As I rested in recovery after a pre-op test and before surgery, a physician assistant stopped by with a consent form. It authorized the team to do not just one but two procedures on me in a few short hours. WHAT? I refused to sign without a firsthand medical briefing. No amount of prodding could persuade me. Soon a second physician assistant appeared with a more forceful approach. STILL NO. For someone like me, who prefers to go with the flow, I was in uncharted territory. My friend, who initially sat quietly, walked out because I would not cooperate. Was I really doing this? YES. Quivering and anxious, I stayed firm by channeling my fiercest advocate—ME!

Just then, the anesthesiologist assigned to my case dropped in and I relayed what happened. Within 15 minutes, through one means or another, three physicians stood before me to explain the proposed change. I listened intently. They extended me the same courtesy. We discussed the possibilities and agreed to add the second phase only if absolutely vital. That said, I signed the paper. I would not know the outcome until after the fact but I understood the potential course of actions and they knew my concerns and wishes. More about that later….

This impromptu meeting and resolution only came about because I summoned and held steadfast to my inner strengths and skills. It set the tone for my hospital stay. I had to be on top of everything. We all do. This wisdom refers to both our personal and professional interactions.

We need to voice and safeguard our rights and wishes. That requires advocating for ourselves at the right time and in the right way.

 

Self-Advocacy: What’s It All About?

Before going any further, let’s not leave the topic under discussion to interpretation. What does it mean to advocate for yourself?

Oxford Dictionary defines self-advocacy as “the action of representing oneself or ones’ views or interests.” Another source expands upon this and outlines the how to’s. It frames self-advocacy as “an individual’s ability to effectively communicate, convey, negotiate or assert his or her own interests, desires, needs and rights. It involves making informed decisions and taking responsibility for those decisions.”

Content on MasterClass underscores the complexity of what’s involved. “Recognizing your needs and assuming control of the decisions that affect your own life are necessary steps to advocate for your best interests.” Acting in this fashion comes with an array of potential benefits. As examples, this post notes that “self-advocacy can help you develop strong problem-solving and communication skills.”

Most of all, advocating for yourself can make a difference. Its importance derives from helping you: “obtain what you need; make your own choices; learn to say no without feeling guilty; express disagreement respectfully.”

Realize that advocating for yourself is not simply: this is what I want; give it to me. Awareness, knowledge and know how are essential building blocks. Self-advocacy is a methodology that demands clear thought and keen execution to deliver desired or agreed upon results.

“Knowing how to self-advocate is a skill that takes practice and effort to master.” From this perspective, how should you get started or, if needed, polish this capability?

 

Setting the System in Motion

Sometimes the occasion to self-advocate pops up on the spot. Take what happened to me, for instance. At others, you likely have the luxury to plan your strategy. No matter how it evolves, self-advocacy is a process. The steps along the way may include:

  • Identify – Hone your awareness of occasions to advocate. Assess situations and whether they merit it. Do a quick cost/benefit-type analysis to determine go or no. Take a judicious approach; otherwise, in the same setting or circles, repeated attempts may render your actions ineffective and even harm your reputation, Alternatively, don’t overlook and be complacent. Instead, read what’s going on around you. Be cognizant of opportunities. For example, a plum windowed office becomes available. Should you advocate for it?
  • Get Smart –Gather the information you need to navigate the path. Do a deep data dive on a personal level. Perform a wider situational analysis too. Arm yourself with the findings. Get acquainted with wide-ranging potential feedback that may arise, including objections. Have fallback positions at the ready. Let’s say you seek a new job or promotion. Showcase your experience and skills; make your case credible and convincing. Prepare to address what may come up about areas of weakness. Intelligence–don’t advocate without it.
  • Articulate – What do you seek to achieve? Formulate your response with precision: what do you want? Keep it simple, crystalline and to the point. Your “ask” should be something of value not to you alone but others in its arc. Frame it, prove, promote, make it appealing. If a discussion ensues, follow with: Why? What do you propose to offer in exchange? In other words, what is your value proposition? “To best achieve your goals, make sure to have a clear idea of exactly what you’re hoping to accomplish. This bedrock will make you feel more comfortable when putting your foot forward to negotiate!”
  • Engage – When the mountain (or physician assistant) doesn’t come to you, do the legwork on your own. In a business environment and elsewhere, request an appointment with an ally, supervisor or decision maker. Create an appropriate subject line or theme. Remember the big picture: make this first move and all those that may follow of interest and benefit to all stakeholders.
  • Go! – It’s advocacy show time, starring you. Use the prior steps to script your role and rehearse. “Over-prepare.” Now present. Expect questions, comments, even arguments. Gladly accept these challenges and keep the constructive dialogue going. Respond with anticipated questions of your own and measured points to go back and forth. Offer options. Come to an agreement of some kind.

Advocacy is not necessarily all or nothing. Stay determined but enable all involved to derive good things to show for it. Don’t “fixate on a single solution that works for you. Instead consider what matters to your counterpart and find multiple ways to satisfy both of you.”

 

Tips: How to Come Across

Throughout the process, keep this principle in mind. It’s not only what you do to succeed when self-advocating, but also how you do it. Attitude reigns important here. Strike a fine balance between being assertive and persistent. Do that by acting positive and polite all the time. You don’t want to alienate those in the chain of command, who ultimately make decisions affecting your goals.

How? Adhere to these guidelines every step of the way:

  • Be courteous
  • Stay calm
  • Maintain a pleasant temperament and tone of voice
  • Practice good body language and listening skills
  • Be fair and reasonable

Self-advocacy requires work and discipline. Those who excel at and exercise this skill “are more likely to thrive in school, work and life.”

Getting back to where we started, when I awoke from surgery, I discovered the team went ahead with the original plan. Self-advocacy success? I hope so!

 

About the author.
You name it, she covers it. That’s the can-do attitude Sherry M. Adler brings to the craft of writing. A polished marketing and communications professional, she has a passion for learning and the world at large. She uses it plus the power of words to inform and energize stakeholders of all kinds. And to show how all of this can make a difference, she calls her business WriteResults NY, LLC.

Designer and filmmaker Saul Bass said, “The most stimulating source for a solution to a problem comes from the problem itself.” Similar to an acorn, which holds within it the complete set of blueprints needed to create an oak tree, an untapped idea is an equation, that, with the right amount of cultivation, can be transfigured into a successful finished product. For David Lynch, this process—the making—comes easy, and is vital. It’s what he’s been doing from the jump, and the result is a body of work that is simultaneously disturbing and beautiful, perplexing and liberating.

Before setting his sights on film, Lynch wanted to be a painter. He was serious about art from a young age and had a studio space in high school which he visited so regularly that his parents mistakenly believed he was out partying. He was living “the art life” as he calls it, and in the sixties, he went to college for painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. It was here that he first noticed “a little wind” in a painting he was working on, and the idea of filmmaking occurred to him. After creating a few shorts in the early seventies, he left Pennsylvania and moved to the west coast to study filmmaking at the AFI Conservatory. It was here that he made his debut feature Eraserhead, which would become a cult hit and put him on the map.

In the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life, we get a glimpse into Lynch’s process and a taste of what spurs him to create. As he declares, “Every time you do something, like a painting or whatever, you go with ideas, and sometimes the past can conjure those ideas and color them.” For someone whose films are known for their dark mystery, surrealism, and dream logic, Lynch’s work is the product of a very specific need to problem-solve—that is, the necessity to unearth the hidden mysteries of his own psyche.

In The Art Life as well as the part-biography, part-memoir Room to Dream, Lynch recalls stories from his past, and the pieces start to fit. It’s clear that Lynch’s memories are the primary foundation for his work, and his artistic pursuits are a form of exorcism. In a story, which will ring familiar to any Lynch fan, the director reveals a disturbing childhood memory in which he and his brother witnessed a bloody, naked woman walking through their nighttime suburban neighborhood. This haunting tableau stuck with Lynch for years, and eventually found its way to the screen in 1986’s Blue Velvet. Similar stories of traumatized women in peril can be found throughout Lynch’s oeuvre.

Similar to his skill for turning dark recollections into thrilling cinematic moments, Lynch sees setbacks and roadblocks on set as exciting detours to be explored. He has learned to roll with the punches and trust the process, which has resulted in some of the most exciting moments of his career. For instance, Eraserhead, created on a shoestring budget over a grueling four years, encountered a number of puzzles that had to be solved: The sets were built out of scavenged materials that were used and reused; blankets and burlap bags were used for soundproofing; and technical questions were solved by anonymous cold calls to various studios. 2001’s Mulholland Drive, originally intended as a series for television, was eventually seen as unfit for the small screen and was then recrafted and beefed up into the horrific movie masterpiece we know today.

Lynch is a meditator, and it is through this habitual emptying of the mind that he is able to “catch ideas,” a concept he explores in his book Catching the Big Fish, which is all about creativity and consciousness. In 2005, he launched the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, which strives to raise awareness about the benefits of transcendental meditation and its effects on the brain. When one becomes familiar with this side of Lynch, it seems ironic: how can one who produces such provocative, disturbing work be so enlightened? This simultaneous quest for peace and the ability to burrow into the American underworld is a balancing act that Lynch has perfected, and one that brings to mind the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang, a concept revolving around the notion that all things are simultaneously inseparable and contradictory. This mode of thinking is essential to both the creation and understanding of Lynch’s work, which is gorgeous and horrifying, hilarious and tragic.

Like the tiny blue key used to open Pandora’s box in Mulholland Drive, the freeing of the mind and the trust in one’s subconscious is the final piece necessary to fully appreciate the director’s work, which should be seen not as a cryptic riddle to solve but a wondrous mystery to be experienced. This can be difficult for some. As Lynch notes, “I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.” With his films, paintings, comics, and music, Lynch is asking us to abandon this tendency and take a ride through the thrilling in-between of not knowing. The answer is to realize there are no answers. It’s through this process of letting go, and the rejection of the human desire for resolution, that boosts Lynch’s work to near-spiritual realms. The result is a release from the white-knuckled pursuit of the definitive, and a plunge into the warm waters of possibility.

 

About the author.

Daniel Nolen is a writer, designer, and performer in New York City. He has written about design, music, film, and theater, and can be found regularly and happily taking in concerts, shows, and exhibitions around the city. He also co-hosts the weekly comedy/variety show Cast Offs, every Monday at 8 pm at Club Cumming in the East Village.

The first Hitchcock film I saw was Rear Window. I was mesmerized—not only by the film’s taut suspense and thrilling plotline but also by the economical and stylish approach Hitchcock took to telling the story. I eventually dove deeper, and films like Vertigo, Notorious, and The Birds took their rightful place on my list of most-loved movies. When I eventually went to school for graphic design, I learned about Saul Bass, the designer responsible for a number of Hitchcock title sequences, including Vertigo, Psycho, and North by Northwest. I then discovered that Hitchcock himself had at one point dabbled in graphic design, and everything clicked. It made total sense to me that the man behind these films—which have been celebrated for their bold artistry and visual storytelling—had a background in design and advertising.

Although he was interested in the visual arts from a young age, The Master of Suspense did not initially have dreams of being involved in the movies. A lover of art and design, he enrolled in drawing and design classes in 1916; however, when his father died, it became his job to support his mother and siblings, and he began working as a technical clerk for a telegraph and cable company called Henley’s. He quickly grew bored with the clerical nature of his work, and a higher-up in the advertising department agreed to let him try his hand at ad layouts. It was clear Hitchcock had the skill for it, and he was soon promoted to the advertising department in 1919, where he began drawing graphics and writing copy. As he later told French filmmaker Francois Truffaut, this was his “first step toward cinema.” Later that same year, he worked as a movie title card designer for Islington Studios in Britain.

These early stages of Hitchcock’s career familiarized the director with the principles of design, such as contrast, perspective, shape, line, and movement. It was with these elements that he first learned to economically tell a story through advertising, leading the viewer’s eye and infiltrating their subconscious. This is exactly what he would go on to do in film, albeit on a grander scale. As he himself declared, “My mind is strictly visual.”

Hitchcock is a master when it comes to framing. Each shot is carefully composed, using contrast and perspective to heighten emotion, create suspense, and build character. In North by Northwest, there are two sequences in particular which have been cemented in film history for their brilliant use of contrast and perspective: the first is Cary Grant being pursued by an enemy crop duster—which grows from a dot on the horizon to a giant, murderous machine—and, near the film’s end, a harrowing scene in which Grant and Eva Marie Saint climb the gargantuan, precarious faces of Mount Rushmore. In the memorable Psycho set, Hitchcock varies the shapes of the buildings to create visual interest. As he notes, “The architectural contrast between the vertical house and the horizontal motel is quite pleasing to the eye.” The Psycho house has since become one of the most iconic sets in film history, and is still visited by tourists to this day.

In the 1954 thriller Rear Window—arguably Hitchcock’s biggest crowd-pleaser—the director confines himself to a single set and shoots almost exclusively within or through the window of a single apartment. It is through the windows of the surrounding courtyard buildings that our protagonist glimpses the lives and routines of his neighbors, each window a canvas on which Hitchcock composes minimal but lively tableaus of everyday life. Like an effective logo or ad, these images communicate a massive amount of story with a single glance: a gregarious dancer entertains a roomful of men; a solitary woman dines at a table set for two; a man carries his bride across the threshold. Through Hitchcock’s economic artistry, we not only engage with the plot, but the film’s themes of voyeurism, loneliness, and companionship find their way into our subconscious.

In Psycho’s famous shower scene, Hitchcock uses seventy-eight camera shots to show the murder; however, nudity or actual violence are never seen—instead, we glimpse an extreme closeup of a screaming mouth, a medium close-up of silhouetted figure holding a knife, a pair of feet moving in what appears to be bloody water, and, eventually, the water swirling into the abyss of the drain. Individually, each shot is meticulously composed, but shows only a granule of information; when strung together, they create one of cinema’s most famous and horrifying sequences.

In Strangers on a Train, Hitchcock gives us another iconic murder scene, but this time in a single, twenty-second-long shot. The crime is shown in warped, fisheye reflection through a pair of fallen eyeglasses. These glasses are an important part of the film’s visual language, much like the camera lens in Rear Window, the bell tower in Vertigo, and the stuffed birds in Psycho. “I was quite intrigued with them,” says Hitchcock about these feathered props. “Owls belong to the night world; they are watchers.” These shapes become symbolic, and, like a designer placing an icon on a piece of signage or arranging a group of shapes within a brochure, Hitchcock uses these objects to convey information and arouse emotion.

As Hitchcock commented to biographer Charlotte Chandler, “Klee could have made good storyboards.” He was referring to the German artist Paul Klee, known for his colorful, cubist paintings and surrealist instincts. Hitchcock’s visual sense is equally impeccable, and is at its most brilliant in Vertigo, which in recent years has come to be regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.

First of all, Vertigo distinctly showcases Hitchcock’s genius when it comes to color. In one of the film’s many breathtaking scenes, our protagonist gazes at a beautiful woman wearing an emerald wrap as she moves through a bloodred restaurant interior. Later in the film, these same shades of green and red recur in the form of costumes, props, and lighting, alerting the viewer’s subconscious the the emotional weight of the scene. Hitchcock’s use of line to create emphasis and motion can be seen in the film as well, whether it’s in the shot of a woman standing by the Golden Gate bridge as it recedes in the distance or in the climactic sequence involving a set of perilous, square-spiral tower stairs.

Hitchcock’s films are an endless visual feast, and something new can be unearthed upon each viewing. Just last month, while on holiday in France, I attended a Saturday night showing of Rear Window, a film I’ve seen no less than two dozen times. It was during this screening that I noticed a particular shot as if for the first time: that of Grace Kelly’s Lisa, who, having broken into the murderer’s apartment, gesticulates across the courtyard to her admiring, watchful boyfriend. In the apartment below, this image is reproduced: the suicidal Miss Lonelyhearts approaches her own window, hypnotized by the music of a male neighbor. In an instant, the spinster has become a shadow self for Lisa, drawn by an outside force which promises companionship. The energy emanating from this shot is heightened even further when, seconds later, the killer reappears two windows down, approaching his front door.

About the author.

Daniel Nolen is a writer, designer, and performer in New York City. He has written about design, music, film, and theater, and can be found regularly and happily taking in concerts, shows, and exhibitions around the city. He also co-hosts the weekly comedy/variety show Cast Offs, every Monday at 8pm at Club Cumming in the East Village.

We are in an age of breakneck progress in artificial intelligence — the chatbots have given way to AI tools that can create impressive, highly detailed images. Is it time to worry or rejoice?  

Say hello to an emerging and fast-evolving genre of AI known as text-to-image generation.

It’s a fascinating new front in artificial intelligence, where anyone can generate hyper-realistic images from a written text description.

While most users have generated work that leans toward the weird and absurd, like the Mona Lisa painting a portrait of Da Vinci, many are also experimenting with possible commercial applications. As you might imagine, this tech has stirred up deep existential and ethical questions about art, creating, and more. Who is the artist behind the creations — AI or its human user? Can machines be creative? And perhaps most germane for creatives — Will this new technology make certain creative industry jobs go *poof*?

Just this past midsummer 2022, a select few people in and adjacent to the tech industry were granted access to these text-to-image AI tools during initial beta testing. The two most prominent are Dall-E —derived from the name of the surrealist artist Salvador Dali and Pixar’s lovable animated robot Wall-E —and Midjourney. Dall-E was launched last year by OpenAI, a nonprofit research lab founded by Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk, among others. Midjourney entered open beta in mid-July 2022 and comes from a self-funded AI research lab founded by David Holz.

These AI text-to-image tools are simple to use — but rife with controversy.

You can open the doors to a dazzling cornucopia of visual creation in seconds with just a few words or simple phrases. Here’s how these AI tools work: Users type in a text prompt like “a frog on a united states quarter” or “chickens gathered to watch human wrestling,” for example, and the results are wild. These programs can translate text into award-winning art that has roiled the art and design community.

The New York Times recently published an article, “An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy,” chronicling the brouhaha around the Colorado State Fair’s annual art competition awarding Jason M. Allen, of Pueblo West, CO, with the blue-ribbon prize in Digital Art for a piece he had created with Midjourney (he won $300).

via Jason Allen

Allen’s work, “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” won the fair’s contest for emerging digital artists, making it one of the first AI-generated pieces to win such a prize, provoking fierce criticism from artists who accused him of “cheating.” Allen defended his work, which in submission he had explicitly labeled “Jason M. Allen via Midjourney.” After winning, Allen posted a photo of his prize piece to the Midjourney Discord chat, which made its way to Twitter, where it ignited heated debate and backlash. Here are some excerpts from the online mêlée.

  • “This is so gross. I can see how AI art can be beneficial, but claiming you’re an artist by generating one? Absolutely not,” shared one Twitter user.
  • “We’re watching the death of artistry unfold right before our eyes,” another Twitter user wrote, who was quoted in the New York Times piece.
  • “No effort? Please,” another wrote. “If Jackson Pollock can splatter paint onto a canvas or Maurizio Cattelan can tape a banana to a wall, and both are called “art” (both which take hardly “any effort at all”), then this counts too.”
  • “Fine tuning and curating is the art here. If they just presented generic Midjourney art, then… It wouldn’t have won. Figuring out what looks like good digital art is the art itself.”

Some tweets excoriated Allen, while others defended him. Many argued that using AI is no different from using other digital image manipulation tools like Photoshop, and that human creativity was necessary to craft the right prompts and curate the final award-winning piece.

Controversy over new art-making technologies is nothing new.

The New York Times article shared that “controversy over new art-making technologies is nothing new. Many painters recoiled at the invention of the camera, which they saw as a debasement of human artistry. (Charles Baudelaire, the 19th-century French poet and art critic, called photography “art’s most mortal enemy.”).”

Is text-to-image AI different? Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, human artists are, however, understandably anxious about their futures. Will anyone pay for art or design if they can just generate it themselves? Or are these just new tools that will augment concepting and prototyping, freeing artists, designers, marketers, and more to focus on the more directional components of creation?

Just this past June, Cosmopolitan commissioned art director and digital artist Karen X Cheng to produce the magazine’s first-ever AI-generated cover art — a strong woman shown as an astronaut, based on creative direction from Cheng and the Cosmo design team. The headline and lede on the cover read, “Meet the world’s first artificially intelligent magazine cover. And it only took 20 seconds to make.”  While it took Dall-E twenty seconds to render the image, that bombastic but attention-grabbing claim does not take into account the time it took to refine the art direction or compose the right prompt to achieve the final image.

Cheng documented the process and posted the video on Instagram, which showed the hundreds of iterations of text prompts she typed before coming up with: “wide-angle shot from below of a female astronaut with an athletic feminine body walking with swagger toward camera on Mars in an infinite universe, synthwave digital art.”

Via Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan wasn’t the only magazine with an AI-produced cover this past June. The normally buttoned-up Economist deployed a Midjourney-created piece emblazoned with the headline: “AI’s New Frontier.” These examples are significant because they show how quickly digital technologies can go from bleeding edge to market, giving rise to a panoply of complex emotions.

What is the future of text-to-image AI, and what does it mean for artists and designers?

Advances in AI have often sparked concern about the displacement of human workers. While those concerns are legitimate, IBM CEO Ginny Rometty recently said, “If I considered the initials AI, I would have preferred augmented intelligence.”

One way to look at this new technology is that it can help push creative visions forward. Someone putting together a presentation might find they can communicate ideas visually that surpass their artistic abilities. The production team for a video shoot can quickly test out backdrops and props ahead of time. An advertising agency can tweak drafts of a new campaign before having artists work on the final concept.

The reality is that AI design tools are already a part of the creative industry. The Adobe Creative Suite is full of AI-enhanced features. Premiere Pro has proprietary Adobe Sensei AI embedded, allowing automated captions to be created. In Illustrator, the ability to trace and vectorize sketches is powered by AI, as well as the skin-smoothing and other retouching tools in Photoshop’s neural filters.

This compendium of AI use cases from the last several years shows how ubiquitous automated design has become, but it also demonstrates that without creative intervention from human artists and designers, the results of AI-generated design can feel derivative, regimented, and homogenized — making the case that without a human to steer the way, this technology has no intrinsic soul. Perhaps the future is for humans to be captains of creation, with a growing array of digital tools at their disposal.

About the author. 

An award-winning creator and digital health, wellness, and lifestyle content strategist—Karina writes, produces, and edits compelling content across multiple platforms—including articles, video, interactive tools, and documentary film. Her work has been featured on MSN Lifestyle, Apartment Therapy, Goop, Psycom, Yahoo News, Pregnancy & Newborn, Eat This Not That, thirdAGE, and Remedy Health Media digital properties and has spanned insight pieces on psychedelic toad medicine to forecasting the future of work to why sustainability needs to become more sustainable.

It’s no surprise that “freedom” means different things to different people — but what does it mean to creative professionals as it relates to work? 

We are experiencing an ongoing revolution in the workplace. Traditional ideas about knowledge work are dissolving, and as a society, we are undergoing a radical change in how we think of work — especially for those who work in creative industries.

For decades, scientists have known that creativity often grows in a non-linear fashion and that creatives tend to be more neurotic and antisocial than others — aka, they live more in the world of daydreams and require some solitude to produce quality work.

Neuroscientists who study creativity find that it does not involve a single brain region or side of the brain as the “right brain” myth of creativity suggests; rather, it draws on the brain as a whole. The complex process of “creativity” comprises many interconnected unconscious and conscious cognitive systems and emotions, with discrete areas of the brain recruited to handle each task and work in concert to get the job done.

Creatives don’t always follow the classic 9-to-5 workweek flow, finding that doing work at night or early in the morning is often more beneficial. In other words, thinking out of the box is hard when you’ve been put into one. It’s fair to say that social environments can adversely impact creativity.

So, when are people most creative? A large study by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley sought to better understand what drives creativity. They collected daily electronic logs from nearly 240 professionals working on 26 distinct creative projects, who reported on their emotions and perceptions of their work environment, along with their motivation and one notable event from each day.

They found that of all the positive events reported in the nearly 12,000 diaries collected, the most significant factors for generating positive emotions and perceptions of their work environment was making progress in meaningful work — moving forward on something that matters. They were not only more productive on those days, but more creative, too. Simply put, creativity has a lot to do with setting up the right work environment to allow motivation and imagination to thrive.

But the right environment isn’t the same for everyone.

For some, working from home stifles creativity because collaboration via Zoom doesn’t get their creative juices going vroom. In contrast, others find open office setups and their attendant distractions a major creativity killer. Recent research published in the journal Nature, based on fieldwork in five countries, found that video conferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas. But they also found that video conferencing was as effective as in-person meetings for choosing which innovative ideas to pursue, essentially proving that some folks prefer vanilla ice cream while others prefer strawberry (just kidding, sort of).

We set out to see what were the most essential creative workplace freedoms for Creative Circlers. While everyone wants control over their general process — including where, when, for whom, and on what they work — we learned that some aspects are definitely more important than others. To uncover which work freedoms matter most, we crafted a LinkedIn poll to which over 6,000 people responded.

We broke things down by looking at the overarching question: Which freedom is your #1 priority?

And these were the options:

  • Working with whom I want
  • Working where I want
  • Working when I want
  • Doing the work I want to do

Can you guess which option creatives valued most?

In this new age of widespread digital nomadism, we guessed that “working where I want” would take the cake. While this ranked high, there was something that mattered even more…

Here’s how our results broke out:

  • Doing the work I want to do: 41%
  • Working where I want: 34%
  • Working when I want: 21%
  • Working with whom I want: 4%

The number one thing for Creative Circlers? “Doing the work I want to do” — echoing the results of the Berkeley study.

Creativity is crucial for companies. It’s one of the elusive characteristics that managers seek in their employees so that their organizations can stay ahead in today’s cutthroat new-new-new marketplace. Research suggests that businesses would do well to remember that creativity is as much about communicating with creatives to set up the right work environment that lets motivation and imagination juices flow as it is about finding the right candidates.

People are most creative when motivated by interest, sincere enjoyment, and satisfaction with the work itself. That’s important for both creatives and those that employ them to remember.

About the author. 

An award-winning creator and digital health, wellness, and lifestyle content strategist—Karina writes, produces, and edits compelling content across multiple platforms—including articles, video, interactive tools, and documentary film. Her work has been featured on MSN Lifestyle, Apartment Therapy, Goop, Psycom, Yahoo News, Pregnancy & Newborn, Eat This Not That, thirdAGE, and Remedy Health Media digital properties and has spanned insight pieces on psychedelic toad medicine to forecasting the future of work to why sustainability needs to become more sustainable.

The workers have spoken (or, rather, Slacked): A widespread return to the office is not happening anytime soon. Even as workplaces have upped the ante with in-person perks far beyond breakroom snacks, most employees still say you can’t beat the comforts of home. 

But while long commutes, overpriced lunches and an off-kilter work-life balance are things employees obviously don’t want to revisit, there is still one benefit to office life that can be hard to replicate remotely: connection.    

According to Harvard Business Review, the pandemic accelerated a decrease in connections across wider networks. While employees made an effort to keep in contact with their closer relationships, the review said, broader informal interactions — once a common side effect of casual deskside chats or running into a coworker in the hallway — had plummeted. According to the survey, this has impacts on everything from productivity (people who feel more connected to their work also feel more productive) to innovation, such as sparking new ideas and collaborating with others. 

Especially hard hit? Employees on the lowest levels: Recent graduates have found their experience of the workplace to be extremely isolating and have not had the opportunity to engage with potential mentors or feel they are contributing on a meaningful level. 

For working creatives and artists, going it solo has often been a major plus. But that doesn’t mean that working collaboratively is gone for good, or that it can’t be lonely from time to time when your cat is your coworker (and never refills the coffee pot). Especially when you want to reach a new level in your career, seek new clients, or explore new possibilities, having a professional network you can turn to for referrals and recommendations is crucial.  

From online daters to online commenters, many of us have been building relationships in the digital space for a long time. But how can that translate into finding your next freelance or full-time work opportunity? 

Whether you’ve adopted a remote-first work schedule, transitioned to freelance, launched a digital nomad lifestyle or have always worked as an independent creator, here are some ideas to grow your professional connections.  

Make the first move 

The art of networking has obviously come a long way since the days of passing out business cards, awkward icebreakers and Sharpie nametags. As Sam Mani writes in Art Business Journal:  

“If you think networking is simply about advancing your own career, it’s time to change that mindset. Rather, focus your networking efforts on connecting through your passions and creating a community, and that requires being open to others and their needs. As the Young Entrepreneurs Council puts it, successful networkers ‘…go beyond thinking, ‘What’s in it for me?’ to ask ‘How can I help?’’” 

An offer to volunteer with a professional organization, like participating in portfolio reviews, hosting a virtual meetup, giving an online lecture, or judging Open Call art competitions in your field of expertise, will often receive a resounding welcome.  

If you’re looking to find out more about a particular field, consider asking for informational interviews with professionals you admire. Virtual meetings mean the world is your oyster when it comes to finding people who do your dream job and asking them how they got there. Follow up with a thank-you note or a gift card to a coffee shop. 

Join online professional networking groups 

Where are the best places online to find career contacts? More than just the top tool for interoffice communication (and gossip), Slack features groups where you can meet people according to your professional or personal interests. You can also search Discord for niche communities and make connections. Remote work and digital nomad groups abound on Facebook, where anywhere from dozens to thousands of members share opportunities and resources. 

For working artists, creatives, or those looking to turn a side hustle into a full-time gig, online artist communities like Artrepreneur, a global digital marketplace and membership platform, give you access to a wide array of working artists. Complete your profile. Like and follow other artists you admire. Engage with the community over chat. You just might find your next client or collaborator. On each of these platforms, introduce yourself in a post, ask an open-ended question, or engage with others in the replies of a thread to kick off the conversation.  

And of course, there’s the big name in professional networking: LinkedIn. To make sure you’re in tip-top shape for potential recruiters, refresh your profile, write a mission statement, and start posting — and engaging — with content in your field of interest. Not sure where to start with connections? Tapping your alumni network is always a good first step if you’re looking for referrals, since you automatically have something in common. When it comes time to send that message inquiring about a particular company or client, your fellow alums will be that much more likely to hook you up. 

Give coworking a try  

As a writer, I experienced a major breakthrough when I discovered the London Writers’ Salon. During one of four daily sessions by time zone, writers from all over the world log on, chat about what they’re working on, listen to an inspiring quote, then write in tandem for 50 minutes. I never would have thought being in a giant Zoom with strangers on silent would help me get stuff done, but there’s something comforting about getting together with like-minded people and cheering each other on. Now, when possible, I try to replicate that feeling with coworking sessions in person around kitchen tables or in coffee shops with fellow freelancers. Just because I WFH doesn’t mean I always have to do it alone.  

Coworking spaces in your town or city could fill that same need, and often host mixers so remote creatives from a variety of industries can meet each other IRL. Or, if you’re a leader, you can start your own critique session or creative salon. Invite a friend or two, ask them to share with their contacts, or post about the opportunity online to gauge interest. My bet is that you’ll find there are plenty of people who are just as interested and invested in making connections and building community as you are.   

 

About the author.
Allison Stice is the editorial director at Artrepreneur. She has been published in the Bitter Southerner, Garden & Gun and Savannah Magazine, among other publications.

Sometimes we are blessed by the muse and find a flow so profound we see God. Most of the time, we do not and have to slug through a horror-inducing first draft in order to get anything decent. Everyone’s journey through their own mind is different, and the differences expand as we work with different mediums. Here’s how I tackle writing for this one… most of the time.

PITCH
It starts with an idea. This will often come from something going on or the yearly focus du jour. Maybe I read a Reddit post that got me thinking about a certain topic. Maybe it’s something I’m already passionate about. Maybe I just have a vague idea of a concept I’d like to explore. Maybe it’s Mental Health Month and I’ve got tidbits galore to share. Either way, I compile those ideas into an email and send them off to be green lit, rejected, or adjusted to fit the publication’s needs.

RESEARCH
Here’s where we dive in. I spend a lot of time here solidifying my idea and thesis. What exactly is it I’m trying to share/explain/provide resources for? Where do these resources live? What are other people saying about this topic? Especially people who disagree with my point of view. I always try to present counterpoints and add balance to any topic I tackle.

DISASTER DOCUMENT
We have not started writing yet. The disaster document is like my living bibliography where I throw the links to every source I’ve consulted and perused in my research process. I’ll paste key info and quotes I might want to use here as well. If I have interviewed anyone, this is where my transcriptions might live, as well as any other resources they’ve directed me towards.

This document is typically in Pages, where I do most of my writing. I also use SimpleNote to take quick notes and throw in links before transferring things into an official document. I jump between those two to refine my organization process and eventually format it so it makes sense to me, although it might not to anyone else.

VOMIT DRAFT
This is where I start laying out the goodies. Sometimes I start with an intro, sometimes I start with a particular point I’m excited about. I’ll go through and fill out all the points I wanted to get out. Sometimes I’ll remember something I might need a source for so I’ll look it up really quick, or if I’m being really “good” and in the zone, I’ll make a note to look it up later.

STRUCTURE
Some people may structure before they vomit, but I don’t roll that way. There is a rough structure, sure, but once I get the main points down, I’ll figure out the order they should really be in and find the narrative that will get me to a conclusion that makes sense.

This is not always the case. Sometimes I’m just trying to lay out information, in which case I want to structure it in such a way that each section builds on the last. Even if it’s just a presentation of referential knowledge, there should still be the shadow of a narrative holding it in place.

PLAYING WITH COOKIE DOUGH
Writing is rewriting and this is the meatiest part of it all. I’ll start going through each section and refine the wording, cut what doesn’t fit, and generally turn the cookie dough vomit into something resembling a cookie so it will be ready to bake.

TAKE A BREAK AND SCREAM
We get to the point where I start to ask myself why did I want to write about this. Why did I think I could take this utterly complex and nuanced topic and distill it into a 1,000–2,000-word piece. What drugs was I on? How did I think I was smart enough for this?

Here are things that might happen here:

  • various sighs, groans, and screams
  • staring at my documents and rubbing my eyes while I curl into my chair or onto the floor
  • exclaiming “why do I always do this to myself” whenever my husband walks into the room

Then eventually, I might:

  • switch to another task
  • go for a walk or swim
  • dance my frustrations out
  • practice the piano
  • meditate, preferably outside
  • take a nap or just lie down with my eyes closed
  • roll around on the foam roller

Usually, it’s something physical or some form of rest.

RESTRUCTURE
Okay, at this point I’ve stepped away, and now it’s time to come back and make sense of it all.

Hopefully, I can see more clearly and am ready to move around, cut things, and fill in any blanks. I’ll grab any bits of research from my disaster document that might still be needed, or grab whatever other sources might be required to complete the flow. I may just throw them in to edit later, or I may just write it in on the spot depending on how generously the muses are blessing me that day — or if I’ve gotten enough sleep, food, and water.

EDIT
Now we’re talking. We’ve got words, a narrative, and a structure. Time to go through and edit the damn thing. This is honestly the easiest part for me. Creation is a struggle, but honing is a challenge I love. Snip, snip, and reword. This is where we get it tight, fluid, and strengthen the narrative structure so the flow makes sense and presents the information in the most digestible format possible. I know you’re busy and need to move through these words smoothly.

SUBMIT
There comes a certain point where I can’t take it anymore and will just send off the article (usually because I said I would have it the night before and it’s the following morning). My editor luckily knows and understands this about me and never gives me grief for it.

RESUBMIT BECAUSE I FOUND NEW EDITS TO MAKE

Usually happens a few hours after I press submit. For some reason, I need to be “free” of the deadline in order to separate myself and see the words clearly for the very final pass.

FINAL EDITS
My bff Kevin (who manages this blog, say hi, Kevin) will usually let me know if there’s a link I forgot or trim verbose sentences and superfluous points.

Thanks, Kevin. He’ll send them to me to make sure none of the meaning has changed. Once everything has been OK’ed by us both, it’s ready to publish.

REST + RESET
Finally, I can rest, exercise, eat, and get ready to do it all over again!

 

About the author.

Alessandra is your friendly neighborhood writer, coach, and facilitator with a varied history of experience from digital agencies and corporations to yoga studios and gyms. Her expertise and interests range from fitness and wellness to self-care and personal development to intersectionality and justice to science and creative cultivation. She has worked on and off with Creative Circle since 2014, originally as an NYC recruiter, later as an internal sourcer, and currently as a community wellness and culture specialist as well as a contributing writer for this here blog. You can find up-to-date offerings or sign up for her newsletter at alessandracalderin.com.