When I posted last night that I was happy to be getting back into the routine of daily blogging, it was with the thought that I was doing a good thing for myself. This morning, I’m wondering just how good it is.

As a creative person I’ve always Detested — with a capital ‘D’ — any type of structured environment. Schedules and I do not get along, and haven’t been on speaking terms for years. Ditto with the alarm clock. I truly cherish my freedom to be able to go where I want, when I want, and to be able to write when the mood strikes.

However, as a creative person working at making a living as a creative person, I also know that I need some sense of structure and routine in my working life at the very least. Case in point — almost three months between blog posts. (Being a diabetic means I also have to have some semblance of routine in the rest of my life too if I want to keep it under control. But that’s a story for another day.)

So anyway, back to the story here… This morning when I was trying to decide what to write I went searching for a quote to sum up how I feel about creating a work routine that works for me. I was really shocked to find a whole raft of thoughts that portray routine in a really negative way. For example:

“Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy.” Henri de Lubac

“Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly” – George Eliot

“Routine is not organization, any more than paralysis is order.” – Arthur Helps

“The less routine the more life.” – Amos Bronson Alcott

“As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.” – Henry Van Dyke

That last one by Van Dyke really resonates with me. I’ve had some friends who schedule every minute of every day, and day in and day out never change their routine at all. They call it good time management. I call it no time to live, but they’re my friends and I love ‘em so I put up with having to make appointments to spend time with them. But I can certainly see the point that is being made here.

As a person who hates being labelled and stuffed into a box — whether of my own or anyone else’s making — being so bound by a routine that there’s no room for change would be a fate worse than death.

But I know that in order to be a good writer, I have to have some type of routine that requires me to spend time with my butt in the chair with a pen in my hand. So I guess the challenge is to find that happy medium that gets the job done and falls somewhere between the no-room-to-live, destroyer of creativity brand of routine and having no routine at all. I’ve come to the conclusion this is another one of those things that there’s no right or wrong answer for — it’s another one of those life choices that is unique to each one of us.

For me, I’m thinkin’ my routine will look something like this: write and work out in the morning, do client work in the afternoon, and spend the rest of the day doing whatever the heck I want.

Oh, and I did find my quote finally:

“Most of life is routine – dull and grubby, but routine is the momentum that keeps a man going. If you wait for inspiration you’ll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street.” – Ben Nicholas

So what about you? Where do you fall on the routine spectrum? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

My brain is on overload today. I’ve spent the day doing one of two things — fighting through the Christmas shopping crowds, or listening to the amazing speakers at Ross Goldberg’s Marketing Masters Seminar. The seminar’s been great and I’ve got so many ideas from the speakers for products to create, articles to write, seminars to plan, and general improvements to make to my business. So today I have no shortage of ideas of what to create. But there are days that I do need come up with something, and I don’t have a room full of people to bounce ideas off of. I used to let those days really get me down, and I’d just not write anything and go for days without a fresh piece of content. And if you’ve seen any of my old sites you’ll know just how infrequently they got updated.

There are a few tips you can use to help jump start your creativity when you need to find something to write about. For me brainstorming pretty much involves a yellow legal pad and my favorite pen. Some people use software and follow a mind-mapping process, but I’m much more of a scribbler. (If you could see the draft of this article, you’d know what I mean.)

These are some of the things I do to brainstorm when I’m in need of an idea:

1. Write everything down. Turn off yoru inner critic and write down every single idea that pops into your head. Don’t discount anything at this point, no matter how far-fetched it seems.

2. Along the same lines and #1, write quickly and don’t stop to think about what you’re writing. I don’t know about you but when I’m in creative mode, I tend to write a lot faster because my hands need to keep up with my brain. If you can use a voice recorder to get your ideas out, that’s even better because we can speak much more quickly than we can write or type.

3. Let your thoughts flow. Let them wander where they will and you’ll notice that your thoughts flow into one another. One idea may spawn several more related ideas and you’ll end up with something you may never even have seen coming.

4. Once you’ve gone as far as you can, and you think there can’t possibly be even one idea left in your brain, then write for five more minutes. You might be surprised at what you come up with whn you stretch yourself just that little bit further.

Using these tips has never failed to produce at least one idea for an article or report for me. I hope that you can get some use out of them as well.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think or how you brainstorm. I’d love to hear your thoughts.