Remember mix tapes? Of course you do. A mix tape was a tape of songs that meant something to you and, hopefully, for the person you were making the mix tape for. If the mix tape was for a girl or boyfriend then odds were the tape would contain love songs. If it was for one of your friends it might contain an introduction to a genre of music you thought worthy of sharing. The point is, the music on the tape often had a purpose.

One purpose of music is to create atmosphere. And atmosphere is very important to the creative process. Music can lead us into the right frame of mind to get that creative task done. And it isn’t simply about music that you like.

I don’t know all the scientific explanations about right and left brain process and how certain types of music can get them working at their peak. What I do know is that different styles of music help me for different creative activities.

A lot of our creative time is now spent in front of a computer. This is good news for creating an atmosphere. Whether you have access to music stored on your computer or streamed via the net, you can create playlists depending on what you are creating.

When writing, I prefer something ambient and quiet, but when working on an image the sound is much louder and rhythmic. With this in mind I have created different playlists to use. I simply turn on the player (current favourite is Spotify) and click the preferred playlist.

Do you have a favourite style of music depending on your creative task? Have you got any recommended soundtracks to help creativity? Let us know in the comments.

Photo by Clix

Over recent years I think I have signed up to each and every task management tool that has come online. They are all pretty good and to be honest not too much difference in the way they work. Have goal / project and create some to do / next actions for it et voila.

So when I saw another task management tool that was on the net I thought I needed that like a hole in my head. The Big Picture is the tool and like all the rest it works in pretty much the same way. Create a goal and then assign some tasks and actions etc.

But

The Big Picture does this in a wonderful, visual way, and is totally dragable. It is a breath of fresh air in a pretty stagnant development arena. I love it. I can’t really explain it so check out the video below. And while you’re off doing that I am going to get the obviously needed hole in my head.

The demo

The slight negatives at the moment are:

• no iPhone app (but I don’t use an iPhone so no prob for me)
• no desktop version
• no tagging options that I can see – GTDers beware

But these are slight negatives. Now to plan my creative future…

Just when I thought I could concentrate on getting some work done. Along comes this wonderful online sequencer. It feels like I’m back in the 80s, albeit via a flash interface and firefox.

Plug and play and have lots of fun

Audiotool

You have deadlines. You have pressure at home. The world is on the brink of disaster. Everything is piling the pressure on you. You need to perform, but your creative urge just won’t rise to the occasion.

I’ve been feeling a little like this recently, with all of the above coming into play at some point. But to be honest they are always part of our life. There aren’t any days when these and other distractions aren’t fighting for a bit of our creative thought.

Some days however, they seem closer than others and we need to know how to deal with them. If we don’t, we’ll end up missing those deadlines, neglecting the home and becoming paranoid at everything beyond the front door. And that is before we realise that the blog hasn’t been updated for a while.

Overwhelmed
The biggest danger is that we become overwhelmed. Everything gangs up on us and we collapse under the pressure. What moments before was a pile of things to do and think about, is now a mountain that is beyond our climbing skills. There are three ways to deal with this:

1. Throw everything in the bin. For some people this is the best option. Anything that is on your mind, simply ditch it, emails, tweets, RSS feeds, lists, and so on. If anything that you had on your mind was important it will surface again. Important deadlines, emails that need responding to, will all resurface. Then when they do, you can put them into your system and deal with them.
2. Throw everything on a list. For those who aren’t as brave (or as those who prefer this solution would say, reckless), there is the list. Instead of picking up everything and throwing it away, you can throw it on a list. Out of your head, and away from distracting your creativity, is what you want to achieve. Adding everything to a list does exactly that, and you won’t have to worry about losing anything. Once everything is on the list, you can go through it at your own pace.
3. Throw yourself away. Instead of getting rid of all the stuff, why not get rid of yourself. Or more accurately, remove yourself for a while to recharge. The things will still be there when you get back, but if you can give yourself permission to take a break, you’ll be in a better state to deal with them.

Control
All of the above can deal with the feeling of being overwhelmed. They all take different approaches but they all work for the same reason. When we feel overwhelmed we feel powerless and helpless. These feelings leave us unable to do anything. The above all give us back our power. They are ways of us taking control of the situation and dealing with it, and that is what is needed.

So the next time you feel overwhelmed and it begins to affect your creative output, decide what is going to be thrown.

So here I am typing away on Focused. Focused is a compact adobe air app that blanks your screen and provides you an area to type on. Enabling you to stay ‘focussed’ on what you are writing, with no distractions. It has basic settings which allow you to choose the area on which to type and the font used.

The idea is similar to other desktop apps that are available. The same can be obtained in most word processor apps by clicking on the full screen option, and you’d still retain all the bells and whistles associated with your particular flavour of bloatware.

Are there advantages to focused?

• Well it is a tiny app.
• It is quick and easy to launch
• It does what it sets out to do
• It will help you learn to spell correctly

the disadvantages?

• The opposite of the above

I’m going to keep it installed and see how it goes for the next few weeks. The big question for me is whether or not I’ll actually bother to open the app. Having said that, white, or just off white, text on a black screen is very, very cool.

You can try it out here

There’s a great list of twitter tips for artists over at Mashable… so click here

In my current job incarnation, I need to be creative. I need to be creative at certain times, to meet certain deadlines. Planning my time with these deadlines in mind helps. A creative space, days or weeks before a deadline, eases the pressure and allows free creativity. But what happens when I, or you, need to be creative and create something within a couple of hours. How can we be creative on demand?

Deadlines can be persuasive. It is easy to see deadlines as the enemy when they loom in front of us, but they are a source of encouragement. The added stress that a deadline brings will get adrenalin and the creative juices flowing. We all need an amount of stress to provide motivation. So, being given a short time to be creative in, can actually be exactly what we need.

Open the cupboard of hints and tips. If you are getting nowhere, give yourself a helping hand with the simple creativity exercises we love to hate. All of the following, and many other, tips can help trigger the creative process, so don’t be afraid to get back to basics.

• Think of five related words around the main subject of your project and see where they lead.
• Think of the opposite to what your subject is, again seeing where that takes you.
• Think of your subject in a situation where it is not normally found, what ideas does that spark?

Avoid a blank sheet or screen. The pressure is on, the deadline is imminent and all you have in front of you is a blank sheet of paper or an empty electronic document… run! No, seriously, get away from it. As the pressure and stress levels rise, the last thing you need is an empty space. This blank nothingness will grow and grow engulfing any hope you have of creative lift-off. A quick walk around, a little tidy-up or a ‘phone-a-friend’ moment can break the ‘blank’ spell. Taking your mind off a problem can often allow your mind to solve it, and be creative. Be sure to keep a capture device relatively close by though… that deadline isn’t far off.

There is a fantastic, yet really simple, course available from Productivity501. It is a ten day course, via email, that helps you overcome procrastination. highly recommended if, like me, you end up with more things left undone than done.

Courses : Productivity501

Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has a really interesting post about keeping ‘like’ tasks together. I am sure you’ll find something of interest in the post even though it doesn’t deal directly with being creative. However, if you are like most creatives then a little organisation could go along way.

How Batch Processing Made Me 10 Times More Productive

You too can achieve your creative goals through those three steps and if you keep those steps in mind you’ll be amazed at what you can create:

• Preparation – prepare everything you may need, both during your creative journey and before you even start, e.g. resources, templates, time.
• Inspiration – the enigmatic spark that is fanned into the creative flame. Seek out inspirational tinder for you fire, e.g. images, sounds, space.
• Perspiration – nothing is free (well almost) and creativity will take effort on your part, so be aware that you’ll need to sweat a little to create.

Now what creative mountain are you going to climb today?