Powerful and Productive Words for Creatives to Work By
A 3-word recipe for a very good day
Word themes. You’ve likely seen this phenomenon.
At the beginning of the year, you choose a word that inspires and embodies what you want for the months ahead.
Hope. Light. Progress. Joy. Strength. Peace. Love.
It’s a lovely idea and I have tried it with limited success. As the days of the year fly by, I lose sight of my word and good intentions.
This year, I struck on a three-word theme — three Cs — for my work life as an editor and writer.
This trio has settled in my mind, and I call on them to guide me when I am feeling lost or unnerved. I can go back to them to ground myself, remind me why I am doing the work and show me the way forward.
At the start of each week, I write these three words at the top of my planner.
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” — George Bernard Shaw
1. Create
Looming deadlines. To-dos for days. External and internal expectations. When pressure builds, I can forget how much I love the creative process.
I am creating something — sometimes from nothing.
It’s messy but it’s fun too, and I am lucky to have work that requires my creativity and challenges my brain and abilities. So I go back to this word to stir my imagination, and to remind myself to enjoy being a maker regardless of the outcome.
When I do that it also frees my mind from its stress spin cycle, and I can do better work.
“Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.” — Bob Burg, “The Go-Giver”
2. Contribute
In an office setting, I work on creative teams with talented peers. Every day, I tell myself I am there to contribute, and that means that it doesn’t always need to be my idea or even my project.
How can I help? How can I be of service? In a meeting, does a thought or idea I have contribute to the discussion?
As an editor and writer, it’s also about offering value for my readers and clients. That means determining whether something contributes to the piece, the project, the process and the people? If not, I should edit it out or come up with a way to make it valuable.
When I work on my own passion project, a quirky productivity blog about making chores more fun, I task myself with contributing both helpful ideas and inspiration.
I am not there to just wax on or entertain myself, although I can be guilty of both. I want to create content that offers something to others, and helps them improve their lives in enjoyable and doable ways.
“Eventually everything connects — people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.” —Charles Eames
3. Connect
I landed on this word, thanks to one of my closest connections.
My son, who works for a top tech company, encouraged me to do a core values exercise because of our shared interested in personal development. In this exercise, you start with a list of more than 220 values and narrow it down to your top three.
Not easy. Not easy at all.
In the end, connection — a word that wasn’t even on my radar — made the top three, along with creativity and passion. I lobbied my son to allow me five core values, so I could nab honesty and authenticity too. He said he knew it was difficult … but, “That’s cheating, Mom.”
Yet, how could those essential parts of me, at least who I want to be most, not make my short list? Then, I realized why being honest and authentic were so important to me — because I so value my connection with others. I’d landed on a word that covered those too. (Yay! I won the game without cheating.)
In my work life, connect has many layers of meaning. I want to connect with my colleagues and clients — to care about them as people and to make their days better. As a writer and editor, I want my work to connect with others and to influence them in positive ways.
Circling back to the joy of creating, I want to make connections with ideas, words and images, in a way that solves problems or brings delight. I believe these sparks of connecting energy are at the core of a creative mind and life. And they’re pure magic for me.
Create. Contribute. Connect. That, my friends, is a good day.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +443,678 people.
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