Unleash Your Creativity – How Chunking Down Your Creative Projects Can Help You Be More Creative

How many ways are there to help us be more creative? Probably too many to count!

This is often the problem. We find half a dozen new techniques, start trying them all at once, then a few weeks, or even a few days later, we’re so confused about which method is having what effect on our creativity, we give up on all of them and return frustrated to how we were before.

Or maybe we don’t even get that far. We feel so overloaded with choices and decisions about which tip to try that we just freeze and don’t pick any.

So here is just one powerful technique for you to use to help you unleash your creativity.

Read it through, think about how it can work for you, and how you can apply it to your creative projects, then take action and get started.

The only way to make progress and help you increase your creativity is by DOING.

Try something, see what works and what doesn’t, then adjust your approach to improve it, and repeat the process until you find the best methods that fit for you.

Chunking down your creative projects can help you be more creative.

Often, as creative people we’re highly ambitious with our creative projects, and have ideas for vast far reaching work that’ll change our world, and touch the lives of many others.

This is all fantastic and gives us plenty to aim for. But then what usually happens right after is we expect to go from having the initial ideas to completing the project in a couple of days, a completely unrealistic timescale.

The alternative is to “chunk down”, break the project down into manageable chunks and approach them one at a time, building momentum as you go. So how and why does this help?

Well, here are 3 of the reasons why breaking your projects down into chunks can help:

1. It takes the pressure off. If you constantly have deadlines hanging over you, you’re not likely to be creating very freely. Yes, often a time frame can be very helpful and motivating, and we don’t want to be working on the same project for the next decade. But be realistic and cut yourself some slack.

If you think your project will take 6 weeks, review it after 3 weeks and see where you are. If you need another 6 weeks, give yourself permission to take it, and use the time as effectively as you can.

2. It allows you to make best use of different aspects of your creativity. There are different stages to any creative project, from having ideas to planning to creating to editing through to presenting it to the wider world.

By breaking these into distinct parts you can put to use your creative talents that are most effective at each stage and make better progress, rather than randomly dipping in and out of the whole project in a haphazard way and not really getting anywhere.

3. It sharpens your focus. Once you break the project down then just pick one part to work on – say chapter 1 of your book, or the drum tracks of a new composition – you can focus all your creative energy on that part and make it as good as possible.

Rather than losing focus and momentum, and being overwhelmed by just how big the whole project looks, you can give your best effort to each smaller section and build a step at a time.

Breaking creative projects down into small and manageable chunks is one technique you can use to increase your creativity.

Experiment with different ways you divide up the project, whether into equal parts, like “I’ll write 250 words at a time” or into different stages, such as “I’m just going to focus on writing my characters and getting to know them without worrying about plot, the length of the book, where I’m going to publish it…” and so on.

Only by trying different methods of breaking the project down will you find the best ways to help you unleash your creativity.