Develop Your Creativity Instantly in 12 Minutes: Find 12 Projects That Will Excite You To The Bones NOW!
I am creating 12 doodle exercises in 12 days. This series will be made of one-minute articles that will help you quickly generate ideas and unleash your creativity. This is the sixth article (the first five articles are here, here, here, here, and here).
Get your pencil and notebook. Draw a flower with 12 petals, like the one below. Here is your challenge:
Your goal is to enrich your life and world by designing monthly projects you will take up over the course of next year. For this goal, you will use divergent thinking and create a lot of ideas. You will think of 12 projects that will excite you to the bones. These might be personal or professional projects — it doesn’t matter. What matters is these projects should stimulate and excite you. Get some ideas and inspiration here or here. You might create some side projects, such as the ones that are listed here. You might also check craft ideas here, here, or here.
- Do you have any ideas or projects that will get you excited or stimulated?
- Do you have any projects or ideas to increase the quality of your life? How can you improve your life one project at a time?
- In which areas of your life do you seek improvement? Why? How can you achieve such improvement? Can you think of projects that will accelerate such progress?
- What kind of professional, personal, entrepreneurial, or creative projects excite you? What are you curious about?
For example, here is how I did this exercise:
- July 2022: I will teach at Pembroke Cambridge Summer Programme at the University of Cambridge. I will make sure that I design a cutting-edge and innovative class, and offer a creative experience for my students.
- August 2022: This is my month for revitalising myself through taking online classes from Masterclass and Skillshare. After I catch up with these classes, I want to create my own teaching innovations for the upcoming academic year.
- September 2022: This is my month for renewing myself as a scholar and as an instructor for the upcoming academic year. I will reinvent myself as a researcher and as a teacher. I will come back to research and catch up with my academic research and/or manuscripts.
- October 2022: I want to create new teaching innovations in this month for my new modules. I will design new learning experiences that will inspire my students. In particular, I want to act as a role model and champion in the fields of creativity and asset creation for my students.
- November 2022: I want to accelerate my asset creation journey on Medium during this month. I will take up on new writing projects and blogs that will inspire me. I want to be a thought leader in the fields of creativity, jobs, and the future. In particular, I will write blogs about how individuals should reinvent themselves to adapt to the non-linear changes of the 2020s.
- December 2022: I want to focus on creating my e-books for the upcoming year. I have a couple of e-book ideas that I would like to introduce to the world (one on self-coaching, one on creativity, one on finding one’s strengths, and one on playing games of asset creation). I would like to achieve some progress on these e-books by the end of this year.
- January 2023: I would like to get back to my academic manuscripts and submit an article to a top quality journal. In particular, I would like to publish at least one innovative and high-impact qualitative research paper (perhaps on FONKU — the fear of not keeping up).
- February 2023: I would like to experiment with new formats (such as fun, improvisation, micro-teaching moments, comedy sketches, book reviews, film reviews, popular culture, etc.) on my YouTube channel as well as on my TikTok.
- March 2023: I want to achieve some momentum on my GumRoad product ecosystem. I want to work as an entrepreneur of new ideas in the fields of work, learning, careers, creativity, content creation, storytelling, micro-entrepreneurship, and asset creation. Through my digital products and e-books, I want to inspire and empower everyone to be creative. Everyone is creative and can tap into their creativity through simple activities, such as doodling, writing, video-making, and notebook-keeping. I want to provide a large library of exercises and resources for individuals interested in practicing their creativity.
- April 2023: I would like to kick-start a new initiative where I will act as a champion of developing creative and entrepreneurial capabilities for academics. I want to create workshops, blogs, training programs, and resources to support this aim.
- May 2023: I want to create a YouTube and/or TikTok series on cutting edge technologies, non-linear innovation, future jobs, and exponential change. I want to understand the Zeitgeist of our times through the lenses of culture, technology, cinema, TV, music, social media, fashion, science fiction, and entertainment. I want to use multidisciplinary and futurist perspectives to understand future trends (social, cultural, economic, and technological).
- June 2023: I want to open room for the unknown. I call this the X factor. I might even write a book on this or prepare a workshop on the power of the unknown. Ideally, we want to be prepared for the unknown and open more room for open learning, experimentation, blue sky research, and boundless curiosity.
It is your turn now. Do the exercise now — it will be very rewarding for you. In 12 minutes, you will create your 12 ideas. Write them on the flower petals.
I will continue this exercise series over 12 days. Each day, you receive a straightforward creative challenge of creating 12 ideas in 12 minutes.