Recognizing my own flaws, foibles, and quirks is easy. My default form of humor is self-deprecating, so I’m well aware. One of those things that I’m constantly fighting is what I’ve taken to calling “Design paralysis”. This is when I have so many ideas flood into my brain at once, or in one major overwhelming brainstorm, that I freeze. I’m unable to pick one to work on. Sometimes it’s so bad that it can actually trigger depression, which typically can take several days to climb out of. That goes like this:

brainstorm -> overwhelm -> frustration -> self hate/loathing -> depression

I loop back around to frustration and start again. Eventually, I either get distracted by the things that occupy my regular schedule, or I claw my way out of the spiral, usually through using food as comfort/medication. I’m not proud of it, but there it is, a brutally honest ugly truth about me you probably never knew.

The Cup Overfloweth

Sometimes I’m purposefully trying to generate ideas. I have brainstorming sessions where it’s just me and my unfiltered mind. I can’t explain exactly what happens here, but shit is happening much to quickly to write down ideas, and honestly many of them are utter shit. Unfiltered ≠ lots of great ideas no matter how many ideas are flowing. So what I’ve done in the past is just let all these ideas start racing through my mind, and trying to latch on to ones that seem worthwhile. The problem is that my mind ends up just keeping the cup under the waterfall, so to speak, and it fills up really quickly with everything, and I’m left with an overflowing cup, full of mostly shit ideas that are so mixed in with the one or two great ones that nothing is usable. Even if I do manage to latch onto something worthwhile, all the other stuff is still floating around in the cup and I can’t make a lot of sense out of it and I end up unable to figure out how to move on. I get frozen by all the content swirling around in the cup.

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Solution?

Lists are my go-to solution for so many problems because they break stuff down in a way that my mind can understand. It helps if the list ends up with some doodles on it as well, that’s a very satisfying list to my brain. However, since all the ideas are flowing so quickly, how the hell can I possibly write them all down and then filter them later?

I think what I need is a microphone. I think I should speak all these ideas out loud as fast as they’re coming into my mind, without judging their merit or filtering them in any way. That way, I can go back and write them down and uncover the ones I feel have potential.

Todo: See if I still have my digital voice recorder and put that fucker to work or research options to buy one if I don’t.

Once I’ve got a list, then I still have to avoid the overwhelm I can often feel from looking at these large lists. I know, it sounds stupid, but this is what I go through, and I’m hoping I’m not the only one because then I’d really feel incompetent. Here’s just one list of potential new art projects.

How does one not get overwhelmed by this? Make smaller lists? How many recursions does one go through to avoid the paralysis of looking at the list, seeing all these great concepts for each item come flooding through my mind, and then I’m back to the overwhelm and design paralysis.

Any ideas?

Lesson: I’m not close to perfect, and just because I have good ideas on this blog doesn’t mean I’m not suffering the same crazy issues as other artists!