Creativity on a Deadline

Instructional Design is a creative process, and creativity requires a lack of boundaries, such as deadlines. But living in the real world means deadlines are inevitable. When you’re asked to be creative on a deadline, does your brain feel a little like this?

Photo by Alice Dietrich on Unsplash

Mine does. When I’m trying to come up with ideas for a course, I love to go for a walk and let my mind ponder the possibilities. If the ideas blossom early on, I can then focus, work hard and deliver a great course. But when the ideas don’t come easily or I’m assigned a project with a tight deadline, I find comfort in the words of the pros.

In an article from Fast Company, Chris Regan, a TV comedy writer, offers this advice: “If they are paying you to create . . . chances are you can do something great. If your employer has some faith in you, have some faith in yourself. That should make the 5 o’clock deadline easier.”

It's true! Sometimes the hardest thing is to have faith in your own abilities. Remember that your employer, who is probably more objective about your talents compared to the other job candidates they interviewed before they selected you, believes you can deliver a good course.

Inspiration is for amateurs doesn’t pull any punches. The article presents six tips, including sparking thoughts by creating visuals or doing research. My favourite nugget is viewing constraints as freeing, like poets who use rhyme and metre to create their works. “Throughout history, artists have sought to stimulate their own and each others’ creativity by imposing artificial constraints as a form of artistic challenge: take the French writer Georges Perec for example, who wrote an entire novel without the letter ‘E’!”

As Instructional Designers, we don’t bemoan the fact that we have to create courses rather than Picasso-style paintings. When we focus on the deadline, we can’t help but view it as a major constraint, but when we remind ourselves of all the other constraints that are inherent in Instructional Design, it helps us achieve perspective.

In Mel Robbins’ article from Success.com, she presents “two factors that promote creativity on a deadline: 1. Time to concentrate with zero interruptions. 2. Knowing why the problem is important to solve.”

It can be hard to protect focused, undistracted time, but it’s crucial for creative success. The second point may not feel directly related to an Instructional Designer’s work because designing a course doesn’t necessarily feel like there’s a problem to solve. The idea behind this is to find the mission: why is it important to complete this task on deadline?

As Instructional Designers, we (hopefully!) have a passion for education, and our mission is to deliver engaging, high-quality content to our learners so they can benefit from increased knowledge and skill.

Keeping these ideas about creativity on a deadline tucked into my mental toolkit has helped me meet my professional goal to deliver great courses to learners.

Please feel free to share your tips and tricks in the comments below!