July 28

Hunting Trails

Our neighbors have an outdoor cat named Leo. Several times a day, Leo will stop by my home office window to say hello.

Well, at least that’s what I like to think she’s doing. In reality, Leo is on the hunt. She loves to explore the bushes in front of our home for small game. In fact, Leo has a defined hunting trail that she follows each day that runs in front of our house, around the side, through the neighbor’s landscaping and around their house, past the bushes in our side yard, back to the firewood pile, then finally into the woods where I assume her trail continues.

Leo follows this path because it’s been a successful one for her. She routinely finds what she’s looking for. She doesn’t invent a new path every day, hoping that somehow she will discover a chipmunk.

As creative pros, we can learn a lot from Leo’s habits. We need to establish well-defined hunting trails that help us spark new ideas. This means having sources that we routinely check for insights, habits, and rit- uals that help us review our notes and make new connections, or places we go that introduce new and valuable stimuli.

As you consider your life and work patterns, where are your hunting trails? Which of them can you build into your life to help you have ideas more consistently? Be like Leo—hunt where there is likely to be game.

Plant yourself in the places where great ideas are likely to occur.

QUESTION

What sources of inspiration, habits, or places tend to spark new ideas for you? How can you build them into your routine each day?