Oh Hello, I didn’t see you there. I was so busy, editing a video, writing a script, designing a graphic, taking a photo, writing a book and conquering the world. If you’re multi-passionate and multitalented but find it hard to get anything done just like me, you might be a Hypercreative. 

How are you today? Are you getting that project done? Or are you just looking at YouTube videos all day? Yea, the last one?…Sigh.. me too.

What does it mean to be a Hypercreative? Oh what? You’ve never heard of that term before? Let allow me to edutain you.

A few years ago, I had the idea that I might be a hyper-creative person. At the time, I didn’t know if such a thing existed. I kinda just came up with the word in my head. And in reality, it doesn’t really exist. It’s not a disease or anything like that, it’s just a term used to describe a certain type of behaviour.

Anyway, I did absolutely no research on the term and I kinda just assumed I should keep that crazy old thought to myself. Flash forward to a few months ago, you know…when I quit my job to be a full-time artist. That term, hypercreativity popped back into my head.

I started to experience the full brunt of my creative work; it was overwhelming, to say the least. I had way too many ideas and I wanted to do them all, at the same time. Which is impossible.

Before, when I was teaching full time I knew that I couldn’t do everything I wanted to do because I had to balance working and my art on the side. So naturally, when I stopped teaching full time, I thought *that the skies would be the limit and I could do everything I always wanted to do, boy was I wrong. Wrong like a biscuit.

Why is Hyper Creativity?

Then is when I typed the term ‘Hyper creative’ into Google to see if anyone was experiencing the same thing I was. And low and behold, I was not alone.

So let’s define the term hyper-creative. One of the first articles I read about this concept was ‘What is a Hypercreative and how to know if you are one’ by Mike Roy.

In that article, Mike, defines hypercreative as a person or state of being that posses a higher-than-normal degree of creativity.  This basically means, according to my doctor looking at the results from my ECG scan, there’s too much activity going on at one time in my brain.

Being hypercreative means that your brain is always coming up with new ideas. You see a mother at the park playing with her son, now you have a new idea for a play. You’re on the bus heading home from work, now you have a new idea for a song. You’re trying your best to sleep at a reasonable time at night but your brain is way too busy generating new ideas, unprompted.

Usually, hypercreative people like myself find themselves really passion about various projects at once. We often enter, what I’d like to call ‘work mode’ where we isolate ourselves from everything and everyone else while we work on a singular project for hours on end.

And while this might seem like a good thing, hypercreative people tend to have a really…big…problem. We get all excited about one project, we start it and then we get excited about another project, then we start that one and abandon the previous project. So we have a bunch of good ideas that almost never reach their full potential. Listen to me… if you are a hypercreative person, say Amen in the comment section because I know I cannot be alone on this.  

Related Post: why you start projects you never finish

It’s really frustrating because you know that if you can just focus on one thing long enough, it would be really successful. Luckily, for you I have found some really good tips that have helped me over the years to actually get some of these ideas done and I will share them with you now.

Here are 3 Basic Tips for Hypercreatives

Number 1-Write down all your ideas

My pre-dominant artform is writing. I have a million story ideas in my head and I come up with about two or three every day. The characters will not leave me alone. Pray for me. So what I have done throughout the years, is write as many of these story ideas down on one document. Every time I come up with a new idea, I type it out in this document, so when I’m done with one writing project I can easily go back and look at the other ideas I had.

This helps me be a little bit more organized with my thoughts and even if I’m not working on that story now, I can always go back and start another one once I’m done with my current writing project.

Number 2-Learn your limits

It takes a little trial and error but one of the most important things you can do as a person with a million ideas is to figure out your limits. For me, I know that I can only work on one narrative script at a time. Whether it be a stage/screen play, a book I know that my brain only has the space for one set of characters. It gets crowded in there sometimes. If I try to write a book and a play and a short story, chances are I will crash and even worst I wouldn’t be able to finish any of them.

Number 3-Set realistic goals

And my last point, is to set realistic goals. Its soups important to set goals for yourself in any aspect of your life but those goals must be realistic. This is something I still struggle with because I wanna be the very best (sing pokemon theme song). But I’ve learned the hard way that if you set unrealistic expectation for yourself then you WILL disappoint yourself if/when you fail to meet those high expectations. I’m not saying not to push yourself, you better push yourself you punk. But what I’m saying is to at least give yourself a reasonable time to achieve those goals, and give yourself a break if you don’t meet them.

As a hypercreative person if you have zero goals, then you’ll end up with a pretty large folder on your computer named ‘unfinished projects’.

And now for a poem…*clears throat*

A Letter to an unfinished Poem

Dear Unfinished Poem,

….

And that’s it for today guys. Thanks for reading! And wherever you are have a blessed day.

Remember,

Tell Your Story.

Niques