đŠ Creative constraints, artisanal ice cream, and reader-submitted courses
Plus the week's best content, news, and events for learning professionals
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Do you ever feel paralyzed by the proverbial âblank canvasâ in front of you when you start a project?
To feel more inspired, you actually need some creative constraints.
Thinking inside the box
Letâs try an experiment. Since weâre learning professionals, weâll do this in the context of designing a course. Youâll need a timer.
Round 1: Take 30 seconds to brainstorm how you could create a course to help 10 of your colleagues improve their active listening skills. Go!
After timeâs up, ask yourself:
How did that go? Was it easy? Hard?
Would you actually want to build the course that you brainstormed?
After reflecting, move on toâŠ
Round 2: Take 30 seconds to brainstorm how you could design an instructor-led course about active listening for 10 of your colleagues. The session HAS TO happen in Zoom, but you CANâT use a slide deck. All participants MUST turn their cameras off, and the session CANâT last more than 5 minutes. Annnd go!
This time, ask yourself:
How did that brainstorm feel different from the first time around? Did you feel more or less creative given these constraints?
Which course are you more excited to design?
The creativity myth
Some people think that creativity is about removing mental obstacles, and letting our minds run free to dream up brilliant, novel ideas.
Thatâs not how creativity works.
Our brains are innately⊠pretty lazy. Without a forcing function to get us thinking creatively, they arenât likely to churn out many great ideas. When presented with an obstacle, however, our brains get really good at looking at the world differently to find a solution.
Six-word memoirs
Smith Magazineâs Six-Word Memoir Project has inspired deep-but-concise writing from thousands of professional and amateur writers alike.
Some of my favorites:
âExtremely responsible, secretly longed for spontaneity.â - Sabra Jennings
âResume, skilled at handling inconvenient nonsense.â -Erika Stellar
âThe psychic said I'd be richer.â -Elizabeth Bernstein
Being forced to tell a story in exactly six works inspired more creative results than if it had been, say, a One Sentence Memoir Project.
Adding artificial constraints
Sometimes, projects come with constraints. Try resisting the urge to fight them, and let your creative brain do its thing.
The bigger creative blocks usually appear when we donât have enough constraints in place. We can overcome this by adding artificial constraints: requirements that no one else is mandating but are used to kickstart innovation.
Try picking one of the following types of constraints the next time youâre feeling uninspired about starting a project. Some ideas:
Time: âI have to complete a full draft of this course in the next 90 minutesâ
Budget: âIâm going to complete this project but canât spend more than $100â
Format: âI have to use X tool that Iâve never used before to complete this projectâ
Have constraints ever helped you create something unexpectedly successful? Tell us about it by leaving a comment!
đ Upcoming Events
â° Starting TODAY: Learning Experience Design: From Ideas to Impact. This free five-week course from NovoEd has helped over 20,000 learning professionals leverage LXD to tackle organizational challenges since its launch in 2016.
đ» LineZero is hosting a webinar on Technology's Role in Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace on September 30th. Theyâre also giving all live North American attendees a $20 Uber Eats voucher, so make sure to register!
đ§ Streamlining Global Training
This is a great interview with Drew Krajewski, Director of Global Training and Development at EnerSys! The discussion includes:
Deploying global training in 11 languages
Unlocking SMEs in your organization
The attention span of todayâs employees
đRecommended Reading
đ The shift to online learning in 2020 has an interesting parallel with 2008. Corporate learning budgets got axed during the â08 - â09 recession, and expensive instructor-led training was ditched in favor of eLearning. eLearning 12 years ago wasnât what it is today⊠and it all went pretty badly.
â° This week marks New Mexicoâs first ever Outdoor Learning Week. The statewide initiative encourages all teachers to reimagine how learning can take place outside of the classroom, and has overwhelming bipartisan support. Who else wishes we could do this in the corporate world?
đŠ What does sales training have in common with artisanal ice cream?
đ© Reader Submission!
There has been a TON of feedback about the 7taps bat course! If youâre new here, check that out.
Reader Osemome Ndebbio signed up for the 7taps free trial and sent me a link to a cool course they made! Thanks for sharing, Ose! Their blog is tiptoplearner.com.
If you want to have a lot of fun making mobile friendly microcourses, the 7taps pro version is free for a month! If you like it, the promo code âjonathanâ gets you 10% off on your subscription.
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