Make Your Life and Work a Work of Art | Linda Naiman, Creativity at Work

How do you make life and work a work of art?

Building on the headline, Naiman asks that obvious question to begin her column. She responds:

Art-making is meditation in action. It nourishes my craving for beauty, clarity and harmony. By beauty I mean aesthetics, that is the beauty of meaning-making, when all the parts come together to create a whole, or when clues are combined to solve a mystery. It's about finding elegant solutions to problems we face. ..."

And she asks another question:

How can you bring more artistry into life and work?

Naiman responds with six answers, summarized here.

Intention

Artists begin their work with intention and purpose. They have some idea about the end product they want to create ....

Focuses Attention ...

To establish more flow in your work, the first step is to prioritize and focus on what is most important. Devote your best thinking time for tasks that most need your creativity and focused attention. And don’t allow interruptions.

[I like how she describes the flow between action and reflection: "as Frank Sinatra put it so eloquently: 'Do, be, do, be do.'"]

Artistry ...

Artistry can be defined as having mastered a skill sufficiently enough so that you don't have to think about it. ... Once you have mastered a skill you can transcend technicalities and focus on creating, inventing and innovating. ...

Aesthetic Experience ...

Art here is not divorced from life, but rather informs life. We can enrich are own life and work, by incorporating the aesthetics of emotion, sensory experience, values, and sense-making into daily experiences.

Artistic Reflection

Artistic qualities such as: Seeing with new eyes, sensing and perceiving, mastery, finding beauty, meaning, elegance, rhythm, melody, harmony, and composition — can be applied to all aspects of our lives.

Reflect on these qualities and ask yourself which ones are present in your life and which ones are missing. ...

Act ...

Imagination without action doesn’t make you creative; it only makes you imaginative. Action brings ideas to life. ...

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Naiman's article is featured today (Aug. 17) in Garbl's Creativity Connections--available at the Creativity tab above and by free email subscription.