Every single one of us as architecture student has shared this feeling of wanting to give up and quit. Things become too overwhelming and it may feel like you can’t handle the stress any longer. Every class is equally demanding and a lot of work. Just thinking about the amount of work that needs to be done can start a panic attack. Instead of sleeping, you just keep replaying in your mind all the things on your to-do list.

You start to lack inspiration and can’t seem to move forward with your projects. Motivation starts to drain away and you no longer want to even look or think about the work. Just thinking about not wanting to do it is stressful itself.

After a bad desk crit with your professor, you just want to flip tables. You start to feel like everything you’re doing just isn’t working and there’s no use in trying to move forward.

What happens to us during this time is hard to describe in words. And trust me, this happens at least once every semester.

Now I’m here to try and help open your eyes to how one can overcome this experience.

—————-

Talk to professors

Professors are there to guide you, so who better to talk to when you are having a hard time?

I know when I’m having a hard time communicating my ideas to my studio professor I go and reach out to another professor that I can talk to. Doing this, you are able to get another person’s outlook on your design. I feel that sticking with one person’s perspective (your studio professor) can start to become useless because they have a certain outlook on your project and so it’s hard to find another direction when you keep trying to do what they expect. So reaching out to other professors and getting their input can really benefit your design.

I say it’s like a mid crit, but at a time you really need it. Mid crits are always really helpful since you get an outside perspective. Receiving many inputs can be a bad thing too though; try not to go around to 5 different professors. Stick to one or two who you can keep in contact with through the duration of your project.

Talk to friends

Speaking to your class mates can also really be beneficial.

When I say go talk to your friends for some advice, I don’t mean ‘hey man can you tell me what you think of this idea?’

I mean really sit down, at dinner or something, with your sketch book and discuss architecture. Discuss what you are trying to achieve and how you far you have come in doing so. From here you and your friends should be having an architectural discussion about your design. Like really get deep in there and really discuss the problems you are facing and ask them how they would go about progressing it.

Be open to change

This idea of being open to change sort of comes from the previous topics. When you are trying to get feedback, you need to be open minded. Some people may give you some advice that you don’t particularly like, but sometimes it’s those examples that lead you to progress your ideas further.

This has happened to me, my studio professor said this ridiculous thing that had nothing to do with where I was trying to go but it made me think. It made me think really hard at how I can take what he said but make it my way. This resulted in me coming up with a solution to my problem. Even though it wasn’t exactly what he was saying, I was able to tweak it into something that worked for me.

This is what constructive criticism is all about. It’s about you taking what was said and interpreting into your own idea.

Find inspiration

Go look at some awesome architectural tumblr blogs! There’s loads of inspiration on tumblr!

Don’t go on these blogs and find things that look cool, find out why is this architecture like this, why does it work, what about it can benefit my own design. When you are looking for inspiration you need to have an architectural outlook on the projects you come across.

Also look at some books in your school library, pick up a book specifically on an architect you favor. Look at some topics that may pertain to your ideas.

Switching from Intuitive to Deliberate Thought

Photo: Second Thought designed by Benjamin H. Byron from the Noun Project

We tend to think in habitual ways, which hinders our ability to think creatively and solve complex problems. Over at Farnam Street, Shane Parrish dives into the writing of Roger Martin to uncover the value of breaking our thinking habits in order to generate new ideas or solutions:

What we think is often made up of habits…In an evolutionary context this makes a lot of sense. If you see a lion, you run. This is fairly closed. You don’t ask a lot of questions or attempt to discern if the lion is friendly or not. Our minds are optimized to think and act quickly…

As unconscious and intuitive habits, these are often hidden from us and often come from our desire to feel good. Over time, however, these habits become our reality…

The key to changing how we think, then, is to switch from intuitive to deliberate thought, observe our patterns of communication, and then change the way in which we communicate. As Heinz von Foerster put it, “If you want to think differently, first learn to act differently.” Communicating differently with others and yourself is the key to changing your mind.

After watching Tony Schwartz’s: To Solve Big Problems, Change Your Process I wanted to write his process with my own thoughts and words. I’m mainly projecting this idea in an academic setting and hope to give those interested in architecture, or any creative field, an insight of the process of creativity as well as a reassurance to those who feel stuck and don’t know how to move forward.

I’ve written about how to come up with a concept (to me, the word concept has become taboo, that’s a story for another time) and how to get the creative process going; both posts talking about how to spark creativity but not about the process of creativity.

What happens during the creative process? How do we get to one stage to another? How does an idea get transformed into reality?

I hope to answer some of these questions.

Jess

—

First Insight:

Every creative project starts with the intentions to solve or fix a problem; whether the problem is housing a sustainable community, making a bike helmet more wind-dynamic, or branding a new company. There are multiple creative and diverse industries that all revolve around solving and answering to a problem.

Finding and defining the problem or question at hand is an essential step. Outlining the issue is the starting point of imaginative and intuitive discovery; it tells us where to start looking and how. For instance, the way I would go about solving a housing issue would be entirely different from resolving an environmental problem.

Identifying the issue allows the transition into discovery.

Saturation:

Discovering the how’s and why’s of an issue is the ultimate challenge, but immersing ourselves in the known is a rewarding accomplishment. To come up with answers we need to learn the past, what has come before and how did it get to this point now. The gathering of information creates a strong foundation to any creative project.

As architecture students we learn about architecture history, we understand precedents, we research, we sketch, we make, and we conclude. These are all key skills that we should use during this process.

What I have found a lot of people do, myself included, is look at inspiration thinking it can solve my issue but it can’t and it shouldn’t. ‘Don’t Waste Your Time on Inspiration’ because to solve our particular problem, we need to find the solutions through research and development. The learning and understanding process is how ideas form, not looking for inspiration.

I think and will always think knowledge (particularly about the problem at hand we are trying to solve) is power and holds a strong foundation to how we stir creativity inside us.

Incubation:

At different points of the creative process there is time when thinking needs to be put aside. When we engross ourselves into a project too much, we start to lose momentum, things get too frustrating and ideas don’t move forward. Taking a break allows a shift in thinking to happen whether we are aware of it or not; when we turn our brains off and we aren’t actively seeking for an answer, we permit the mind to breathe. Learn to value turning off the brain because most of our best ideas come when we are doing simple tasks such as showering, driving or walking. The greatest times we get our best ideas are not when we are searching for our best ideas.

The average creative process will ask for multiple breaks and we shouldn’t fight them, we never know when that ‘ah ha’ moment will come. During the ‘Saturation’ time, we should expand our minds in knowledge and then walk away from it after we digest it all.

Illumination:

These are the ‘ah ha’ moments. The breakthrough experience is when we figure out what we were trying to solve from the very beginning.

After intensive amount of time spent on discovering, learning, and understanding what it is that needs to be solved, we come up with the solution to that problem almost instantaneously sometimes. Through moments of putting thinking aside we sometimes can stir up these breakthrough moments.

Verification:

The final portion of any creative project demands an interpretation into reality; translating our insights into something that is accessible and understandable is the moment we work up to. Granted in architecture school we always say we are never finished, but for that semester you work your ass off for the final presentation.

—

The creative process itself is simple; there is a problem, research what makes up the problem, walk away from it, re-visit and research some more, a discovery happens, and finally produce it for the final.

There are a lot of articles out there that focus on improving creativity, productivity and generally the capacity to do good work and get results. While these articles are often very useful however, it’s not always clear precisely what they are aiming to achieve. Improving creativity and productivity are undoubtedly noble aims but are we talking about increasing the peak of our potential? Are we talking about increasing our average creativity? Or are we talking about the ability to tap into that creativity and productivity at will?

What’s important to remember here, is that your ability to do your best work is something that is always going to peek and wane over time. Sometimes you will find that you are able to maintain concentration, that you can come up with great ideas and that you churn out large quantities of work in no time at all. Then at other times you’ll find that you can’t focus, that no breakthroughs are forthcoming and that you spend entire days sitting in front of your monitor/desk staring blankly and getting nothing done.

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to improve the quality of your work then and the experience of completing said work, would be to focus on controlling whenyou get those bursts of creative inspiration so that they coincide with the times you need to do the work. Rather than killing yourself trying to rewire your brain and develop more power, perhaps you could just better apply it to make use of the abilities you already have.

You Can’t Force Productivity

This is something that a lot of performance coaches will focus on when helping businessmen and women to get the most out of their brains. It is typical of the average ‘type A’ personality to want to continuously drive forward, and when they hit a roadblock with their productivity their solution is often thus to simply try and force themselves to overcome it and to succeed.

Actually though this will usually have the precise opposite effect of tiring them out, creating more resistance and leading to frustration and an ultimate lack of productivity. This is a particularly big problem too with entrepreneurs who are prone to pushing themselves even after their nine-to-five is over. If work isn’t forthcoming they will often see the solution as being simply to keep trying until they can get that work done… even if it means effectively squeezing blood out of a stone. In an office environment the equivalent is clocking off at 10pm, which is becoming an increasingly unhealthy aspect of the culture surrounding office jobs.

Again this tends to just make matters worse. While you might manage to get some work done at 2am that day, you’ll then be going to bed wired, late and stressed. You’ll wake up with insufficient sleep and your brain will be almost incapable of completing any meaningful work until you’ve rested. Which you won’t let it… And even if you manage to continue this cycle of grinding yourself down every day, you’ll find that the quality of the work just isn’t there and that you don’t have the same spark of enthusiasm that equates to the best output.

Understanding Your Ebbs and Flows

The better solution then is to acknowledge that your creativity and productivity are going to naturally ebb and flow, and to focus on getting that cycle to line up with the times when you want the most work. Think of this as a similar process to your body clock – the times you eat, the times you sleep and the external cues you get coming in all combine to create a body clock that dictates when you’ll feel awake and when you’ll feel tired. Your brain works in the same way, in that it can only work optimally for a set period of time and thus needs periods of rest in between if you are going to get the very most from it.

So scheduling in rest from the stress of everyday life is important, but just as important is the ability to make sure that that rest is high quality and that it will actually mean a break from work-related thoughts and other kinds of thoughts that might tire you out.

The Most Important Rule…

The most important rule to this end, is that you need to switch off mentally after a certain time. Make the decision that come 5pm, 6pm or 7pm, to turn off the computer and to turn your brain off from stressful and work-related thoughts as well.

The problem is that once we go home, many of us end up living in a kind of limbo where we’re ‘half’ working and half resting. We’re not doing any productive, so we may as well be resting, but instead we’re staying on alert in case we decide to work later, or just because we can’t stop our minds from churning over the day’s events.

Even if you suspect you are going to work again later, learn to switch off completely and to stop worrying for a few hours when you get in. If you struggle to do that, then try setting an alarm to go off in an hour or two and tell yourself that until you hear that alarm there’s really no point in stressing.

Helping Yourself to Switch Off

If that isn’t enough to help you truly switch off, then you might need to learn better mental discipline. You can do this by trying meditation which revolves around the ability to direct your thoughts as you wish and to quiet your internal monolog and chatter. The more you practice the better you’ll get at being ‘on’ when necessary and being ‘off’ the rest of the time.

And if meditation isn’t your thing, then what can work almost as well is to find something that you really enjoy and find relaxing and to focus on that instead. For me it’s playing Sonic the Hedgehog, for you it might be knitting or reading a good book. As you focus you’ll find these have an almost meditative effect in just the same way.

Ending and Starting Your Day

How you end and start your working day are also two very important factors to this end. A common mistake is to start the day by answering e-mails, which immediately puts you in a stressed and reactive state of mind rather than letting you capitalise on the rest and relaxation you’ve from gotten from sleeping. The first thing you should do when you get to work or boot up in the morning is to continue with a job you were working on yesterday – now with the added benefit of a fresh mind and a cup of coffee.

Likewise you should think carefully about how you end your day. End your day by answering stressful e-mails and you will be cementing that feeling of stress and inability as you sleep. Conversely, if you can end your day on a ‘high’ that will then carry over into evening.

Many prolific writers, entrepreneurs and other creative types will recommend ending your days with something ‘half complete’. While this might seem counterintuitive, this can actually have many benefits – encouraging you to start work right away the next day, and at the same time letting your unconscious mind work on solutions while you rest and sleep. This is an ideal way to take literally the concept of ‘sleeping on it’.

Understanding Yourself

These tips should help you to better control your flow of productivity and creativity and to harness your full potential. To an extent though you are going to find that you have natural tendencies in these areas and that this is all much easier if you try to create a workflow that works with your natural rhythms. Identify at which points you work best during the day and then move tasks around so that those moments coincide with the most important and challenging jobs.

You surf. You tumbl. You pin. You FFFFound. You “curate” popular, proven work. You find hundreds of niche, beautiful examples of success. Dozens of formulas that look like they can be applied to your project. You show your team and clients work that other people have created.

When you’re learning to think for yourself, this is fantastic. But when you’re producing creative work, it’s not. That is not the creative process.

The more you look for inspiration: the less you make. When you put that much energy into watching other people make: you begin to think it’s impossible to do great work of your own.

…

You have to dive in. You have to make yourself uncomfortable….Where do you start? Start by sharing your point of view. Talk to your friends, your team. Whomever. The moment your idea is in the world, it’s going to get pushed around a lot. If it continues to make sense, then you have an opportunity. And you made it—you made your own opportunity.

-David Mikula

Inspiration is often a way to make ourselves feel creatively energized and busy, but when it comes to being more productive or creative, that’s where the activity falls short. The hours you spend browsing sites for creative inspiration is time you could have instead spent making your own ideas and learning from the experience.

The best creative work doesn’t come from time spent looking for inspiration, it comes as a result of tirelessly generating, sharing, and exploring ideas.

Albert Einstein once asserted: “I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious.”

Steve Jobs famously quoted a phrase from the back cover of the once popular The Whole Earth Catalog which read: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

The great author and education researcher, Sir Ken Robinson, exclaimed: “Curiosity is the engine of achievement. Curiosity is the engine of achievement.”

These historically creative geniuses all highlight the importance of curiosity. Not the pursuit of revolution or innovation even, but simply the notion to “stay hungry and foolish.“

Yet we live in a culture that escalates the value of creativity into something it’s not; a world-changing force, a responsibility we owe the Universe.

For many, we’ve been led into believing the world is a disease and one of the best cures for it is creativity.

Why aren’t we all like Einstein, or Jobs, O'Keefe, Picasso, or Musk, we are asked incessantly. If we aren’t finding ways to cure cancer, to propel mankind forward, or to solve global problems, does that mean we are floundering our brain’s tremendous capacity for imagination and problem solving?

For a long time I didn’t have a good answer to this question.

Friends and peers would ask me what’s holding us, as a civilization, back from the limitless genius we could all possess if only we could think like Einstein or Edison!

But now I think I have a reasonable answer:

“Genuine creativity comes from a sense of curiosity, not the will to conduct some marvelous act or revolutionize the world.”

Curiosity, exploration, encountering and discovering what others have overlooked, that’s how the most novel and useful ideas come about. But when we see what creativity can do, it’s no wonder we ask why we aren’t constantly utilizing it for bigger or bolder things.

The answer I have come up with is: that’s the wrong question to ask.

Creativity has never been about changing the world or remarkable innovation. At it’s heart, creativity is about curiosity and uncertainty, little else.

That’s not to say that creativity can’t enable us to think of wild solutions to global-scale problems. It’s just that, if we set out to do those things, we may have missed the point and end up falling flat as a result. The drive to change the world must come separately from creativity, not as a motivator for it.

The point is to be curious, foolishly so, as Steve Jobs would say. Without that curiosity – behind ulterior motives and a forced sense of wonder, for example – creativity simply cannot thrive.

You don’t have to want to change the world to be creative. And you shouldn’t feel ashamed if you’re not changing the world with your ideas.

Find what you are passionately curious about and go do that. To quote one of my favorite artists and writers, Jonathan Harris:

“Don’t do what you think the world needs; do what you love. The world needs more people who do what they love.”

It’s the impeccable off-duty style of locals. It’s the co-existence of the grunge and the glamour. It’s the fashion headquarters, a world-stage for production, and a creative heart that never skips a beat. 

It’s New York City. 

It was my recent visit this winter that cemented the fact I would one day call her home. Whether it’s working off tips at a bar, or playing dress ups as an Intern for the rest of my life- no cares are given. Rarely do I find myself leaving a place, dreading the thought of home. Sadly this year, that feeling became a reality- and hence, i’m counting every second until i’m back there again. This year we stayed in The Standard East Village- it’s like the teenager of New York’s hotel family, not enriched with enough history to be considered a classic, yet lacking the youth of what Brooklyn is boasting. It’s the city you can spark conversation about, it’s the ice-breaker for meeting strangers, and it’s a place so rich in the arts- they almost all call NYC home. 

Like the season’s itself, extremes exist in harmony. Dali and Picasso grace the walls of the Guggenheim, while Koons erects metallic puppies in MoMa’s lobby. Just as the rich and poor share a seat on the Subway, and despite her extroverted personality, Manhattan accepts them all.

Before visiting New York I find myself jotting down a minute-by-minute agenda, but in reality there’s no place for a schedule. You’ll find yourself in shops you have discovered through their windows, and snow storms will bring a halt to all sense of time and place, forcing a three-hour coffee date at Cafe Gitane, and before you know it’s Standard Bingo Night. This year we ventured into Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and with the Canon in hand we attempted to blend into the hipsteresque neighbourhood. First stop breaky (or Brunch, they say) at Egg, a cafe with enough eggs to feed the entire borough, and the best drip coffee for two (or three). We followed Wythe Ave and embraced all it had to offer- The Brooklyn Artists Library, The Wythe Hotel, and even a tour around Brooklyn Beer’s Brewery. So please, I urge you next time to take that extra stop off the L line and find yourself looking back, rather than up, at the infamous skyline you travelled so far to see. 

Amongst the pristine fashion houses and art royalty, Central Park remains gridlocked on all sides by penthouses and ghettos alike. The neighbourhoods of New York are defined by a feeling, not a look- and the more variety you expose your sense too, the more you can appreciate the spark in them all. Each have their own personality. You have your coffee-lover, fashion-obsessed student paying top dollar as a SoHo tenant. Or your older, more lived (less travelled) and immaculately groomed Upper East Side resident. In between them both there is less room to move, breeding the Midtown up-tight, business-driven woman, who lives half the time in London and the other at the local drinking hole. All stereotypes aside, it’s this perfect gridlock and all it’s history which makes Manhattan what it is today- an island in which 1.6 million people call home. 

Time in New York flies faster than a Boxing Day sale at Barney’s, and i’m addicted to the feeling. While it’s not the relaxing holiday you daydream of, it is the busiest ten days of your life. It’s for the girl who likes the cold, can handle the heat and considers peak hour her favourite time of the day. For most, it’s a place they’ve only dreamed of through screens,  so when reality hits and you’re on the move, like the Silver Screen, you’re a movie star by day, and a rock star by night.

  It’s the type of fun that can’t be crammed into an Instagram photo or 16 gigabytes in your bag, and for that, I thank you New York City, brb, i’ll see you soon. 

(Scroll down for my full list of New York Galleries, Cafes, Restaurants, Coffee and Art)

@hatrikkk

- NEW YORK - Cafe Gitane  Two hands nyc Happy bones  The Butcher’s Daughter  The Egg Shop Jacks Wife Freda  Saxon and Parole  Gasoline coffee  Momofuku Milk Bar Cafe Select Dean and Deluca  Egg (Brooklyn) Balthazar Bakery  Dough donuts (Brooklyn) Russ and Daughters  Mast Brothers Chocolate (Brooklyn) - Restaurants - The Standard Bar and grill (especially Sunday night bingo) Miss Lily’s  Narcissa (inside Standard East Village) Balthazar’s  Momofuku noodle bar Mercer Street kitchen La Esquina (Brooklyn and Manhattan) Bond Street Sushi  Rubi Rosa Pizza  Shake Shack  Reynard (Wythe hotel Brooklyn) Eataly ABC Cocina  Potlikker (Brooklyn) - BARs - Momofuku Ma Peche  Standard Bar East village  The Wren The Dead rabbit  Wythe hotel (Brooklyn) Brooklyn beer brewery (Brooklyn)  Living Room (Standard Highline) - NIGHTLIFE - Catch Le Bain

Can’t Help Falling In Love With You (Cover) - Fleet Foxes 

"Shall I stay?

Would it be a sin?