Organization Is Essential in the Creative Process

Creativity involves the culmination of various skills. Some of those skills revolve around the ability to organize. Organizational skills are important skills to have in order to intensify our creative potentials. They give us the ability to formulate our work, which directly allows us to target certain activities at suitable times without getting disorganized or falling off-track. That, in turn, allows us to increase our efficiency and creativity.

Prior to college, my organizational skills were distinctly absent. I was always the messy individual that never organized his binders, assignments, tasks, etc. I never used a planner or anything of that nature to plan out my tasks, which is one of the many reasons I’ve missed deadlines for a multitude of assignments during my pre-college career.

Upon entering college, I knew that the absence of organization was definitely going to hinder my creativity as the tasks I would have to accomplish would just multiply as the semesters progressed. My sleep schedule, creativity, and overall ability to perform well within the college environment would be crippled if I did not implement any form of organization within my life.

Cater Towards Your Preferences When You Develop Organizational Plans

In order to develop organizational skills, we have to cater towards our preferences. Within my case, I knew that I wanted my organizational tools on my electronic devices. The reasoning behind that is that I’m an individual that loves using his technological gadgets as much as possible. I cannot imagine a day without my laptop or phone. I knew that if I were to have my tools located on my devices, I would be reminded constantly about the tasks I have to accomplish on a daily basis.

Taking my love for technology into consideration, I downloaded an application called Planner Pro on both my phone and laptop. The title of the application is self-explanatory in that it is essentially a digital planner. Initially, I struggled to use it. I didn’t know how to plan out my activities and how to manage my time. But as I conducted various trials and tribulation experiments, I was able to concoct a formula that helped me plan out my tasks.

This is my planner with the activities I planned and completed for the month of February.

My Organizational Formula

This formula is useful for me and I believe it can be useful for many students. It will change as I leave college and enter the workforce. But, as of March 2, 2018, the following is my organizational formula for my planner:

1. First, plan the class-related activities. Many of us go to college for the primary goal of obtaining an education. I value this goal to a great extent and prioritize my classes over any other activities. Taking that into consideration, I plan out my class-related activities first as the initial emptiness of the planner allows for flexibility in planning. As a general rule, the activity you prioritize above all else should be planned first because you can create timeframes that maximize the time you have to work on that activity.
2. Following that, plan the club-related activities. Club participation and social interactions define the communal aspects of the college experience. For this reason, I implement my club-related activities immediately after I plan out my class-related activities. On a weekly basis, I will always attempt to make time for my participation in a minimum of two club-related activities.
3. After that, check the career center website for job/event postings. The end-goal of most students’ college careers is to obtain a job after they graduate. For this reason, depending on the space available in my planner, I will attempt to make time to attend a few information sessions to understand the workings of many companies that I intend on applying to. I attend these sessions to network and participate in events with recruiters and employers that I will be confronted by in the near future.
4. Lastly, plan your leisure time. Within every week, there should be an allocated time in which we have the ability to relax. Focusing entirely on work could physically and mentally drain an individual. For this very reason, I attempt to plan a minimum of two hours of leisure time a day. If my planner isn’t filled with activities, I’ll attempt to have a day, preferably a Friday, in which I loosen up and relax.

The Results of my Organizational Plan

To test if the elevation of my organizational skills resulted in the enhancement of my creativity, I compared my grades from high school to my grades in college. Although grades aren’t the ultimate determiners of creativity, they serve as decent indicators as creative individuals tend to excel in school because they are the ones that develop creative schedules and studying patterns. Moreover, the results of my test show that my dysfunctional organizational skills within high school prohibited me from excelling in classes as I never planned out my activities or set up organized studying patterns. This resulted in lackluster grades according to my current standards. My functional organizational skills within college have allowed me to excel in many of my classes as I now creatively construct my schedules and studying patterns on a normal basis.

What’s Next?

As this blog post comes to an end, I want to simply tease what the next blog post will be about. As I progress through my journey of developing the soft skill of creativity, I want to learn from others. Within my previous blog post, I talked about the ideas that were presented by a fellow blogger, David Kadavy. On my next blog post, I will read sections from a book that focuses on creativity and give my input on the material presented in the book. I will talk about the ideas from the book that I like and that I would want to implement within my life.