So I started practicing the daily pattern breaks. “I realized instead of trying to make one big radical change, I could simply start by tweaking one small thing at a time, and see how that works. He sought inspiration from books like “The Artist’s Way.” But it was simple meditation that led to a breakthrough.
Creative problem solving breaking habits how to#
I knew I needed to make a change, but wasn’t sure exactly what to change or how to go about it,” he says.Ĭhevon talked to friends. I was doing the same thing everyday - waking up at the same time, taking the same walk, going to the same coffee shop. I didn’t know what to do myself and became stuck in a lot of routines. “After I sold my agency, I was a little disillusioned. Small changes are easier and faster to make, and they can ultimately lead to big, reverberating effects.Ĭhevon’s inspiration for PatternBreak came from his own creative struggles.
Good habits can be a powerful tool for productivity, but they can also lure you into a rut when you start to react without thinking about it. So you start to repeat it - eventually it becomes a habit. A presentation template that helps win a client. “Designers create routines because they find something that works. Today he runs PatternBreak, a consultancy that helps workplaces integrate mindfulness with marketing and design practices.Ĭhevon says effective behaviors can become bad creative habits when they are too automatic. He’s built and sold his own agency - Heavenspot - twice, creating award-winning work for brands like Hasbro and Motorola along the way. How can we apply this in our creative lives? To better understand these dynamics, we spoke with Chevon Hicks, one of our incredible creative partners and advisors who has spent the better part of his career thinking about how to maximize creativity and embrace new ways of working.Ĭhevon has produced outstanding creative for more than 20 years at places like MGM Creative Advertising, Attitude Network, Sony Online Entertainment, and Universal New Media. Therefore, although habits are deeply ingrained, it is possible to replace old habits with new. A 2012 study at MIT showed that a small part of the prefrontal cortex acts as a sort of control gate for habitual routines, triggering the formation of, and slightly favoring, new habits. In many cases, the best way to break an old habit is to form a new one. The downside it that it makes it really hard to think our way out of a bad habit.
The value of a habit is that it allows learned behavior to take place automatically and efficiently without the burden of conscious thought. Neuroscientists have known that habits reside in the part of our brain that controls automatic behaviors and emotions - instead of the part where intentional decision-making resides. It’s because they’re so deeply ingrained. The problem is that habits can persist long after they’ve outlived their benefit. And, finally, there’s a reward that helps reinforce and establish the habit. There’s the habit, or routine behavior, itself. It starts with a trigger that tells the brain to go into habit mode. In his book “The Power of Habit,” Charles Duhigg breaks down the formation of habitual behavior into a three-part loop - cue, routine, and reward. To do that effectively we have to understand why people develop creative habits, how those habits can turn into ruts, and what we can do to break out of them to achieve maximum creativity. We need to make it easy to try out new features, tricks, and capabilities. But that also means we’re constantly evolving the creative workflow. We’re constantly working to innovate and bring new capabilities and features to the creative profession. It’s something I spend a lot of time thinking about. In these cases, progress is not dictated by innovation, but by psychology. Once we’ve found success in doing things a certain way, we’re naturally resistant to trying something new - we get stuck in the familiar. Although technology is a core part of the human experience, we’re also creatures of habit. Every technology advancement comes with new ways of doing things, and that creates a very human paradox. Innovation and change - you can’t have one without the other. Breaking Old Habits for Breakthrough Creative
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