My comment relates to "thinking with children."I teach art workshops on drawing and watercolor and journal keeping. For years I taught these workshops in the local schools, mostly to second graders. When I first began teaching these workshops, I experienced them as a big interruption to my own creative endeavors. Then I had the breakthrough to incorporate my own art into the teaching process. I would show the students the beginnings of a painting. (They would ooh and ahh, but I would point out the places where I didn't feel satisfied or felt it was unfinished.) I'd bring the piece back the next week and show them what I had done to push the drawing forward. This accomplished a number of things. First, it transformed my relationship with the kids from being the teacher/expert to being a colleague, an equal. I was actually demonstrating the advice I was giving to the kids--work with what you have; you can't erase your "mistakes" but you can change them. Also, that while you don't know it from a finished piece, my drawings are never what I first envisioned when I'm about to start. There's the idea and a blank piece of paper. Then there are the first marks, and then you have to put aside your vision and work with what is on the page. And you only get one piece of paper. You can turn it over and start again if you think you've made a mistake, but that's the only sheet of paper I'm going to give you (we worked on artist-quality watercolor and drawing paper which would hold up with lots of reworking and was too expensive to waste.) My teaching workshops began to feed my own creative process rather than interrupt it and I learned to take my own advice in a deeper way. And I often found the student's art to be inspiring and innovative in ways that were unexpected. As I helped them see their own work, not in terms of what they had wanted to do, but in terms of what they had done, that was very exciting and interesting, I learned to see my own work in more objective terms. I certainly learned as much from the kids as they learned from me. I've taught the same workshops to adults, and I find that working with kids results in many ideas that adults don't generate, mostly because they already think they know what art should be, while kids are more open to the process itself.
I love mind maps. One thing that helps me even more is a *moveable* mind map. I write my central question or idea in the center of a large sheet of drawing paper. Then I’ll take small pieces of paper or Post-it notes and write individual concepts on those. I can arrange and rearrange the small pieces around the central idea, adding and subtracting, until my thinking becomes clearer. Something about using my hands to move the pieces around helps me think.
I meditate every morning and walk mostly every day. By meditating I start my day off in a relaxed, calm state. When walking I breath in my surroundings, while experiencing a mix of nature, other humans, sights, sounds, and smells. Walking in the morning takes me kind of full circle, caring for my body, mind, and soul. Together, meditating and walking create a happy, peaceful me.
Walk, walk, walk. My ideas get initiated or refined when I am walking. I have a set walk in my small town, which includes an antique row of shops, (the decorated windows are also great for ideas).
I also pass a children’s library, gracious homes, and a large abandoned turn of the century nursing home which has a wide tree draped driveway leading up to it.
Day trips, road trips, car rides! It has happened so often that driving is now my go to solution to unblock on issues that I cannot get movement on. Why did that happen, what’s their endgame? All of the answers come to me while taking a long road trip. Something about a long drive that releases my brain to work on the issue at hand. It has worked so faithfully I almost want to call it God. I highly recommend trying it. Drive on a highway within a reasonable speed, have a destination (fun) in mind and see if you don’t get your AHA moment round about mile 25 or so. Blessings to all!
I have a practice I call "Storyboard Aloud" which is a talk/movement session at a large space (floor or table) with a 1) stack of blank note cards, a 2) sharpie and an 3) audio recorder. I start recording, talk and organize ideas. I say "organize" because that's that I THINK I'm going to do, but what happens is I GENERATE ideas. I generate a sequence, an organization, a new way of seeing the thing. Now that it's a practice I crave it when my mind gets confused. It's always such a release. I think the movement plus talking plus the slight performance anxiety of the recording make a great creative mix. Austin, thanks for the post, as always!
Walks, alone. My best thinking - hands down - comes during a walk. It's like I can be two places at once; being mindful of the present moment and taking in what's around me, but also a bit lost in my own head. It's like the two feed each other, and I feel like I always learn or come to something important.
I too recently revisited Annie Murphy Paul's ideas because the school where I work (as a high school art teacher) is working with a space planning architecture firm to try to reconsider how we use our space. The solution most alluded to in the meeting is analogous to "hoteling". I'm deeply concerned about the loss of customized history, chemistry, and foreign language rooms. Generic spaces do not help students learn! We would be removing a wonderful three dimensional model of the subject matter they are trying to absorb. And they will lose the ability to look at ideas externally and to make their own connections. Wish me luck on this quest!
Walking is the best, and showers are good too! Making art with kids (or thinking with children--please write that book!). Working with other people on some sort of physical project, whether it's cooking dinner or digging a garden. Oh, yeah: gardening!
P.S. Totally off-topic, but I know there are a ton of artists and art-loving people in this group, and I want to recommend children's book illustrator/artist Carson Ellis's substack, Slowpoke, especially right this very minute, as she's writing about traveling in Japan with her 10-year-old son. Today's photo of an art store in Kyoto makes me want to take the first plane to Kyoto. Here's the link: https://carsonellis.substack.com/p/travelogue-japan-part-2?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Meditation and movement. My meditation practice and daily morning walk really helps loosen up the mental gunk in my head. I also journal a lot. I “take it out on the page” when I can. It helps me calm down, reframe challenges, and makes me slow down. Slowing down is important.
Love this. I've recently been obsessed with morning pages--three longhand pages of free writing first thing in the morning (from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way.) I had tried them early on in my writing career and couldn't get into it, but I think it was because I was still new and excited and full of ideas. It seemed like wasted time. Twelve years in and almost 20 published books later, I'm coming at them differently now. They're turning out to be pretty transformative. After about a month of doing them, a book idea came to me (after almost 2.5 years of not having a workable one of those.) Something about the pen on paper and being away from my physical desk made a difference. So then that sent me down a rabbit hole, researching writers who still write their books longhand, because longhand writing seems to be accessing something different in my brain (or at least not triggering the anxiety/writer's block cycle.) So, I'm giving that a try. We shall see.
Austin, I have read your books and I feel excited to find your emails. I always get something that empowers or uplifts me toward a better life when I read your posts and find your sources you so graciously share. I have enjoyed but not thanked you for your work. So thank you for so much good energy❣️
I do my own version of morning pages. Every day I sit in front of a blank page with pen in hand and start a timer for 30 minutes. For those 30 minutes, I can write or do nothing. Those are the options. Once in a while, I read entries at least a week old and write down sentences that jump out at me on an index card. I find the “at least a week old” requirement helps me use time as a filter. The writing feels so distant already. Easier to evaluate. Then I end up with a collection of index cards with starting points for further sessions.
Walking, bike rides when I can, and meditating every morning! All very refreshing and food for my soul. I would also add to this, “deliberate” conversations about why we sometimes think they way we do, with my wife. There are a lot of outlets and resources to help get out of myself! Thanks for the ask Austin! Definitely sparked some moments of reflection today!
I host a podcast about living and working(thinking) with adhd and autism. I was diagnosed when I was 6. I’m now 68. Yes a long time. So on the podcast is where I share many of my ideas floating around in my head. It’s just me talking for 7-8 minutes hoping listeners hear something that will help them. I know it helps me and so far we heard in over 80 countries. Not bad for a one man not professional show I guess.
Adding water always works for me - bath, shower, rain, sitting by a body of water. Also finding a forest to wander in when I can. If I cannot leave the house I draw repetitive intricate patterns in my sketchbook.
My comment relates to "thinking with children."I teach art workshops on drawing and watercolor and journal keeping. For years I taught these workshops in the local schools, mostly to second graders. When I first began teaching these workshops, I experienced them as a big interruption to my own creative endeavors. Then I had the breakthrough to incorporate my own art into the teaching process. I would show the students the beginnings of a painting. (They would ooh and ahh, but I would point out the places where I didn't feel satisfied or felt it was unfinished.) I'd bring the piece back the next week and show them what I had done to push the drawing forward. This accomplished a number of things. First, it transformed my relationship with the kids from being the teacher/expert to being a colleague, an equal. I was actually demonstrating the advice I was giving to the kids--work with what you have; you can't erase your "mistakes" but you can change them. Also, that while you don't know it from a finished piece, my drawings are never what I first envisioned when I'm about to start. There's the idea and a blank piece of paper. Then there are the first marks, and then you have to put aside your vision and work with what is on the page. And you only get one piece of paper. You can turn it over and start again if you think you've made a mistake, but that's the only sheet of paper I'm going to give you (we worked on artist-quality watercolor and drawing paper which would hold up with lots of reworking and was too expensive to waste.) My teaching workshops began to feed my own creative process rather than interrupt it and I learned to take my own advice in a deeper way. And I often found the student's art to be inspiring and innovative in ways that were unexpected. As I helped them see their own work, not in terms of what they had wanted to do, but in terms of what they had done, that was very exciting and interesting, I learned to see my own work in more objective terms. I certainly learned as much from the kids as they learned from me. I've taught the same workshops to adults, and I find that working with kids results in many ideas that adults don't generate, mostly because they already think they know what art should be, while kids are more open to the process itself.
I love mind maps. One thing that helps me even more is a *moveable* mind map. I write my central question or idea in the center of a large sheet of drawing paper. Then I’ll take small pieces of paper or Post-it notes and write individual concepts on those. I can arrange and rearrange the small pieces around the central idea, adding and subtracting, until my thinking becomes clearer. Something about using my hands to move the pieces around helps me think.
I meditate every morning and walk mostly every day. By meditating I start my day off in a relaxed, calm state. When walking I breath in my surroundings, while experiencing a mix of nature, other humans, sights, sounds, and smells. Walking in the morning takes me kind of full circle, caring for my body, mind, and soul. Together, meditating and walking create a happy, peaceful me.
Walk, walk, walk. My ideas get initiated or refined when I am walking. I have a set walk in my small town, which includes an antique row of shops, (the decorated windows are also great for ideas).
I also pass a children’s library, gracious homes, and a large abandoned turn of the century nursing home which has a wide tree draped driveway leading up to it.
When I get home, I usually know what to do.
Day trips, road trips, car rides! It has happened so often that driving is now my go to solution to unblock on issues that I cannot get movement on. Why did that happen, what’s their endgame? All of the answers come to me while taking a long road trip. Something about a long drive that releases my brain to work on the issue at hand. It has worked so faithfully I almost want to call it God. I highly recommend trying it. Drive on a highway within a reasonable speed, have a destination (fun) in mind and see if you don’t get your AHA moment round about mile 25 or so. Blessings to all!
I have a practice I call "Storyboard Aloud" which is a talk/movement session at a large space (floor or table) with a 1) stack of blank note cards, a 2) sharpie and an 3) audio recorder. I start recording, talk and organize ideas. I say "organize" because that's that I THINK I'm going to do, but what happens is I GENERATE ideas. I generate a sequence, an organization, a new way of seeing the thing. Now that it's a practice I crave it when my mind gets confused. It's always such a release. I think the movement plus talking plus the slight performance anxiety of the recording make a great creative mix. Austin, thanks for the post, as always!
Walks, alone. My best thinking - hands down - comes during a walk. It's like I can be two places at once; being mindful of the present moment and taking in what's around me, but also a bit lost in my own head. It's like the two feed each other, and I feel like I always learn or come to something important.
I too recently revisited Annie Murphy Paul's ideas because the school where I work (as a high school art teacher) is working with a space planning architecture firm to try to reconsider how we use our space. The solution most alluded to in the meeting is analogous to "hoteling". I'm deeply concerned about the loss of customized history, chemistry, and foreign language rooms. Generic spaces do not help students learn! We would be removing a wonderful three dimensional model of the subject matter they are trying to absorb. And they will lose the ability to look at ideas externally and to make their own connections. Wish me luck on this quest!
Walking is the best, and showers are good too! Making art with kids (or thinking with children--please write that book!). Working with other people on some sort of physical project, whether it's cooking dinner or digging a garden. Oh, yeah: gardening!
P.S. Totally off-topic, but I know there are a ton of artists and art-loving people in this group, and I want to recommend children's book illustrator/artist Carson Ellis's substack, Slowpoke, especially right this very minute, as she's writing about traveling in Japan with her 10-year-old son. Today's photo of an art store in Kyoto makes me want to take the first plane to Kyoto. Here's the link: https://carsonellis.substack.com/p/travelogue-japan-part-2?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Meditation and movement. My meditation practice and daily morning walk really helps loosen up the mental gunk in my head. I also journal a lot. I “take it out on the page” when I can. It helps me calm down, reframe challenges, and makes me slow down. Slowing down is important.
Love this. I've recently been obsessed with morning pages--three longhand pages of free writing first thing in the morning (from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way.) I had tried them early on in my writing career and couldn't get into it, but I think it was because I was still new and excited and full of ideas. It seemed like wasted time. Twelve years in and almost 20 published books later, I'm coming at them differently now. They're turning out to be pretty transformative. After about a month of doing them, a book idea came to me (after almost 2.5 years of not having a workable one of those.) Something about the pen on paper and being away from my physical desk made a difference. So then that sent me down a rabbit hole, researching writers who still write their books longhand, because longhand writing seems to be accessing something different in my brain (or at least not triggering the anxiety/writer's block cycle.) So, I'm giving that a try. We shall see.
Austin, I have read your books and I feel excited to find your emails. I always get something that empowers or uplifts me toward a better life when I read your posts and find your sources you so graciously share. I have enjoyed but not thanked you for your work. So thank you for so much good energy❣️
I do my own version of morning pages. Every day I sit in front of a blank page with pen in hand and start a timer for 30 minutes. For those 30 minutes, I can write or do nothing. Those are the options. Once in a while, I read entries at least a week old and write down sentences that jump out at me on an index card. I find the “at least a week old” requirement helps me use time as a filter. The writing feels so distant already. Easier to evaluate. Then I end up with a collection of index cards with starting points for further sessions.
Walking, bike rides when I can, and meditating every morning! All very refreshing and food for my soul. I would also add to this, “deliberate” conversations about why we sometimes think they way we do, with my wife. There are a lot of outlets and resources to help get out of myself! Thanks for the ask Austin! Definitely sparked some moments of reflection today!
I host a podcast about living and working(thinking) with adhd and autism. I was diagnosed when I was 6. I’m now 68. Yes a long time. So on the podcast is where I share many of my ideas floating around in my head. It’s just me talking for 7-8 minutes hoping listeners hear something that will help them. I know it helps me and so far we heard in over 80 countries. Not bad for a one man not professional show I guess.
Adding water always works for me - bath, shower, rain, sitting by a body of water. Also finding a forest to wander in when I can. If I cannot leave the house I draw repetitive intricate patterns in my sketchbook.