I cannot believe that is has been three years since we published Coloring Outside The Lines: Integrating Project Management and Creativity. What started out as writings to look at different facets of myself, the creative and the organized, soon became something more. As I continued my exploration of how to integrate the creative and the structured, I learned so much about myself and how I think and approach different elements of my life.
Even three years later, I feel that this discussion is ongoing. I think that I will always continue to have this conversation with myself. It is something that I have realized over time that is a part of who I am. It is not something to disregard but rather acknowledge.
As I evolve over time, so too should the way I integrate creativity and structure. I find that I still struggle with how to be successful with each endeavor. Even though I know that for me to achieve some of my goals, I need to find the balance between the two traits that works for me. That balance is also ever changing. What worked for me three years ago may not work for me now. So, I need to constantly review, reflect, and adjust based on what my new goals are.
I decided that in honor of the third anniversary of the book’s publication, I would reread the third chapter, Project Management and Paper Airplanes. The chapter presented “an exercise that used paper airplanes to showcase the way people think and how people are often hampered by their assumptions and in turn hinder the advancement of creative thought.” The main points from the exercise noted how planning will produce higher quality results and it demonstrated to people how to think differently and from different perspectives.
Great tips and food for thought for sure. For the planning piece, I tend to be a pantser and then outline afterwards. I have been toying with the idea of actually creating an outline first before I write my story for Nano (National Novel Writing Month) in November. As for thinking from a different standpoint, I do feel like I have been exploring different ways of doing things such as streaming on Twitch and examining other means of what success may look like.
What I need to do now as I review and reflect, using Coloring Outside The Lines as a guide, is continue to evolve, adjust and then apply what new thoughts arise. The application of all this consideration is the key to moving forward rather than just having a continued discussion. The end goal of reflection is to eventually make some decisions on how to move forward and hopefully improve along the way.
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