

Ask HN: How do you schedule inspiration? - l33tbro

So I&#x27;m a &#x27;big ideas&#x27; guy that seems to have 3 kinds of work.<p>i) Paid work for other people.  Task-based.<p>ii) Interesting projects for other people.  Task-based, requiring some inspiration.<p>iii) Perosnal projects.  Inspiration based.<p>Now this isn&#x27;t a question of motivation.  Motivation is something else entirley to inspiration.  My question, as you might have guessed, is more about balance.<p>Obvioulsy the first category very easy to complete.   But it&#x27;s the other two sections I find hard to work into my schedule.  My main problem is that inspiration cannot be scheduled.  That&#x27;s really a killer, as inspiration is crucial for making personal projects genuinely disruptive and cool.  The same sometimes applies to category 2, and I find myself needing to schedule inspiration for clients projects that require creativity.<p>So if anyone has hacks on this I&#x27;d love to hear how you balance it all.
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walterbell
If inspiration is asynchronous, the best you can do is have figurative pen &
paper ready to record when it shows up. By also capturing the time & space
context of the interrupt, you can look for unique-to-you patterns that prompt
inspiration.

Generic tips:
[http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/top-10-source...](http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/top-10-sources-
inspiration-for-creative-writing.html)

If you're a visually-oriented person, mind map software (e.g. iThoughts HD on
iOS) makes it easy to spatially rearrange photos and phrases into a vision
board, offering some structure yet leaving implicit room to generate new
concepts.

If you want structured creativity, look into TRIZ. If you want unstructured
creativity, grab some metaphysics / philosophy books.

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l33tbro
This is golden. Thank you.

