Sometimes a lack of limitations on your art is stifling. Faced with an infinite number of possibilities, your brain refuses to make any decisions. Define down what you’re doing with a manifesto!

At its most base level, a manifesto is a written declaration of your principles and intentions. However, they can be a blast! Not only do you get to set forth what you believe without justifying it, you can also denounce everything you don’t like! You can use it focus your passion and fill yourself with a sense of purpose.

While you are writing it use the strongest possible language. Take a look at this bit from Manifesto of the Futurist Painters:

We will fight with all our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of museums. We rebel against that spineless worshipping of old canvases, old statues and old bric-a-brac, against everything which is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and even criminal.

We are sickened by the foul laziness of artists, who, ever since the sixteenth century, have endlessly exploited the glories of the ancient Romans.

It doesn’t mean you have to start your own artistic movement, you can use that kind of strong language whether you are knitting, styling hair or tracing your hand on a paper plate to make Thanksgiving turkeys.

Something like:

We violently reject the mass-produced Thanksgiving turkey tchotskies available at Hallmark stores. They exist as stagnant nothings without souls. At a time when thankfulness is supposed to be at the forefront of our very beings, instead we find ourselves faced with a tiny feathered tryptophan drenched disappointments. The answer is the power and cosmic beauty of a hand traced turkey! Is not the hand an avenue into the self? Is not coloring in that hand an expression of all the is good? Making a hand turkey is a celebration of thankfulness that will resound across the universe.

And so on…

Here are a couple more examples:

The Surrealist Manifesto

DADA Manifesto

If you need any help, just comment and I’ll be happy to contribute to your manifesto.

The word “obsession” has taken on taken on a negative spin in the last decade. It used to be that if you were obsessed with something it meant you were good at it and knew all about it. Well, drug companies and stalking laws have redefined being obsessed, to any degree, as abnormal.

Think about all the great artists in the world that were obsessed with something. Painters that painted the same subjects over and over again. Writers that dealt with the same situations or topics in everything they wrote. It’s funny, but it’s usually because of these obsessions that we enjoy the artist in the first place. It’s like a hook or a doorway into what they do.

To super-charge your creativity, take a topic you are interested in but haven’t studied and developed a short-term obsession. How short? That’s up to you. It could be a day, a week or a month. Read a book on it. Google up all the best websites on the topic. Talk to other people about it. No topic is too high or too low. If you like  Christopher Walken, use him. The possibilities are endless, cowboy poetry, unicorns or squirrel recipes, whatever you find yourself wanting to obsess on, do it!

When you sit down to create you won’t be short on ideas. In fact, the idea will be right in front of you. Make sure you create more than one thing based on your obsession or it really doesn’t qualify.

Eventually, you’ll get tired of your obsession. Just drop it. You can always go back to it. In the meantime, pick something else to be obsessed with.

Being obsessed frees you from having to worry about being “creative” in the sense that most people use the word. You don’t have to come up with a big idea or topic, you just use what is right in front of you.

I’m off to research the use of surgically implanted monkey glands used to keep rich people young in the 1920s.

In his book Overachievement John Eliot discusses how to get into a Trusting Mindset (A mindset of accomplishment) by thinking like a squirrel. He also defines an opposing method of thought called the Training Mindset. This is how we think when practicing to do something. The process of learning and getting better is a completely different mindset than actually doing something.

In the Training Mindset, you second-guess what you do. You think about it while you are doing it and evaluate every move to see if you can make it better. While practicing you should be analytical and critical, but are those helpful when you are actually doing something? How do you get into that Trusting Mindset that lets you just use what you’ve learned without over-thinking the process? In the book, Eliot states that a lot of mediocre achievers never get beyond this Training Mindset.

He uses squirrels to make his point about Trusting Mindset. Squirrels, he points out, don’t really think, they just react to their surroundings. When a squirrel is presented with a telephone wire to cross, it doesn’t consider how windy it is or how high the wire is off the ground, it just scrambles across. People get nervous and start think about falling and calculating how fast they should move to maximize safety as they make their way across the wire.

Another example of Trusting Mindset is tossing a set of car keys to someone. It’s an easy task, you can do it without thinking. Suppose someone told you that you could get a million dollars for successfully tossing them a set of keys. Would raising the stakes change your process? Would you be able to do it? Would it decrease your chances? It would flip you instantly into Training Mindset.

Here are some adjectives Eliot uses to describe a Trusting Mindset: Accepting, Instinctive, Playful, Letting it Happen.

He also says, “The Trusting Mindset is what you were in before you knew any better.”

To use the Trusting Mindset, he advises “practice, practice, practice” and that you should come to accept and enjoy the pressure that comes with creating something. Expect the fear and reservations that come when you are starting something new and let them become part of the experience while you focus your abilities and remain confident. Don’t not do something because you are worried about failure. In other words, there is no secret except knowing how you always feel before you begin and letting go of those emotions while you are creating.

Once you start creating, become that squirrel, unconsciously using every ability you have to get across that wire without fear or stopping to consider the consequences.

Be a squirrel.

Link to book.