The power of shaking stuff up

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I just had two chocolate digestives with my afternoon cuppa. 

“What’s so strange about that?” - you may ask.

“I always have three” - I would retort.

Big deal.

Actually, it is quite a big deal. It’s a little ritual I’ve lived happily with for the last year.

Every weekday afternoon, a steaming cup of decaf and three plain chocolate digestives. Snap ‘em in half, a skilful dunk or two, and away you go. It’s a treat. One mug, three biccies – the perfect combination.

Why did I decide to shake things up?

As a friend of mine would put it, “to prove to myself that I haven’t become rigid”.

And this is important.

Daily rituals. The things we read, watch and listen to. Our work patterns. Knowing what we like… Liking what we know – and sticking with it... It’s easy to become rigid.

Sometimes it’s a good thing. Familiarity feels good. It gives you a solid foundation to work from.

Sometimes it’s a bad thing. It drags you down, narrows your vision and limits your capabilities.

Being stuck in a rut can eat away at your soul.

🔍 Related: How to be a motivated creative

If you love your creativity, set it free

If you’re a copywriter like me (or perform any creative role for that matter), rigidity can slowly but surely drive the last nail into your career coffin.

Creativity depends on experiential variety. Collecting new sights, sounds, shapes and ideas. Squishing them together, chopping them up, reframing, juxtaposing, finding novel ways of expressing them.

Alternatively, if we keep chugging away on the same old diet of mental stimulants, there’s a chance we’ll seize up.

That’s why we need to shake stuff up now and again. Look at life from a fresh angle. Go anti-clockwise. Wear odd socks. Talk to strangers in the street.

Of course, when we’ve found a groove that works, or a rich vein of creative goodness, we’d be crazy to ditch it for the sake of it. But if the rut you’re in starts getting stinky, it’s time to freshen things up.

🔎 Related: How creative limits help you write better

Smashing the system

So, back to work patterns.

We’ve all got our little routines. And for the most part, they bear fruit.

Interrogate the brief. Grill the client. Research the competition. Notebook. Laptop. Draft one. Edit…

Logical. Reliable. And unfortunately, sometimes intensely, mind-numbingly, predictably tedious. With intensely, mind-numbingly, predictably tedious creative outcomes.

So shake it up.

Skim read the brief. Throw down some random thoughts. Jokes, wordplay, first ideas. Jot down an imaginary consumer’s objections to using the product you’re writing about. Picture yourself elevator-pitching them into submission. Go to the library in your dressing gown and thumb through copies of The Lady from the 1940s…

It may not get you to the ultimate answer, but I’ll bet my collection of dinosaur stickers it’ll unearth ideas you’d never have got to otherwise.

Creative indigestion

The parents of an old girlfriend of mine lived by a very strict dinnertime rulebook. Spaghetti Bolognese? It must be Thursday. Strawberry blancmange? Guess what, it’s the third Sunday after Lent.

Safe, if a little pedestrian.

But that’s not usually why clients hire creative copywriters.

Agreed, they don’t want unpleasant surprises or missed deadlines. A certain level of professionalism is a given. We have to hit our deadlines; we need to answer the brief.

But we also need to delight and excite.

Sometimes it’s good to have a vindaloo for breakfast.

🔎 Related: What sloths can teach writers about taking risks

Some practical ideas to help you shake stuff up

Change venues

If you always write in your home office, go to a local café for the afternoon. Take your laptop to the beach. Go and work in the kitchen. Do a John and Yoko – work in bed.

Work backwards

If you always start with the headline, write a few options for a final paragraph. If you usually sketch out a structure for your copy, try a nebulous mind dump instead.

Swap tools

If you always use a pen and notepad, use an A2 layout pad and Sharpie. If you’ve always typed in Arial 12pt, give Century Gothic 14pt a go.

Search in other places

If you find yourself plumping for the same old creative curation sites for inspiration, look elsewhere. There are a million and one to choose from.

Better still; go browse a bookshop - if the deadline will let you.

Try your target’s shoes on for size

If you’re writing for an audience that moves in unfamiliar circles, read what they read, watch some TV that they watch. Even if it means spending the evening on Love Island.

Give your client a surprise

If you’re working on the 10th brief for the same client, throw in a wildcard option. They may not buy it, but it’ll show them you’ve not stopped thinking.

Do your own thing

If those ‘dream’ briefs aren’t coming your way, make one up and work just for the fun of it. Pitch it to someone with a budget, or just use it to boost your portfolio.

Stop flying solo

If you always work on your own, search out some like-minded people to run your ideas by. Swap briefs, crit each other’s work, work as a creative team on bigger projects.

Get uncomfortable

If you work in one niche, break out. Next time someone says, “Can you…” and your knee-jerk reaction is “No, I can’t…”, throw caution to the wind. Research, ask a friend… sometimes you don’t know what you know. 

Get lazy, get dead

Different creative briefs need different creative remedies. In a world of templates, word churn and copycat fixes, we have to keep exploring new ideas. We need to find new, unexpected paths through the deep, dark forest of content-copy-design-ad land.

Come on, isn’t that why we got into this game in the first place. To do fun, new things? To head out into uncharted territory?

The alternative is, at best, a painfully dull portfolio of looky-like projects. At worst, someone will find you out and throw you on the lazy writers’ scrapheap.

And we wouldn’t want that, would we?

So, if you’re creativity’s going a bit limp, maybe it’s time to switch to two chocolate digestives with your favourite brew.

Sod it, go wild; have a whole pack of ginger nuts.

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