Diary of a creative person: day 13

Working at doing things differently

Almost as a counter-balance to reworking and reusing old material Marc works hard at doing things differently from other composers, especially those from previous eras. His aim in doing this is not about being original for originality's sake. It is about offering something fresh for his musicians to play and his audiences to hear.

It is not always necessary or appropriate to do things differently. Many of the demands of life and work are best dealt with in tried, tested and generally accepted ways. This not only helps others quickly understand what we are doing but also helps us quickly achieve things. Creative thinking, however, requires fresh and stimulating thinking and approaches and one of the best ways of achieving this is to work at doing things differently.

When you need to be creative practise the previously described skill of suspending judgement to avoid automatic assumptions about how you will do things. Set yourself some awkward rules to help you not only suspend your judgements but also encourage you to do things differently. Look out the window again, but this time look for what someone else is doing to solve your problem and start doing it yourself. Force yourself to do things differently by setting yourself a one-day challenge to solve a problem or address an issue. 


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