What is agility? Or - what does it mean to you?
What IS agility? Or - what does it mean to you?
If we’re going by the book, there are two definitions:
the power of moving quickly and easily; nimbleness;
the ability to think and draw conclusions quickly; intellectual acuity
What that means: It’s being able to pick yourself back up after hard feedback or a failure; it’s re-prioritizing priorities; it’s being able to shift a story we tell ourselves quickly; it’s recognizing the comfort and the challenge of a situation; it’s your ability to think fast when served a hard question; it’s having a plan B and knowing how to implement it; I’d even say it’s taking three deep breaths when you’re stressed, panicked, anxious. It’s any choice you make to use your natural abilities and talents to think and act quickly.
In any case, agility is a word we use in a variety of contexts - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual - and creative. Creative agility is the best of both of those definitions - the power, ability, talent to move quickly AND the power, ability, talent to think quickly.
Here are three quick tips when it comes to refining your creative agility:
Get the shit out of the way: this week, on a toth shop team call, I called this the #ugly20; for writers who struggle to start or move through a project, do the #ugly20. Much like the first 15-20 minutes of a workout after it’s been, like, two weeks since you worked out, the #ugly20 is that 20 minutes where you get all the ugly thoughts, feelings, or ideas out of the way via handwritten notes or a blank Word doc; in doing that, you clear the space to move forward and think faster; as well, that time serves as your warm up lap when writing. The faster you get at this process, the faster your brain will support.
Figure out and implement a way to capture ideas: maybe it’s a physical notebook in your backpack or a note in your phone. Find your way to capture your ideas quickly.
Explore unknown intellectual territory: Read something you’d never read - and find a way in which it connects to you, your life, your work. This doesn’t mean read the longest, most dense work ever written; it just means switch gears on your brain - and find a connection to it. Try to get faster and faster with this.