Automating the creativity

When creativity strikes, time matters. There's nothing worse than grinding gears, when I really want to write down an idea for a blog post, or a new feature in my projects.

That's why along the way I started automating, and streamlining my creativity efforts.

Automate everything

The easiest way to boost your creativity is to automate as much as possible:

• store your ideas in an organized way, either in a note-taking application, or a task manager,
• aggregate information, fetch it from multiple sources automatically, and process behind the scenes as much a possible using tags, RSS readers, search engine alerts, and filters.

I use following tools to automate my creative ideas: Things (research topics and article drafts), Agenda (date-sensitive notes), iOS Notes (information snippets), Notability (searchable hand-written notes).

Streamline as much as possible

Having a smart system of handling ideas and informations is not enough. The next step, after establishing it, is ensuring an easy way to enter new information, process, and access easily when required.

• use automation software, e.g. iOS Shortcuts, Scriptable, Launch Center Pro to process information without your manual effort,
• use task management, and note management software to keep your workflow, and informations in check.

I use following tools to streamline my creative work: iOS Shortcuts (one-click shortcuts to enter new information, and assign it appropriate place in my note applications and task management), Things (smart reminders, and aggregation of the ideas), Agenda (keeping track of publication schedule, and maintenance of projects), Calendar (keeping track of important dates, and overview of the publication schedule).

Finding your creative workflow

As you could see, I use few applications in various contexts—you should try to keep your toolset simple to prevent cognitive overload, but it's a story for another time.

You can also decide to streamline, or automate only, and that's fine too. As long, as you utilize your creative juices fully, your workflow and toolset are a good choice and you should keep using, and refining them!