There Is Art In Thinking (And You’re Probably Doing It Wrong)
How to have better ideas and escape writer’s block
From Da Vinci to Tim Ferris, from Murakami to Ryan Holiday — they all understood the importance of having ideas.
We give so much importance to our minds, yet, we don’t understand their potential. Let me guess, you’re a creative person both inside and out. You love having ideas and looking at things from a deeper meaning. You’ll be looking at a range of mountains and lose yourself in its beauty.
But with great creativity, come great blocks. When I mention something as simple as thinking you’ll probably say “Oh, that’s simple. What’s tough with that?” Right? Remember those days when you are sitting in from of the blue screen, looking for inspiration that never really does. When the painting is left unfinished because you can’t place the last stroke, or the words just won’t come to you.
You’d rather spend hours scrolling content on your phone, spending time with what others are saying but when was the last time you sat with yourself, to have a conversation?
Thinking comes to you when you’re not even trying
The more you force ideas out of you, the more inorganic they will feel. Plus, ideas are not streamlined, there is a channel. When you consume content that tinkles your thinking bone, you start a chain reaction of ideas. One leads to another, then another, then another — and by the end, you’re overflowing with curiosity.
But that’s the problem I want to talk about — a wave of ideas that dies down within seconds.
Let me bring science into it to make it more believable — Our minds are capable of storing a maximum of 7 short-term ideas. That’s the capacity of your brain. When you think about it, those ideas no matter how big are overtaken by minor things like
- What do I want to have for lunch?
- Oh, I have to buy milk before I go home.
- I also have to send that email before 6 PM today.
- Gotta meet my friends at the venue.
- The train leaves in 10 minutes, so I should run.
Your inner monologue is analyzing and running through your daily life and while doing so — all the ideas you had are gone, down in the dump. Later at night no matter how much you press your brain, it is unlikely you’ll remember that thought.
It happens more often than you think
Let’s take a recent example. You’re reading a book, and this quote moved you to your core. It sparked a fire in you and you wish to remember it forever. Spoiler alert — you can’t. But you take a pencil and highlight it.
You’re watching a movie and you feel inspired. By the end of the movie, you have a creative flow rushing. The next morning you wake up, the fire is dead and the inspiration is gone.
Until and unless you watch the movie again or pick up that book from the pile of dust, you won’t bring back that feeling.
There is art in having ideas — says Da Vinci
In the golden era of the Renaissance, the genius mind of Leonardo da Vinci was a beacon of creativity. Da Vinci understood the art of thinking like few others.
His sketchbooks, a treasure trove of ideas, sketches, and fantastical inventions, are a testament to his ceaseless curiosity.
Within the pages of his notebooks, da Vinci’s thoughts leaped from anatomy to engineering, from art to the flight of birds. These sketches weren’t just an outlet for ideas; they were a playground where da Vinci’s insatiable curiosity could roam freely.
In this notebook, we noted his thinking, mindset, and ideas. Maybe there were times when he had a block — all he had to do to get the creative engines running was go back to his notebook and read through it.
Today, pixels replace paper.
Storing ideas is not something great. Yes, it will move the needle but what you really want to escape writer’s block is to reflect on those ideas.
If you take my advice and create a doc where you keep jotting down ideas, 6 months later all you will have is an archive full of words.
When you want to be inspired by something, you’ll have to search through the archive, maybe the right inspiration does not find you.
In 24 hours of your day, take 5 min to read some of your ideas. The more you inspire yourself, the better your mind will function. In those 5 minutes, look through your ideas and have a conversation with yourself.
What to do?
Here is what helps me — Napkin
It is a relatively new app but man does it work like magic. It is so simple yet effective. From book quotes to random idea flows, I write everything on Napkin. It auto-tags my ideas so when I want to look at meditation, my ideas about meditation will come up. If I want to skim through ideas about Poetry, guess what — my thoughts about poetry are right there.
I can swipe through as many of my ideas as I want. But that’s not even the best part — the best part is that my ideas are shuffled. So something that I wrote 4 months ago might come right up — I might have forgotten about it but Napkin makes it possible for me to escape my writer’s block in the best manner.
PS: This is not a sponsored post. I truly like Napkin and they’re relatively new and I want to appreciate their effort in creating this amazing app.
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