1. Visualising your Projects

For me, visualising my projects, using creativity to create something tangible to view, is one of the things that has helped me so much in organising my thoughts, time, and work. Similarly, it helps speed up my process; creativity in this form gets me more excited to embark on (or continue) a project and thus motivated to do the work. It straightens out my brain; I can see the ideas and so I feel more concentrated and focused on what I'm doing than ever before.

The first two pictures of my 'Novel Idea' spread are examples of what I create for big projects. I cannot stress enough, the importance of compiling those smaller ideas into one space, into coherent sentences, and into a tangible object that you can work with, as opposed to everything floating in your head or in a word document that remains closed. For things like exploring a novel idea, a stage play idea or a film/TV project, I'll create big mind maps like these with a twist, the creative twist. No simple bubble in the centre followed by lines of text that get lost among a black and blue sea of ink. It must pop. Colours, materials, washi tape (patterned tape), shapes, textures, glitter, whatever you want. You'll create something alive with colour and art by using the right side of your brain which will only ignite further creativity, making you even more productive in your endeavours. A win-win situation.

Since finding my love of washi tape, I've researched other people's use of it and used my own ideas, plus the coloured paper, to separate points of interest. Like I mentioned above, when I would brainstorm, ideas were lost in plain ink that all seemed to merge together, having different sections like this have drastically improved it visually. As well as this, it makes the process more fun for me, and it has helped spark my creativity in terms of the context of what I was planning. For example, creating the mind map for my novel idea, excited me to get started on the project as opposed to stewing over the idea, and never making moves on it. Other forms of creativity can really help focus you on another.

They're helpful because I find it crucial to have something I can hang up and refer to, always in my face, unavoidable, and a constant reminder of how passionate I am about completing the project. They are fun, get your creative juices flowing, and allow progression in a work project while enjoying the planning process (which I know many people despise).

Next, we have the poetry and prose sheets which I created using my HP Pavilion x 360. The laptop has been a dream come true for me in terms of getting things done and expanding my creative side. It being touchscreen, a pen is available, meaning I have been able to illustrate my poems and design/create productive checklists like the two I have added in this post. I added a key along with working titles of the pieces. The key is as followed: WRITTEN, for when I had a rough draft, EDITED, the first edit, COMPLETE, a third and final read-through for any missed mistakes and PRINT, when I had printed and added it to my portfolio. It has helped me keep track of my in-progress work and when I could or should move on to another.

Following this, I have provided a screenshot of how I organise my many ideas. For a bit of background, I have two huge bookcases in my room, one shelf of which is holding all of my many notebooks. I accidentally opened One-Note on my laptop one day and found how incredibly useful it was, as opposed to hundreds of word documents. If you have Office, One-Note is a Godsend. I can split tabs, hold different ideas all in one place, and categorise, so when I want to write or explore an idea, I can sift through the tabs, pick one and work on it. It's especially helpful as you can share notebooks remotely through different devices. So, if I'm on the go, on transport or away from home? It's on my laptop. At home? My desktop. Even walking? My phone. I used to go on holiday and take three or four different notebooks in my hand luggage to work on the flights, One-Note has changed that! I can now organise all of my ideas into one neat place.

Since writing this post I have created a third-year spread (similar to the Novel Idea spread) for all of my reading, and assessments for my final year of University (I go more in-depth with this in my University Organisation blog post coming later). These spreads really are useful for anything and everything involving planning. I have all of mine hung above my desk so that they are a constant focus in my life. Seeing the blank spaces makes me eager to fill up the page, bringing me ever closer to finishing a project, and with the novel/stage play spreads, every time I look up at them I'm filled with a deep desire to work on the project because I'm excited by the ideas again.

I cannot recommend this enough for creatives or anyone who has a lot of work or ideas muddling around in their head and need a way to sort it out while taming that creative fire that so desperately needs to be expressed.

I hope this blog post has helped in some way, whether you were actively looking for something like this, or stumbled on it by happy coincidence. I'm immensely glad I started to do this, and I hope it can help you focus on your own projects and/or work/university.

Signing off on the first blog post of three.

Bobbie May Corleys