More Fuel For The Tank
Many people get upset when they realize they’ve been heading down the wrong road for a while and have lost time and expended energy on something that didn’t pan out. Even more so when they realize they might have to retrace their steps in order to find their way back to the point they diverged from the correct path. While some may find this a waste of energy, I look upon it as additional fuel for my tank.
Random and Unexpected Experiences Are More Fuel For Your Creativity Tank
Failed experiments, wrong turns, and random experiences actually add to your creative fuel tank because it gives you more material to work with when you’re trying to come up with more ideas.
Most (if not all) of the ideas you generate are sparked by the experiences and interactions you encounter over the course of your life. When you’re talking to a customer and they are complaining about how long it takes to get an update on the shipping tracking for their order, your brain identifies that as a problem and starts working in the background on ways to solve that problem. The more pieces and parts it can find in that creativity fuel tank, the more material your brain has to work with to form a solution.
What might have been originally thought to be a wasted afternoon reading about a text messaging program your boss decided to use for communicating with the company sales team could be just the missing piece your brain needs to come up with an idea for text shipper information directly to your customers when their package leaves your warehouse.
The next time you run into that dead-end on a project that requires you to go back two or three spaces to try another avenue, don’t look at it as wasted time — consider it a short trip to the gas station to fuel your creative tank.
