Managing Ideaphoria by Gail McMeekin of Creative Success

We are pleased and proud to be the second stop on Gail McMeekin’s 12 Secrets of Highly Successful & Creative Women Virtual Blog Tour!

Ideaphoria is also called divergent thinking. Many jobs, careers, and educational programs teach the opposite model, convergent thinking, which is critical thinking.

This is the kind of critical and logical thinking used to evaluate ideas and choices. The SATs are convergent, which is why many brilliant idea people don’t do well on them. In fact, there is one study that indicates that teachers do not enjoy working with divergent thinkers. That is interesting, because Johnson O’Connor themselves write that “the best trait of a teacher is ideaphoria.” Ideaphoria is an important aspect of creativity, but originality, flexibility, and elaboration are important too. The ideaphoria part is often about word association, fantasy, storytelling, and analogies, linking unrelated things.

The challenge for people with ideaphoria is choosing what to focus on and getting it done without changing your mind or moving on to a new project. Focus and execution are key skills that those of us with ideaphoria need to learn. People with ideaphoria can often have multiple careers—copywriters, novelists, teachers, inventors, designers, entrepreneurs, artists, sales people, marketers—any career where they can express their rapid, ceaseless flow of ideas. Therefore, they may have erratic career paths, feel unfocused, have closets full of unfinished projects, and may not stay with things long enough to be successful with them. Successful people open the windows of opportunity to generate ideas and then close the windows securely to evaluate those ideas. People with ideaphoria see connections among things that other people don’t see. They are big picture people, change agents, generalists, and can have trouble specializing. This can hurt them financially, as they need to settle down and work on one thing at a time and not get distracted. Barbara Sher refers to people with ideaphoria as “scanners.”

Highly creative people quite often have ideaphoria combined with strong intuitive skills, high emotional intelligence, and a keen awareness of their senses. They can absorb things like a sponge, which can make them tired, anxious, and overwhelmed. Issues of self-esteem, lack of self-acceptance, and weak problemsolving skills can undermine the careers of people with ideaphoria, leaving them under-employed, unhappy, and underpaid. Sometimes highly creative people are misdiagnosed with anxiety and depression when they simply need outlets for their creative ideas. They need people and projects that can benefit from their highly productive capacity for new ideas—it is creative imagination.

There are six strategies that I teach people who have ideaphoria to help them avoid its pitfalls:

1. Celebrate your talents and heal from your misunderstandings. One potential pitfall is negative self-talk, with you wishing that you were more focused. Acknowledge that you need meaningful projects in which to express your creativity and that you may have multiple careers and identities, and that is okay. There is nothing wrong with you, but you do need to learn how to control it. You are also vulnerable to burnout and sensory overload.
2. Be sure to come up with an effective way to record your ideas daily; then look for patterns or themes. Your ideas are valuable. Then focus on which one to three ideas excite you the most right now.
3. Learn to say NO, not now. You need strong filters so that you don’t get  overloaded with too much input. You need to put up formidable boundaries. Unsubscribe from magazines, blogs, newsletters, etc. and make a decision about what new data you are willing to receive right now and delete the rest—for now. Look at the short-term view of what you are working on at the moment and beware of the lure of bright, shiny, new objects. Note them down and file them away until later.
4. Clear the clutter in your life. Keep one or two books by your bed, not fifteen. Find someone who can help you to get organized and clear away everything that you are not going to complete. A personal organizer who is very structured can be a life changer.
5. You must develop a decision-making process for yourself, which is why a coach or a mentor is essential. Think in three-month quarters, and plot out what you will do during that time to support your big vision and your life purpose. Then cut down your list so that it is realistic. Can’t decide what book to write? Start with the one that you most want to write or one that is almost complete that you still feel passionate about—but choose one. Several support systems may be needed to keep you on track.
6. Design a daily centering process to review your goals and affirmations each morning, so that you remember what they are. Because you are so attracted to the new and the novel, you may forget your current plan and not reap the benefits of your idea generation and execution.

Convergent thinkers are creative too, but they may need a push to learn to tap into their creative ideas. Start by keeping an Excitement List. For two weeks, write down anything that excites you—a color, a word, a concept, a person— and then have someone help you look at the patterns. Then try the Creativity Catalysts at the end of the chapter for a jump-start. You can train yourself to notice your creative ideas by journaling about them with your Excitement List, and by having novel and interesting adventures every week to stimulate new ways of thinking.

Take a different route home from work, wear a color that you never wore before (that’s in your color chart, of course), talk to an intriguing person in a favorite store, travel to someplace you have longed to see. Shake up your life and see what emerges. It’s all about making new connections between concepts.

Like or let us know what you think of this post and Gail’s book excerpt in the comment field and you might win a copy of The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women Book AND Journal or a copy of The 12 Secrets of Highly Successful Women!

Gail McMeekin, M.S.W., L.I.C.S.W. is a national executive, career, and creativity coach as well as a licensed psychotherapist and author located in Boston. She can be reached at www.CreativeSuccess.com or by calling 617-323-1442.

The next stop on Gail’s tour will be Jenna Avery’s creativity blog –  tomorrow, December 2nd!