How Adding Limits can Supercharge Creativity: the 3-Marker Challenge

How Adding Limits can Supercharge Creativity: the 3-Marker Challenge

I love watching kids create. They naturally come up with these little tricks to supercharge creativity, and they don’t even know they’re doing it.

We just returned from a Washington Coast getaway with family, and as usual, the kids taught me a thing or two about creativity. Really, I think we can learn a lot about creativity from kids.

I get creatively challenged all the time. You know how it goes…

You’re sitting there staring at a blank piece of paper or computer screen, and your mind goes blank. nothing. zip. How on earth are you supposed to be creative when your head is empty?

It sucks.
I’ve been there.
I still find myself in that place all the time.

But, maybe that’s not really the problem. Is your mind really blank? Or is it so full of so much everything that your brain throws up a blank, white wall in a self-protective measure?

When you sit down to create, and you’re faced with a blank screen or paper, the possibilities are infinite, and that’s hard to process.

The way to deal with too-much-everything is to narrow things down. Add some limits and boundaries and see what happens. Narrow the focus.

What happens in your brain when you go from “I’m going to write a blog post,” to “I’m going to write a blog post about apples”? I don’t think I’ve ever written a post about apples, but I’ve got to say, I felt a shift when the focus narrowed from the infinite to specifically apples when thinking about this example.

The boundaries help.

The specificity helps.

Now narrow it down some more. Keep narrowing and getting more specific until you have something you can work with.

The 3-Marker Challenge

On a recent vacation, my daughter and my niece spent hours with their noses in their sketchbooks playing what they call, “the 3-marker challenge.”

two young girls sitting at a table and drawing in sketchbooks

They pick a subject (cat, dog, dragon, whatever they think up) and then they each grab 3 markers with their eyes closed. Then they set a timer.

The challenge is to create the coolest looking image of the selected subject, in the specified amount of time, using only the 3 colors they grabbed from the bucket. They draw, compare notes, compliment each other, encourage each other, and then pick another subject and trio of markers to do it again.

They spend hours playing this game, and I’ve got to say it’s the most ridiculously wholesome way I can imagine a couple of 12-year-olds would think of to spend their time.

It inspired me, too.

The real trick of this challenge is in limiting the colors. Just three markers in random colors. That can really limit your options, and it’s precisely those limits that get your brain spinning in different ways. Limitations require you to think differently to get around them, and thinking differently is where your creativity starts to kick in.

This little game works as a warm-up before diving into your creative project, even if you can’t draw and your project has nothing to do with art. It’s about getting your brain to think differently.

If you’re hitting a wall, creatively, maybe your options are too wide open. Try adding some limits. Maybe the scope of your essay is too wide. Maybe you need to narrow your intended audience. Maybe you need to dial in on the focal point of your painting; you can’t focus on everything.

How to make baby shoe ornaments

How to make baby shoe ornaments

When Gem grew out of her first baby shoes, I couldn’t bear to get rid of them. I wanted to keep them, but I didn’t want them just tucked away in a box for decades either.

baby shoe ornament

I didn’t know what to do with them until we started putting up our Christmas tree.

baby shoe ornament

Now, they are included among our most cherished Christmas ornaments. Yes, they spend most of the year tucked away in a box, but they bring a smile each holiday season.

How did I do this? Simple, just threat a little string through the loop in the back. For one pair, I poked a small hole in the back and threaded string through with a needle, but most of the baby shoes had a place to attach the string already.

Dinosaur Ballerina Birthday Party

Dinosaur Ballerina Birthday Party

I posted on Facebook that Gem wants to be a dinosaur ballerina when she grows up, and our my cousins responded with shock. The shock, it turns out, was appropriate. Unbeknownst to us, they were in the midst of planning a dinosaur ballerina birthday party for their soon-to-be 3-year-old. Their little girl is even more crazy about dinosaurs than Gem, and knows ALL the dinosaurs.

This should be cute, I thought.

I had no idea.

When we arrived at the birthday party, Gem was helped into a dinosaur tail and tutu.

birthday party

My happy little girl was giddy. Dinosaur Ballerina!

birthday party

birthday party

The birthday girl’s grandma handmade dinosaur tails for all the kids, and coordinating tutus for the girls.

dinosaur tail

dinosaur

The weight of the tail dragging behind them cause the kids, especially the littlest ones, to exaggerate their waddle as they walked.

dinosaur birthday party

Cuteness overload

dinosaur ballerina birthday party

The lawn covered with littles followed by their tails.

dinosaur birthday party

A back yard dinosaur dig

dinosaur ballerina birthday party

Dinosaur ballerinas discussing books and their favorite dinosaurs

dinosaur ballerina birthday party

dinosaur ballerina birthday party

Even the birthday girl’s daddy had a tail.

dinosaur birthday party

Happy birthday, Isabella. Here’s to many, many more.

dinosaur birthday party

Wouldn’t you like to be a dinosaur ballerina, too?

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A relearning how to dream after cancer blog

A relearning how to dream after cancer blog

Those were the words I wrote without thinking: “a relearning how to dream after cancer blog.” I was shocked when I looked back and saw that I described my blog in this manner. Since writing the post, I’ve gone back and stared at those words countless times. To be honest, the words make me a little uncomfortable. Those hastily written words contain truths I didn’t realize were simmering under the surface.

relearning-how-to-dream-after-cancer

Friday Night I found myself on stage at Courage Night as one of five women reading our work about surviving cancer. In the Q&A session, as I was describing how my blog had evolved, I recited this line from that blog post: “CoffeeJitters has been a single girl making her way in the world blog, a wedding blog, an infertility blog, a photography blog, a quitting my job and going back to school full time blog, a wow! I’m pregnant! blog, a mommy blog, a cancer blog, ….” except I swallowed the words “a relearning how to dream after cancer blog.”

No, in a room full of cancer survivors, women I love and trust, and who understand better than any one else, I could barely voice those words I had already published. I’m still not quite sure whether I said them out loud when I was at the mic.

I am currently taking Susannah Conway’s “Blogging from the Heart” class, which is proving to be more magical that I could have ever dreamed. This class is also bringing me face to face with that line – “a trying to relearn how to dream after cancer blog.” She is asking me to dig deep, and think about the purpose of my blog. It is easy to spot the focus on gratitude and appreciation of everyday magic, but this blogging practice is also challenging me to stretch.

Just as a physical injury can leave the body bound up in a tight little ball of muscle, the emotional trauma can have a similar impact on the spirit. Yoga and stretching and movement will little by little improve the flexibility and range of the body, but it’s sometimes painful and frightening. It is work that exists entirely outside of the comfort zone. I’ve reached the point where I understand what I have been intuitively trying to do, yet simultaneously resisting – to improve the flexibility and range of my imagination, of my ability to re-dream my future.

The process is slow and difficult, but looking back I can see how I have gradualy expanded the time frame of my dreams. Since diagnosis, I’ve had trouble imagining my life more than a few weeks or months ahead. Now my dreams stretch as far as five years out. Some day soon, I’ll be able to imagine myself at my daughter’s high school graduation.

Here’s to sweet dreams.

WW linky is on page 2.

Box of Colors

Box of Colors

Today is 10/10/10 and I spent a good portion of it coloring.

With crayons.

In a coloring book.

crayons

It surprised me how much I enjoy coloring.

It is so calming to spend a few minutes moving a crayon across the paper. I especially love coloring books; I don’t even have to think of what to draw, I just relax and turn off my brain for a few minutes. And I’m so happy afterward.

I really need to do this more often.

What brings you joy?

P.S. I still think that white crayon is mostly useless.