Creative Leap Year Challenge

January 5, 2016  / Sab Will  / Challenge, Creative Leap

Everyone likes a challenge, right?

Well no, maybe not everyone, but I’m darn well sure if you’re reading this article you answered with a resounding: ‘Hell yeah!’

And what better time for beginning an exciting project than right at the start of a shiny new year, and a leap year to boot!

So here’s your challenge:

Introducing the…

2016 ‘Creative Leap Year’ Challenge

‘Finish a 50 or 100 Piece Puzzle THIS Year!’

So, how did you do? With the puzzle I mean. Less than a minute? What? You didn’t try? Where’s your playful, creative spirit, friend? ?

Of course, I’m not suggesting you produce an actual jigsaw puzzle this year! No, I’m talking about something far more exciting than that…

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By the 31st December, 2016, you will have produced an impressive, coherent body of work comprised of 50 or 100 parts which you can use to:

? Prove your undeniable brilliance

? Kick start your imagination

? Turbo-boost your career

? Impress your friends & colleagues

? Feel amazing about yourself

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What’s more, you’ll have great fun doing it! So how exactly are we going to perform this miraculous feat?

Let’s look at each part of the Creative Leap Year Challenge in turn and ask a few questions:

2016 ‘Creative Leap Year’ Challenge

‘(Finish) (a 50 or 100 Piece) (Puzzle) (THIS Year) (!)’

Read on…

Why a ‘Puzzle’?

A puzzle is the powerful metaphor we will use to represent the ‘something’ which you will create and complete by 31st December, 2016.

Why a puzzle? Because right now you probably have no idea what it will look like in one year’s time, and that’s fine!

In fact, it’s better than fine. It’s fantastic. It’s an adventure you’re embarking upon, with fascinating twists and turns, surprises and setbacks, and ultimately success and satisfaction at the end of the journey.

Think of the mini blips of pleasure you get every time you find a piece that fits as you plough through a tricky 500 or 1000 piece jigsaw you got for a birthday or festive present.

Well, the 2016 ‘Creative Leap’ Challenge is only a 50 or 100-piece puzzle, but that’s still a lot of weekly or twice-weekly ‘Yes!‘ moments to keep you motivated and chugging along nicely.

It’s common knowledge that the feeling of satisfaction gained at the end of a long project or great effort is often short-lived, so you’d better be enjoying the process – the journey – just in case the end isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!

Having said that, you do get to choose the picture you’ll end up with at the end – what could be better than that?

Why ‘Finish’?

Yes, why not ‘start’ or ‘create’ or ‘work on’ or ‘develop’ or ‘tackle’ or ‘think about’ or ‘consider’ or any number of other vague terms? Why so final and fatalistic* with your ‘Finish’ already?

Because we’re going to start with the end result deeply chiselled into our brains. Eyes on the prize, guys! A finished, completed and ‘perfect’ work, with no missing pieces.

New Year’s Resolutions are notorious for, quite simply, umm… not working. One of the main reasons for this is that we don’t keep a very clear end point in mind.

It’s true that we should be enjoying each day of our lives and not just waiting for some distant ‘pipe-dream’ to come true and theoretically make us ‘happy’. And that’s built into the plan through the satisfying placing of puzzle pieces day after day throughout the year.

But without a clear end point we will lose sight of what we are doing and more importantly why, which leads to the all too common putting off of the project for another year or… another life.

Which is why we’re going to finish our puzzle, and we’re going to finish it on the 31st December, 2016. Or before!

*Fatalistic is the perfectly appropriate word here. It means:

Accepting that everything that happens is inevitable.
Believing outcomes are determined in advance and can’t be changed.

And that, my friends, when applied to our future success, suits our purposes perfectly!

Why ’50 or 100 Pieces’?

If you split a year into weeks, as you probably know, you get just over 50 convenient chunks. You can do a lot in a week if you’re motivated, determined and organised. Just think what could happen in a whole year if you put your mind to it!

So the idea is to imagine a goal which could be made up of 50 or 100 smaller, self-contained pieces, all of which will go to make up a coherent whole – a highly satisfying original piece of work.

This could be anything concrete you can imagine, such as a book of templates or a series of instructional videos or – why not? – next year’s bestselling business parable based on your own experiences.

Ideally, for this project, tangible ‘pieces’ such as book chapters or woolly scarves will work much better than more nebulous ‘chunks’ such as staff meetings or sessions in the gym.

As a highly-focused creative web site we’d like you to finish the year with something to hold in your hands or take pictures of or print out or publish on-line or sell or hand to people and get feedback on.

Obviously, things like maintaining a healthy weight and reading regularly and nurturing positive relationships with your colleagues and so on are extremely important, but we want to give you a big, obvious, undeniable, in-your-face win at the end of the year. One of the best ways of doing this is to finish up with something solid and new and impressive that didn’t even exist on January 1st. So that’s what we think.

You should be able to complete one or two of these ‘pieces’ each week, depending on what works best with your particular project.

Further professional examples include:

And for the artistically inclined or family oriented:

You won’t be doing this on your own. I’ll be doing it with you, and we can all share our experiences in the dedicated forums which I’m working on right now.

To chat about The Challenge in general, go to the General Group here. To state your goal and how you are going to get there, go to the Jan 2016 Challenge Group here – you need to request to join, but do’t worry, I’ll let you in! (I’m still setting them up – please be patient)

And yes, in case you’re wondering, the whole thing is entirely free, although I have a little creative idea brewing, you know me…

If you are interested in seeing where this will go, show your interest now and it will be free for you forever, whatever it becomes. I happily admit that I’m making it all up as I go, but you’re welcome to come along for the ride and I sincerely hope you do.

Personally, I’ve decided to write 100 articles on creativity this year, 50 here on Creative Business Mind, and 50 over on its broader sibling I Create Therefore I Am.

You can follow my progress here throughout the year, and to prove that you have to start somewhere and that even the longest journey begins with a single step… you are currently reading 2016 Professional Creativity Article No.1, which I am halfway through writing – only 99½ articles to go!

Why ‘THIS Year’?

THIS year is the present; THIS year is currently happening; THIS year is now! The only time you can do anything, of course, is right now. If you ain’t doing it now, you just ain’t doing it, period.

Sure, you can be doing it ‘around’ now, and that’s fine. As long as you have dates or meetings with yourself, blocked off in your diary every week, which are respected and every bit as sacred and non-negotiable as a meeting with your boss’s boss.

If you’re self-employed it’s yourself you have to be super-strict with, but the same principles apply. Just do it.

In order to achieve something really good, we’ve chosen a 12-month time frame. The years go by fairly regularly, I’m sure you’ll agree, so that’s just long – and significant – enough to be really worthwhile, but not so far into the future that it’s effectively meaningless.

As I type these words it is, indeed, this year, and by the end of this year (this one, 2016, not some other one) I will have produced something really exceptional (for me, at least), you’ll see!

How about you, my friend? What are YOU going to finish THIS year?

And just in case you’re still clutching onto ifs and maybes and yes, buts, let me deal them the killer blow:

It’s a Leap Year, people,

and a Creative Leap Year at that!

That’s another whole 24 hours of creativity ON TOP of the 8,760 we’ve already got to play around with, and if eight thousand, eight hundred and eight freakin’ hours aren’t enough to produce a mini masterpiece then I don’t know what it.

I don’t want to put you under too much pressure here, but if you’re not ready to pull your finger out and prove how amazing you are this year, I may have to seriously reconsider our promising recent friendship!

But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Do yourself and me an incredible favour and make 2016 a fantastic one.

So, on that note, tell me… What’s YOUR Creative Leap going to be?

That’s not a rhetorical question, I really want you to tell me. Do it here in our brand new Jan 2016 Creative Leap Year Group and I’ll encourage you all the way!

Why ‘!’?

Exclamation marks tend to get thrown around with wild abandon, and I’m as guilty of that as anyone. In this case, however, I think it’s justified.

At the risk of sounding a bit new-agey, I do honestly believe that as intelligent, thinking beings (notable exceptions aside), we all have the power, or the capacity to bring forth positive change in our lives.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but with a helping hand and the right tools and mindset, it is absolutely possible, if not inevitable, to improve our daily lives and achieve amazing things.

When you have completed this challenge one year from now and look back at what you’ve accomplished, and at what you are holding in your hands, literally or metaphorically, you truly will understand that an exclamation mark is really the only punctuation possible…

Give it a go in 2016 and tell me it ain’t so❗️

Why This, Why Here, Why Now?

Because… a lot of reasons. Do any of these make sense?

Will that do for now? Yes, that’ll do for now. Time is short and the year is already upon us.

What To Do Now

If you’ve made it this far (I’m amazed, and impressed!), and you’re as excited as I am, then what are we waiting for – let’s go!

We’re in week 1 as I write on the 5th of January, so we still have plenty of time to get this thing underway – until the middle of January at least.

A word of warning though, don’t put off starting or you might as well not have read the article. This is about NOW, in case the point somehow didn’t get through.

So make it real right NOW by saying hello, here in the forum, and telling us what your year-long jigsaw puzzle is.

Also tell us what the weekly or twice-weekly pieces are which will get you to a wonderfully successful conclusion by 31st December of THIS year.

Can’t wait to talk, and let’s make it a massively Creative Leap Year in 2016!

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A possible Creative Leap Year motto (whaddya think?):

~ Imagine Stuff… Start Stuff… Finish Stuff! ~

Notes

Sab Will writes about creativity in business and life.

As well as Creative Business Mind (this site!) and his new Creative Leap Year project described in the article above, he runs I Create Therefore I Am (general creativity), Mind Map Mad (mind mapping & visual problem solving) and Fun English Lessons (an on-line language learning site).

Sab is available for training in innovative thinking, creative problem solving, mind mapping and professional English language training. Please get in touch here to find out how increased creativity and innovation can help boost your business.

© 2016 Sab Will / Creative Business Mind