Oh, creativity. It’s both a curse and a blessing to LOVE to create. It’s painful and joyful; difficult to do and yet comes naturally. Creativity itself is schizophrenic and guess what, so is your creative personality.
Each personality has its pros and cons, and none of them are “bad,” or “good” per say. This list isn’t meant to define you (or anyone); you can be many things on the list at different times in your life, in your day, over the course of 1 hour… right now. Or, you could be all of them at once or none of them at all. Doesn’t make you any less or more creative… It’s only helpful to identify your strengths and weaknesses so you can better work with them.
Recognize yourself in any of these creative personalities? Be honest…
THE PANICKED
Yeah, you know who you are. You have so much time, but you start working one day before the deadline and then pull an all-nighter that finally gets you in a work-flow state. When the project is done, it’s actually good… but you’re always wondering, if I started earlier, would it have been better? For the Panicked, deadlines are essential. No deadline means no panic, and without panic, they can’t get anything done. The hard part is when you have your own project and nobody deadline-ing you… how do you create artificial panic?
THE ORGANIZED
Color-coded printed notecards. Enough said.
THE INTUITIVE
You know when you know and you don’t know how you know, but you just do. The intuitive creative feels their way to the answer that they’re looking for. They don’t usually talk about their process because people look at them like they are fortune-tellers or new-age hippies or something… (quit judging me!)
THE MONKEY PROCRASTINATOR
Alright, here goes, I’m getting down to business. I’m going to open my laptop and… what’s that over there? Is that the cat running around? She’s so cute, I could die. I’ll just play with her for a second because that eases my mind and I can work better that way. Ok, back to the laptop, it’s on, the project is open and I’ll just … oh is that an article on creative personalities? I mean, it’s basically research, let me just read it because really, it’s part of my work. Yup.
For a more in-depth look at your inner monkey read this: http://qz.com/486526/why-exactly-procrastinators-procrastinate
THE MONOGAMOUS
We all have friends that are “relationship” people. The ones who don’t simply date, they meet someone and they spend many, many years with that person (for better or worse!). The monogamous creative is kinda like that, sometimes to a fault. They are dedicated, maybe even obsessively, to the one idea that they love. It will take all their blood, sweat and tears. It could be months, it could be years, but they’re in it for the long haul. When they’re done, they can move on to the next idea… and it starts all over again.
THE SERIAL DATER OF IDEAS
You player, you! You meet an idea and you can only see the good things in it. Gosh darn it, you’re a damn genius, this idea is so good, almost perfect, if you will. Once you started dating that idea, you start to see its flaws… you can either work on your relationship with that idea or… oh my… look at that sexy idea over there; that idea is definitely more what I’m looking for. This cycle can actually be healthy for your creative process when you’re searching for your next project, but the fear is, you’ll just continue in this cycle and no idea ever turns into a finished product.
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