Mining Diamonds: Guidelines for Exploration
This came to mind as I was sitting in Shawn Blanc’s outstanding “Finding Your Creative Focus” workshop last year. He was talking through ways to make better use of our time & attention and I couldn’t help but sketch this out. He asked the audience what our New Year’s resolutions were. Not a fan of resolutions, but of commitments, I mentioned that I wanted to ask more & better questions. So naturally, my first more-better questions began with my creative process and I ended up with this pseudo diamond thingy and a metaphor. And a year later, a blog post on Medium. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Here’s how I break it down:
Different things
Like many (most?) people, I have this incredible gift of being interested in almost anything at any time — especially random things at the worst times. Of course, continual exploration has been shown to improve creativity, so my bent always has an alibi. To give myself some direction, though, I’ve drawn vague circles around my current interests to broaden the set of authors & sub-categories I consume. For instance, after asking for recommendations from twitter & a few non-designers, I checked out several dozen books, ebooks, & audiobooks from my library this year, not to mention the many that I’ve purchased. Starting small but gradually gaining radius, I’ll gain a bit more insight other circles.
Quality things
Define “quality,” right? This has become less of a strict rubric and more of a reminder to ask: “Is this going to help me or someone else in the near future?” “Is this the best source for this information?” I’ve also noticed that many sources—podcasts, twitters, blogs—tend to get weaker over time, so I need to give ambient attention to whether or not to keep going to my go-tos.
I have a couple friends who are very much into extremely high quality obscurities (like supercars, but unimaginably niche). I can’t even begin to be legitimately interested in those things, but I can learn from them, which is really a broad life lesson: be willing to learn from anything and you’ll always be learning something.
Stretch & hunt
While I’m prone to wander, I also gravitate towards (and function better within) routines — pens, notebooks, jeans, undershirts, snacks, socks, etc. — so getting outside those predictables isn’t always easy, either.This is the opposite of digital wandering. This is where I deliberately (not reflexively), specifically (with direction) venture outside my established norms. I should have parameters — 20 minutes*, a new watch, tiny backyard office research, EDC pens, new learning topic—before beginning and work to stick within them.
*The Pomodoro Technique (and the Tomato One Mac app) have been helpful here.
Thrive & focus
This is where I tend to find a groove, sort of like burning a bike trail into the grass. Though the slope is the same, it’s a whole lot faster & more predictable than the grass. Here, I’ll find flow. Without the burden of having to look for something and the enabling constraint of a committed focus, I’m able to get more-better work out of the time. And there’s a comfort of having a creative home: familiar routines, books, topics, people to return to that at once relax & reinvigorate a stale state.
The diamond
The idea here is not a formal checklist. It’s to develop tenable, scalable, & helpful patterns & habits that recognize the benefits of my tendencies while gently challenging my weaknesses.
All this works together. Stretching to bring back new ideas to my creative home reinforces, modifies, or even radically transforms the positions I held when I “left.” Thriving in the diamond overlap helps refine that input, burning off the dross. And so on.
