very happy to say that I won a "silver" prize last week here 🎆. Over the last couple of years I have been a finalist in this contest six times and won some kind of prize five times. Some of my projects were also released as open source software. One had a magazine article published, and for another one I wrote an article on my employer's engineering blog. If you have followed all my posts on this blog (the one you are currently reading), then you have probably figured out what these projects were:

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I want to learn new technologies or to deepen my knowledge of a given technology. I want to have a personal benefit from the project, even when I don't win any prize. So when the company is offering a contest, why not use it as a motivational trampoline? It's good to have a hard deadline for a project. And the project will also benefit the company in some way. So it's a win-win.

I love the idea of combining several old things into a new thing. You can call this creativity. At work, we call this sometimes Lego: Building new things from given blocks. But I also love to add something new and unique to the mix, something that didn't exist as a Lego block before and could not be built by using only the already existing blocks.

How to be creative

How did I manage to be creative with all these Pet Projects? Unfortunately, there is no step-by-step guide I could point you to. But what I want to do in this blog post is share my personal experience so far.

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Know which problem you want to solve

There must be a problem to be solved or a thing to be improved. It makes no sense to have a project without a goal. A problem might be obvious to you, and you don't even need to think about it. In that case, you are all set, and you can immerse yourself with the problem.

If, however, you don't know what problem you want to solve: Do you really need to be creative? All problems are solved anyway, correct? In that case, just go on with your work. As you immerse yourself with your daily work, you will find a project naturally after a while. I don't believe you should artificially find a project. It should come naturally to you. You should have an interest in the problem domain and a strong desire to find a proper solution for the problem. Artificially created projects come with the catch that you might give up on it rather sooner than later due to lack of motivation and desire.

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Immerse / deep dive

If you want to be creative in a field, you must know a lot about it. The more you know about it, the more dots you can connect. When you are learning a new technology or if you are thinking about a tough problem, do it thoroughly. Don't let anything distract you. Read books, watch lectures, listen to podcasts or audiobooks about the topic, talk to other people working on similar topics. Immerse yourself for multiple hours per day, multiple days per week, multiple weeks and maybe even months. Create your own inner universe.

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Sometimes, depending on how deeply you were immersed, you may need to let the problem go for a couple of days (e.g. over a weekend) before you can download a new insight.

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Always have a notebook with you

Wherever you go, ensure that you always have something to take notes with you. Once you have an idea from nowhere (or from your unconscious but volatile brain), you really want to write it down to persistent storage. It doesn't matter what kind of note-taking device you use here. It can be a paper journal, or it can be your smartphone.

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I prefer taking notes on paper, as it gives you more freedom of how to structure it. You can use any colour, and you can also quickly create diagrams without the use of any complex computer program.

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When you didn't sleep enough

I noticed while being sleep-deprived I am (obviously) unable to concentrate so much, and it is difficult to be immersed in a focused way. But on the other hand, I am a lot more creative compared to when I am not sleep-deprived. Then, my brain suddenly presents me with connections I have not thought of before. Here, I usually write any idea I have down on a sheet of paper or in my journal, so I can pick it up later. I then often continue to philosophise about a possible solution. Sometimes to the absurd, and sometimes to something pretty useful.

I am not saying that you should skip sleep. By all means, if you can sleep, then sleep. But there are some days when you don't manage to sleep (e.g. think too much about a project and didn't manage to hit the off switch). This is, where you can take advantage of your current state of mind. Disclaimer: Skipping sleep damages your health. So, please don't try this out on purpose. But in case you had a bad night, remember this trick.

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Have regular breaks and relax

Have regular breaks. Don't skip your lunch break. Best, have a walk during lunchtime. And after work, do some kind of workout or visit a sports class. Do something completely unrelated to work before going to sleep (e.g. visit a parallel universe and read a Science Fiction novel). In short: Totally hit the off-switch after your work for the day is finished. You will be much more energised and motivated the next time you open your work laptop.

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It also helps a lot eat healthy. Healthy food makes your brain work more efficiently. But I won't go into more details here, as nothing is as contradictory as the health and food industry. Conduct your own research. Your opinion may be different from mine anyway, and everyone's body reacts to certain foods differently. What for one person works may not work for another person. But be aware that you will find a lot of wrong and also conflicting information on the internet. So always use multiple resources for your research.

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Upside-down approach

It's easy to fall into the habit of "boxed" thinking, but creativity is exactly the opposite. Once in a while, make yourself think "Is A really required to do B?". Many assumptions are believed to be true. But are they really? A concrete example: "At work we only use the programming language L and framework F" and therefore, it is the standard we must use.

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A small additional trick: you can train yourself to generate new and unconventional ideas. Just write down 20 random ideas every day. It doesn't matter what the ideas are about and whether they are useful or not. The purpose of this exercise is to make your brain think about something new and unconventional. These can be absurd ideas such as "Jump out of the window naked in the morning in order to wake up faster". Of course, you would never do that, but at least you had an idea and made your brain generate something.

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Don't be busy all the time

Especially as a DevOps Engineer, you could be busy all the time with small, but frequent, ad hoc tasks. Don't lose yourself here. Yes, you should pay attention to your job and those tasks, but you should also make some room for creativity. Don't schedule meeting after ad hoc work after meeting after Jira ticket work after another Jira ticket. There should also be some "free" space in your calendar.

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Conclusion

This all summarises advice I have, really. I hope this was interesting and helpful for you.

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