Boost Your Creativity: The Random Word Doodle Workout

1. The Introduction: It's crazy. We live in an era with the gray squishy thing, and our skull plays a major role in all aspects of our lives; in work, our personal lives, our decision-making, in productivity, in efficacy, and especially not creativity. I come across a lot of people who say things like, "I'm not creative," or "I wish I was creative," or "Man, if only I could come up with ideas like that," and "I wish I was as creative as you." The thing is, you can be. Our brain is our number 1 tool, and it's a muscle that can be exercised. Just like you get fitter by training and gymming, singing get more creative by giving your brain a good workout. When I tell people this, most stare at me blankly. There are many ways of making your brain sweat, but I'd like to introduce a really fun and effective method: unfeignedly, boskopoid, gumdrop, piecemeal, blandae, cry, morbo, cranch, photoelectric, shiva. That's the beginning. Now, pick one of the 10 random words and doodle it, and that's the two basic steps of a super creative brain workouts. Doodling random words is one of the best creative workouts you can do. In addition to sharpening your mind, the practice helps overcome the fear of failure. It helps you to embrace making mistakes as part of the creative process, and gets your brain into creator mode rather than consumer mode. It's also a fun, requires minimal efforts, and doesn't take long. My name is Rich Armstrong, and I'm taking you through 10 days of doodling random words, what the best practices for doodling them all, and what benefits are gained from integrating the practice into your life. If you want to grow your brain, increase the quality and quantity of your ideas, became a prolific creator, you better prepare to take on each day, get your brain into overdrive mode, or even begin to dive into being creative. Join the class. Let's do it. 2. Day 1: rules and guidelines: You want to make your brain sweat, you want to come up with better ideas, you want to be a prolific creator, or maybe you don't even think you're creative yet? Doodling random words is one of the best exercises we can do to give our brain a workout. I'm going to take you through the basics and the rules today, and then tell you about how doodling random words everyday can rock your world. The basics of the random word doodle exercise is this. One, get a list of 10 random words. Two, pick one to doodle in 10-15 minutes. Three, Doodle it, and four, share it. Have you ever played a game with no rules? It's chaos. It's not fun and people get hurt. Often, everyone just stops playing. When you put rules in place the game gets fun, it's the same with creativity, blank canvases had been the bane of creatives for centuries. By setting up rules and structures, we give our brain a space in which to create and flourish. You can make your own rules, but I'd suggests following along with my rules for a few days at least. Rule number 1: no pencils. Pencils invite correction and perfection. This is an exercise, mistakes are encouraged. I like using a black ballpoint pen, it doesn't bleed. Two: work within a time limit. See, choose, doodle, and share your random words within 10-15 minutes. It's not about perfection, it's about creation. Action begets action, creation begets creation. Get it done, don't hesitate. Rule number 3: work small. The best for me is doodling in a small book. I like an A6 notebook because there's less space to try faux. It's less daunting, and I get much less of that blank canvas feeling, it's also easy to carry around. Rule 4: stick with your words. Once you've got 10 words, stick with them. You'll be tempted to skip to a bunch of nicer words but the point is to make your brain sweat. We do tend to put constraints on the brain yet it's enough to give the brain options. Not too many, not too few, just right. Rule number 5: always share. Whether good or bad, share it. To beat the fear of failure, you must learn to share whether you think it's good or bad, it's also a great way to document your progress. Rule 6: same time everyday. Do it everyday at the same time to create a routine, and your mind will prefer it and your best results will come from it. Rule number 7: do the easy bits first. Start by writing dates and the word, and then sign it. Does makes it easier to begin, you've already put pen to paper, you've committed. Even opening your book can feel like a good first step. Rule number 8, the final rule: have fun quickly. If it's not fun and it takes a lot of time the chances of you doing it decreases dramatically. You don't want it to become a toll or something that takes a while to get into, it's meant to kick-start your creative day. It's not about perfection, it's about creation and exercising your brain. Putting structures and boundaries in place leads to creating little masterpieces. Doodling in itself is amazing, but sometimes we have no clue what to doodle, so with this, you have 10 ideas to start with and a structure to create within. The pressure to come up with a starting idea is removed and the rules make you go. If you don't have a pen and paper, stop the video and grab them. You've got your pen and paper, nice. Here are your random words to choose from today: masai, lubricitate, gerres, odor, schnorrer, abjuration, gorget, isotopic, unamusing, moderated. See what makes you laugh or smile, and ask why it makes you laugh or smile, and then think of how to convey that to an audience, then doodle it. I give myself 10-15 minutes from seeing the words to sharing it. Stop the video now, doodle and resume the video when you're done. Okay, well done. You just did your first random word doodle. You haven't done so already, write the dates, the random word you doodled, and sign it. Then take a photo of it and post it to your Project Gallery. Stop the video and resume when you're done. Now for the big one or the hardest part, you need to share it on your social networks. I find Instagram and Facebook the best ones to share on. Mention me on Twitter or mention me on Instagram and hashtag it with random Word Doodle. Stop the video and resume when you're done. Okay, your first random word doodle is done and shared. You may stand up and celebrate, dance, high-five yourself, eat a chocolate. Maybe not eat the chocolate. With each video, I'll unpack specific benefits and methods of doodling random words before giving you some random words to doodle. I'd recommend watching one lesson a day rather than watching the next few videos all at once, this is so that you can get into routine. I'll see you tomorrow. 3. Day 2: the inner child: All righty. Welcome to Day 2: the inner child. Doodling random words may feel silly or stupid. You may feel like a child. You may feel the need to do something a little bit more adultish to get that brain in creative mode. That's often doing things that kids do is a key to creativity. Kids just create. They get messy, they make stuff up, they tell stories, they paths out, they have imaginary friends. Let's embrace the inner child, let's put down our adult problems, our adult pressures and let's just doodle, let's be silly, let's be free. Let's get something straight. Doodling isn't the same as drawing. When we doodle, we make things up, we create, we try things. We get what's in our mind onto paper, we just put pen to paper, and see what comes out. For many people, this is scary, not having a clear goal freaks them out. This is the challenge then, just create, do it. The words help, but it's up to you to decide what you're doodling exactly and how you're going to do it. Today's words are lupine, fewest, madbrained, defacement, doubles, socioeconomically, nonadsorbent, lubrification, transportation, and tool. Sometimes there are some normalish words, and sometimes there're some weird and wonderful words, whether they're real or not, means they're different. Today, the idea is to pick a word you think a kid would like to doodle, and then doodle it like a kid. Remember, 15 minutes max. Stop the video now and resume when you're done. Second day done. Well done. Now, share it. Post it on your project gallery and share it on your social networks. Your brain may continue to think of other things to doodle and it may ponder on the other words that you didn't doodle, but that's okay. Your brain is going to be an overdrive mode. The point is to get your brain working. It would be warm and ready to take on the day. Doodling is powerful. Now, go forth and be more childlike today. See you again tomorrow. 4. Day 3: routine: Day 3: Routine. Again, during random words like any creative workouts, is like sharpening an ax to fell a tree. In this case, your mind is the ax and your mental work for the day is the tree. It makes sense to sharpen your ax before you start chopping, and because it's an important part of the process, it makes sense to incorporate into your pre-work or pre-day routine. I like to do my random doodle, as I wake up. It gets me up, it kick-starts my day, for me it's a creative breakfast of champions. It also replaces checking e-mail or thumbing through my Facebook or Instagram feed. I start the day creating, rather than consuming. I start the day with fun and a small head of dopamine. Not knowing what my list of words will be, also brought some excitements as I get up, anticipating a creative challenge. I find getting into a teen of doodling daily gets me into a creative mood way quicker. I also wake up faster and waste less time in bed after my alarm clock goes off. Ideally, you want to give your brain a workout before you start your work day. But I find it helps in all areas of life, not just with work, and that's why doing it in the morning is best for me. So, in your project gallery, right down your ideal time for your daily workouts. Pause the video now and resume when you've written it down. Because of the sharing aspects of the random word doodling practice, what routine does is build a habit of creation and shipping. What's great is that you get to build the habit with a small amount of time and effort. Instilling discipline and routine into creative life, contrary to popular belief, does wonders for the creative soul and mind. Now let's get to doodling. Here are today's words; tremellaceae, trappist, brutal, satisfaction, misprision, watercress, oxycephaly, schmeer, delicious, comer. What is your brain envisioning when it sees the list of words? Which one is jumping out? Which one is screaming to be doodled? Don't stress of [inaudible]. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes you have an idea right away, sometimes it ignites an idea fire. Ask why it stands out and, try emphasize that in your drawing. Now, pause the video and resume when you're done. Third day done. Nice. So, post it on your project gallery, and share it on your social networks. Then have yourself a most brilliant day, you legend. 5. Day 4: mistakes and fun: Day 4, mistakes and fun. The reason you shouldn't use a pencil, is that doing a random words is not a piece of art. Sometimes you do create doodles you'll be proud of and sometimes you won't. It's not about perfection, it's about kick-starting the creative process, and that means coming to terms with making mistakes. Sometimes mistakes will lead to profound realizations, and sometimes they'll just make it easier to go with the flow. I encourage you to stop seeing mistakes as bad things, but rather as something that can fuel discovery, random creativity and fun. Perhaps, even start with mistake. Most children make mistakes, a lot of them, and they have fun, and a lot of it too. Most adults don't. Most adults are stressed out to bang rules and avoiding mistakes like the plague. It may be because most adults have been through school where they punish you for making mistakes or maybe because your job and society as a whole rewards compliance and punishes people for making mistakes. Or maybe that there is a lot of pressure on adults to perform in all areas of their lives. Kids don't have any pressure. They just do, they just create, they just have fun. A lot of adults don't even try anything new. Just in case they fail and they see deviations from the norm as mistakes. Well, you fail more because you do not try. If you fail and it was fun and if you learn something, then it's not failure at all, it's a step in your journey. Here are your random words for today, where you're allowed to try new things and where you're allowed to make mistakes. Argive, day, ancestry, crimson, disprove, traditional, nationale, flustered, churlish, azoturia. Try something a bit weird and wonderful with these words. Interpret them, don't take him literally. What else could it mean if they were in another situation? What plan words can you achieve? I'd like to see posting something different in your project gallery today, even if it looks like a dog's breakfast. Only draw the basic shape first and then add more detail. Add a landscape, and then if I have time add a bit of fluff and shading. It depends on your style though and what you're used to. But try different things. Very hostile and very aware of working. It's a playground antigen you're allowed to mess up. If you don't allow yourself to try different approaches and playtime, how the heck are you going to allow yourself different approaches in your work and in your life? Different approaches can lead to remarkable breakthroughs. It's doodle time. Oh yeah, day 4 done, and we're only getting started with the practice. Remember, going to gym for week 1, give you the body of a Greek god, and neither will do the random words after four days making the most creative person on planet Earth. But you're on your way. Well done. 6. Day 5: rejection, failure and sharing: Rejection, failure, and sharing. We as humans fear rejection and failure. We want to fit in. We want to be liked, but the only way to move forward is by trying new things and by sharing them, testing them, putting them to the test. Waiting for perfection is debilitating. Rather try, share and try again. Continue sharing will make you blind to the opinions of others, who bleed fear of failure and rejection out of you. It will invite constructive criticism and inspire others to do the same. If you don't face failure and rejection head on and put yourself out there, you can say goodbye to an interesting life. You'll always be a fitter-inner when the pressure to succeed and fit in disappears, your more likely to try new things. This leads to find different ideas and change and a great way to do this is to start with things that don't really matter if you mess up, like daily doodles. When I was sharing my doodles, my friends and family thought I was nuts on some occasions, but wildly brilliant on others. If I had stopped when people thought I was nuts, I would never have gotten to some of my brilliant pieces. Post your doodles on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, or create a blog and post in there. Share them with me and share them in your project gallery. I'd love to see your creations. Tag me on Instagram and on Twitter, and hashtag your posts with random word doodle. Stop the video now and share in your project gallery where you're sharing you doodles, resume when you done. Okay, nice. Thank you for sharing. I promise it'll get easier and easier. Here are today's words: inquisitory, mojarra, amelia, veisalgia, blennioid, persuasible, ypres, extended, rhadamanthus, granulocyte. Random words are not as any things. What I want you to do today is to find a word that you don't know. There is a few that I don't know obviously, research it. Learn a new word. Do a quick Wikipedia read up or look in the dictionary, or just google it, and then doodle something related to it. That's doodle time, so I stop the video and when you've done your doodle, resume the video. Great work, you're now halfway through the class and a few more things to learn. But today was a very important concept. Today of all days you've just got to share what you've just doodled. I'm looking forward to seeing them. 7. Day 6: the blank canvas: Day 6, the blank canvas, doom, doom, doom. That dreaded scenario, being given a blank canvas. What to do? Just start, yes, doodle, you can always start again. I mean, just start creating, just go, you'll know what you've done right and what you've done wrong. You'll know what you still need to do rather than keeping it in your head and trying to figure everything out from there. What doodling random words does, especially at a time pressure is get you started, it gets you going and it's much easier to change direction when you're moving. As soon as you put pen to paper, it's no longer a blank canvas. Even just drawing a circle or a squiggle or a few lines will help you get going. As humans, we're great at editing, filling in blanks and doing the best with what we've got. So put pen to paper and get something to work with, and if you want doodle more than one word or doodle the same word more than once. Doodling quickly and without much thought will make you way more spontaneous and way more likely to take risks, risks with your work, your life, and even your cooking because you realize that you can't change it at anytime. The worst is stewing over decision without knowing what it actually looks like. Try it, start, just begin, get going, and now, get going with these words, opalesce, semaphore, igigi, mezzo, insinuation, suborbital, Sydney, taxodium, doubled, parte. So try this today, just start with a line, a circle, a square or maybe some squiggles. I normally like making characters out of everything, so sometimes I start with eyes and a mouth. If you finish quickly today, just keep on doodling, make use of all the time you have. It's doodle time, so stop the video and resume when you've done doodling. Marvelous, well done on conquering the blank canvas. Now, shatter your creation and conquer your day. 8. Day 7: a stream of ideas: Day 7: A Stream of Ideas. We live in an idea-centric world, and sharpening your mind is a must. Not only does it help us to do our work better and faster, it helps us in every area about eyes, allowing us to become indelible assets wherever we are. It's better for you and the rest of humanity without creativity is growing fast and free. The quantity and quality of our work increases, as large as a whole become more interesting, and we can begin to help others. My brain is often sore after doodling. My days are always better because of it, and yet, we do so little to help it out. In fact, we often do things that make us lazy and flabby. When you stop creating and stop coming up with ideas or if you've never started, your stream of creativity dries up. What's lift goes stale. It festers, it rots. It's just no good. I like to view my daily random word doodles as the grand unclogging of the idea pipe. Each morning I get the crab pots, I start the machine, I make way for fresh ideas, I get closer to the brilliant idea, waiting in the idea line amongst all the average ideas. So don't be dismayed at the odd and maybe frequent bad idea or doodle that pops out onto the page. Rather revel in the knowledge that you're a step closer to better work, a better life, and a crazy cool day. Remember that some [inaudible] need more than just a quick clean. Some brains are overweight and very lazy. They probably haven't been used properly in years. It's like going to the gym. You can expect to be ripped with a toned and bronzed body after one day. Some thing's take time, and doodling daily will get you there. If you don't push through the bad days, you may never get to the good days. With that in mind, choose a words to unclog your stinky stream of ideas and creativity. Ordo, currente, ipecac, raffinose, sinistrality, mercy, pervicacity, unpresidential, jumble, cannery. What I want you to do today, is make up a meaning for a word you don't know and draw that. This approach is really fun and probably my favorite. It gets the lateral thinking part of the brain going. Its doodle time. Stop the video now and resume when you done doodling. [inaudible] done, dusted, unblocked. Now, share and have a glorious idea-centric day. 9. Day 8: sharpen your mind and solve your problems: Day 8. Sharpen your mind and solve your problems. Doodling. Imagine it could help you think clearer, work faster, be nicer, help other people and come up with solutions to life's gnarliest problems. Well sometimes it can. When we focus on something else, we let our subconscious get to work. Remember that time you woke up in the middle of the night with a solution to your problem, that's your subconscious, and it's really good at doing things behind the scenes. It's a fine piece of work. Focusing on doodling for 15 or so minutes, is a great way to hand things over to our subconscious. Our big squishy gray thing is the most powerful tool we have, and when we let it get to work, it seldom lets us down. When we start putting random things into our minds, our brains incorporate those things with current events and problems and sometimes we see some amazing outcomes. Sometimes not. It helps the brain think differently and laterally, not how we've consciously been thinking. Another great thing about doodling is that it helps you articulate what your brain has been juggling around for a while. It gets something visual out into the world. The amount of times I've solved problems by doodling or drawing something is overwhelming. It's like everything becomes crystal clear, all of a sudden. So onto our words for the day, they're a bit different and I think we're going to have some fun here. The words are: angiopathy arcanum, arterial desuatude, elettaria sium, expensive colorful, humeri condescending, feasting informity, amniotic conjuring, meticulously rusticate, staggers cetorhinus, baygall roccella. The double-barreless of these words often gem two unrelated things together with great results. They give our brains a bit more to chew on and they make you laugh more. The combinations help me think laterally. Go wild on the double-barrel approach today, and if you want, create a conversation Starter, create something that's a little bit more controversial, can be a social commentary or a political commentary or whatever you want, have fun. Okay. It's doodle time. I'll stopped the video and when you've done your doodle, share in your project gallery, share it on your social networks, and then resume when you're done. Okay. So you've done your first double-barreled day. Super. They're fun. Don't forget to share and send. I hope your brain is sweating and ready for smashing your day. 10. Day 9: becoming a prolific creator: Day 9: Becoming a prolific creator. Starting the day with a creation no matter how small is a creative win. Your brain flies off the gates on a role ready to gobble up the day's challenges, you'll start to love the feeling of getting through random word workouts. The more you create and the more you work your brain, the more you believe in yourself and appreciate how creative you are. You'll see that your creativity isn't a switch, it's a muscle. You'll understand that in the creativity and coming up with amazing ideas, it takes time. Only little by little, can you turn your brain into that bronzed and well-toned muscle. There will be highs and lows, I promise, but you'll see that the best way to create better is too create more and to create consistently. So keep on. You'll realize that you've got so much potential that you're capable of so much in that you're getting better and better at this creativity thing. Don't hold on to your ideas and creations and fear of never beating them. Keep them to see your progress, be inspired by looking back and seeing how you've changed and grown. All that you created is manure for future creations. You'll see that over a period of time, you can accomplish a lot. Even by spending 15 minutes every day doing something, it demonstrates how you can become better at anything. All it takes is time, practice, and consistency. Today, I've got more double-barrel words for you: Ruth batfish, materialization doorbell, trenches rwanda or wanda, pepper and salt bridgehead, overhasty alphabetical, saponification anthracitic, uninominal sundrops, forearm violent, sirloin honeytongued, sapphism peal. What I want you to do today is think of stories and think of people. What do the words lead you to thinking about, who are the characters, what strange land are they in, what happens there? Doodle less, don't be precious. Doodle rather than think. It's doodle time. Stop the video and resume when you've done doodling. All right, done. Remember, share them in your project gallery, and your social networks. Also, check out some other students doodles and look out for the random word doodle hashtag on Twitter and Instagram. 11. Day 10: forth and onwards!: Day ten, 4th and onwards. This particular creative work out is something you can do for the rest of your life or something you may want to do for a week or a month or maybe a hundred days. It's one of many ways to give your brain a creative workouts. What I need to emphasize is that it's your creative workouts. You need to feel your brain sweating and you need to be having fun. I've transitioned onto different forms of creative workouts, but this is still one of my favorites. One that I'll come back to again and again. You must gauge for yourself how long to continue the discipline and practice of doodling daily random words. If it feels like a troll and you're not having any fun, it's probably time to change it up and do something that is fun and is exciting. The purpose is to work your creative muscle, which doodling and thinking and oppression do really well. Here are a few extensions of the daily random word doodle you may want to try. Pick a variation today and give it a go. Number one, post your doodle on social media without telling anyone what the word is and ask what people think it is. This is a great conversation starter. Two, doodle all ten for an Uber workout. Three, doodle the same word, ten different ways. Four, write stories on the word. I do a lot of writing when it comes to creative work outs and I love stories, so this is a great creative work out for me. Five, write a story that contains all ten words.The next one, try using the word or all the words during your day. Another way is try limiting your word options to five or two or even one word. You can do this either by limiting yourself to the top five of the list or the bottom five, or visit this URL and customize the number of words that I'll put. Then next, try finding words in a different language. It's amazing what your brain things over this approach. Another option is setting a very short time limits. Two minutes can have some great results. Another one is try doodling on a phone or tablet. I know you can easily undo, much like a pencil, but it allows you to create quickly without cutting down trees and without carrying another something with you. Then the final one that I have to offer is try doodling for a long time, for 30 minutes, an hour and listen to something while you do it, pick a topic, pick a word, and just see what comes out. With that in mind, choose a variation to your normal approach today and try it out on one of these words: jugular, underexposure, sardonic, proclamation, avatar, aeronautics, procaine, matter-of-fact, butterbur, instructions. If you can try come up with something that will get people talking, have fun, do a social or political commentary again, controversy is always really cool. Be a kid, mess up, have fun do it if you want. Just try something different today. Try a variation on the norm. It's really up to you. It's doodle time. I'll stop the video now and resume when you're done doodling and don't forget to share. Day ten done, you are champion, july end. Okay double high-five yourself, dance, play the air guitar well done. I'm super excited for you. Now keep up the creative exercises and make sure you share your last doodle and all the ones before it and what you did to vary it up in your project gallery and share it on your social media. Tag me, hashtag it, you're a flipping legend. 12. The end!: Well, that's the end of the class. I hope you've learned a lot and are starting to benefit from doodling random words everyday. I found that the best creative and mentor results come from doodling daily for 30 days or more. Doing it for over 100 days was the ultimate for me. It was really, really fun. I'm excited to see your doodles on the project gallery. Also, take a look what other students have done, comment on them, and have fun. Now that the videos have come to an end, you may be wondering where the heck to get random words from. Well, I've got you covered there. Visit this URL for daily and unique random words. It includes double-barreled words as well. Subscribe to the random word emailer to get your daily dose of words delivered right through your inbox. Visit this URL to get your hands on the doodling random words book. Because you took this class, you get 50 percent off. The book includes 150 random doodles that I did and the information on this class as well as personal explanations and revelations. If you'd like to keep in touch with me, get on my mailing list and follow me on Twitter and Instagram. Thank you for taking the class. Share it with your friends and family. Please, let me know how you found the process and how it helped you. Remember, #random word Doodle. You rock. You're a legend, and believe me, you are creative. Just keep going. Okay, bye for now.