IS IT ME OR MY EGO TALKING?

Working with different people, especially when you’re a manager, requires a lot of self-knowledge about your patterns, how we see the world and how we interact with others. Pause for thought before answering someone in a frustrating situation and realize that everyone is doing and giving their best for a common goal. Realize that reality always depends on your interpretation of it, and it’s never objective.

ADMIT YOU DON’T KNOW

There is nothing more potent than admitting failure or that we don’t know something. Accepting it will help you break through, grow, and strengthen a team that collaborates and evolves together without competition, domination, or other constraints for creativity and innovation.

SHOW SUPPORT 

Be present and genuinely care about others, this is important to have clear communication. If you don’t show your support, people won’t come to you when they are struggling with something, and they will hide it – and that’s a massive enemy to progress and innovation. 

PRACTICE TRANSPARENCY AKA TALK

Not seeing the face of a dialogue partner can leave you feeling insecure, worried that the message has been perceived in the wrong way. This also works the other way around: Receiving an email or a message on slack can get your thoughts going in either direction and raise doubts or questions. 

If this happens, it is crucial to step back, try to find another interpretation of the message that makes more sense and remind yourself that these are your co-workers, maybe even your friends, and that you trust them. Trust them to make an effort to understand you, and trust them to speak up if they don’t. And do the same. Communicating transparently, openly asking any questions and straightforwardly addressing any potential conflicts might seem like extra time or irrelevant for the process. But in the end, it saves time and frustration.

ACCEPT  YOURS & OTHERS CRAZINESS 

Don’t block each other. It takes bravery to be a little crazy and to share crazy ideas. Accept others and trust them to accept your crazy moments too. 

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WE KNOW IT’S A CLICHÉ BUT LISTEN

Creativity is a constant process of call and response happening inside our heads which only gets better if we involve others. 

Sharing ideas and thoughts is an accelerator for creativity. At Be A Peach, we implement creative sessions at the beginning of new projects in which we openly share ideas, reach out for feedback and give space for ideas to connect. It is a beautiful way to expand your thoughts, empathize with new ways of thinking and connecting dots that have not been visible before. 

CREATE FROM A PLACE OF PURPOSE

Whether you’re creating a brand or launching a campaign, be constantly aware of your purpose and how you want to impact people. Remember that there will always be someone who will feel deeply affected by it. Don’t neglect that responsibility.

ABSORB DIFFERENT TOPICS

The best part of working remotely is that you can move and work from wherever you want, which means you are opening the box for all your team. Make the most of it – be curious about all the topics that interest you, try different sports, go to other places, listen to various podcasts, books and see how creativity and ideas from different stimuli interlace so well!

Creativity needs to be fed! 

ALLOW YOURSELF TO HAVE CREATIVE BLOCKS 

They are part of the process, and they are part of you but don’t get lazy. You will have moments of high creativity where everything is aligned in your life, and it just flows, but there will be times that nothing happens and you’re begging for one good idea. Don’t stop trying. Just embrace it.

See creativity as a process and not as something immediate. That shift will also help you lead with pressure:  great ideas can take days or a minute to come up, but it’s all a process.

PLAY WHILE YOU CREATE 

Experiment, don’t stay fixed to an idea – say, write or draw absurd things and explore those, merge different ideas and see what happens – and don’t be afraid or feel embarrassed of doing it.

Remind yourself that there is no such thing as wrong or right in creativity. Let go of all the pre-set boxes and trust the process. Moreover, sharing ideas and thoughts is an accelerator for creativity that goes hand in hand with letting go of feelings of embarrassment or shame: Just because it has never been done before, it doesn’t mean that it is not possible or not valuable, right?

STOPPING IS NOT A SELFISH ACT. IT GIVES PERMISSION TO OTHERS DO THE SAME

Because of the society we live in, we might feel that we are giving up or not doing our best by stopping. That is nonsense. To create, our mind needs to be rested and relaxed. If we don’t stop, our community will also feel pressured to keep going, even if drained. Taking care of ourselves will increase the team’s health and morale. 

THE 20 MINUTES RULE

Put together a list of your tasks and look at each point individually: If it does not take longer than 20 minutes, do it right away. If it takes more time, see what has the highest priority and go from there. Of course, if it requires actions from others, you need to reach out and try to align with their schedule. Aso: Know when to let go of something. Especially when working creatively, you can come to the point of feeling stuck with a project or thoughts and tend to sit hours over it. In our experience, only one thing helps there: Let it go, do something else instead and return after a bit of while with fresh eyes. And if the feeling of being stuck stays, reach out to your team, but don’t lose half of your day on it. 

‘When you feel like you have too much in your hands and you feel like you have to accelerate, do the opposite and slow down’

DON’T MULTITASK! IT’S A TRAP

Multi-tasking is not as good as we praise it – it causes stress, which creates the inability to observe and pay attention to others and our minds. Set times on your calendar for everything you do if you have a full schedule.

DO NOT GET SLACK ADDICTED 

Email and slack addiction are actual! Even if we don’t want the clients or team members to wait, being addicted to these platforms damages our ability to do deep work, which highly impacts our quality. Take out the notifications from your phone and set up proper times to check these platforms. 

HAVE YOUR OWN DEADLINES 

Imagine that your day is divided in two, so you organize tasks to do in the morning and to do in the afternoon, and for that, it helps if you understand your patterns – at what time of the day does your creativity shine?! 

 BE FLEXIBLE 

Time management is not prison is a tool to help you guide your day, don’t freak out if your lunch took longer to make and you will only be eating at 1.30 pm! Creative minds work best when they feel free.