If ideas are the lifeblood of our industry, then creative block is the silent heart attack nobody sees coming until it’s pitch day and your brain feels like dial-up internet.
Samuel B. Thorne, Art Director at 33Seconds, knows this dance all too well. In this wry and reassuring editorial, he dissects the quiet killers of creativity—from the pressure to perform in brainstorms, to the rabbit-hole allure of research, to the strange magic of getting your best ideas in the shower (a technique famously endorsed by Aaron Sorkin). It's a brutally honest look at how to unblock the flow—without waiting for lightning to strike or Slack to crash.
As creatives and marketers, ideas are at the heart of our work and industry. Yet ideas are fluid, intangible things. Come up with a good one and a project, campaign or pitch falls into place almost effortlessly. On the flip side, if the idea isn’t water-tight, it can totally upend the whole thing. No pressure.
But where do they come from, these ideas? They’re slippery, unpredictable. Abundant one day, non-existent the next. It often feels like we have very little control over when, why or if they pop up.
Deadlines, pressures, expectations and general busyness only add to this and can lead to us falling into unhelpful habits that turn into ‘creativity blockers.’
Here are some of the most persistent ‘blockers’ that I encounter on a regular basis in my job as Art Director, plus some tips on overcoming them. Perhaps one day, I might even follow them myself.
Being afraid to step away
When that elusive and all important idea is slow to arrive, it’s tempting to keep researching, brainstorming, actively searching. However, keeping your nose to the grindstone can be far less effective than stepping away and doing something else for a bit. ‘Giving up’, ‘procrastinating’ or ‘wasting time’ can all be used to describe this action. ‘It’s your job’ will also enter the internal dialogue, especially when there’s a deadline looming.
The thing is, that reprieve from the physical space and mental pressure can be hugely beneficial — as author Ap Dijksterhuis outlines in his book ‘Inspiration: where the best ideas come from’: stepping away from a problem can more often than not be an essential part of the process of arriving at a solution.
This is because a change of scene — especially when it involves a low demand activity such as walking, listening to music, or even doing the washing up — can allow the subconscious the space to work away in the background.
Inspiration can strike in these moments when we least expect it. For myself and many others, the shower cubicle seems to be the most prolific idea generator in the house. The Hollywood screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, was said to have up to eight showers a day during periods of writer’s block and if you disagree with him, I would venture to the r/showerthoughts subreddit to prove yourself wrong.
Over-washing may not be for everyone, but an ‘incubation’ period, where the unconscious mind is free to chew through research, knowledge and previous conversations can be essential to the creative process. And if it doesn’t work, at least you’ll smell nice during your continued struggle.
Falling down the research rabbit hole
A large part of my job involves coming up with ideas for content that will live on TikTok, Instagram and the like. It would make sense then, that scanning through their infinite feeds, where content is abundant, would give me a plethora of ideas.
Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy. Submerging yourself in what others are doing may only lead to ideas that already exist. Social strategist Lucy Robb admitted recently that she’s much more inspired when not taking inspiration from other brands. In her work for restaurant brand Bao, she purposefully avoids competitor’s social feeds because: “I actually think you can end up copying other people without realising it.”
Our job is to cut through the noise, not be a part of it. While it’s important to know what trends are emerging, just jumping onto one in the exact same way everyone else is won’t be enough. Instead, perhaps be inspired by an entirely different sphere and become the competition
That’s why I’d recommend limiting time spent doing desk-based research and try to supplement it by getting out into the world. Go to a gallery, pick up a book, have a conversation, a walk, run an errand, stare into the abyss… As we’ve learnt, ‘disengaging’ from the creative problem often leads to its solution.
Putting all the eggs in the brainstorm basket
It’s a familiar scene: an exciting new project or brief comes in, every creative mind in the company is thrown into the same room and we try to out-do each other by coming up with increasingly amazing ideas, delivered in beautiful, succinct soundbites.
There’s a sense of performance, spotlight and show — everyone wants their ‘Don Draper moment’ and to be seen as the saviour of the day.
There’s also the expectation that after hours of deliberation, something brilliant has to emerge from the room. That if you just think really hard, we’ll be able to squeeze out a moment of amazing.
Unfortunately these are not usually the best conditions for creativity to thrive. Ideas arrive in stages, with periods of research, discussion and ‘incubation’ built in. It should be a process, not a production.
To come up with the famous, global Snickers campaign ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’ the brand’s agency assigned the brief to five teams of creatives in order to go forth and generate ‘100s of bad ideas’ before they found the one that actually worked.
We don’t always have these resources at our fingertips, but encouraging the abundance of ideas, even bad ones, is just one way to take the pressure off. Start with something, anything, and build on it. What happens if you flip it around in the other direction? And so on.
Creatives have egos — myself included. We don’t want to be laughed at or be seen to be coming up with a ‘bad idea’. But once you get comfortable with the concept that the road to the great idea is paved with bad ones — and to get there we need to let go of our inhibitions, fear and egos — that’s when creativity can truly thrive.