It’s amazing how the mind works.
You could be hanging out with friends, going for a walk, or procrastinating from work and all of a sudden – you have an idea. A moment of inspiration.
Taylor Swift writes a lot of songs inspired by multiple genres. With multiple international top hits in her discography. she knows a thing or two about the creative process.
When she gets an idea for a song, she immediately records a voice memo of herself singing it or she writes it down in her phone.
Later on, she reviews her notes. Her ideas could become a fragment of a verse, a little bit of melody, a background vocal, or another part of the song. Or, it could just be nothing and she just deletes it.
We can learn from her creative process to help us achieve our goals.
SEOT is an acronym to help us get the most out of life. The T stands for Tinker.
(It’s explained more in the goal setting slideshow)
Watch SEOT YouTube Video #16:
SEOT Step to Success #16 is to WRITE IT DOWN
Tinkering is about trying little experiments and seeing what happens. It’s about cultivating a sense of wonder and making space to be creative.
So, what should you do when an idea pops in your head? Here are three steps:
Step 1: Write down your ideas
The first step is to write it down.
Come up with a system where it’s easy to immediately jot down the ideas that pop into your head at any hour of the day.
- Maybe you keep a little notebook or agenda that you carry around.
- Maybe you jot down ideas on the back of the closest napkin or scrap piece of paper.
- Maybe you use your phone and type a quick note in an app or record a quick voice memo…
Writing it down immediately is just the first part. The second step is reviewing your notes.
Step 2: Review your notes
Set aside a regular time to look through your ideas. If you don’t clean out your idea notes, they’ll just pile up and they won’t be as meaningful because you never look at them.
You don’t have to do every idea that you brainstormed.
- Some ideas, you might put into a “one-day” category.
- Some ideas, you might just throw out.
- And some ideas, you might decide to explore further. That’s step 3: tinkering.
Step 3: Tinker
Tinkering is when you start to play around with one of your ideas to see what happens. Most of these ideas may not pan out into anything but maybe you’ll stumble across something that really works. And with a lot of hard work, you’ll be able to turn that little idea into something great.
Think about your goal.
- Where could you record ideas about your journey to achieve your goals?
- When will you take the time to look at these ideas and review your notes?
- When you come up with an interesting idea, when will you find the time to test it out and see what happens?
Good luck!
(Hey, teachers! Check out this growth mindset lesson package or this 2021 New Year’s Resolution lesson plan!)
Bonus video clip:
I learned about Taylor Swift’s creative process when I was making the 6Cs Creativity / Innovation unit. Here’s one of the videos I found about Taylor Swift talking about her creative process:
How Taylor Swift writes her songs