Common Shapes

Creative Ideation Portal Day 2: Moving the Needle Forward

• Cody Cook-Parrott • Season 4 • Episode 25

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Today we continue our mini series going over the free Creative Ideation Portal - a guide to help you vision your projects and share them with the world.

Tune in to ‘Day 1 : Our Many Visions’ first. Then join me for today’s exploration of how to make progress (even when you don’t want to work).

And if you’re listening when this comes out, join me and Amelia Hruby at the FREE COMMON SHAPES PARTY on Saturday, September 20th. RSVP here.

Mentioned in the episode:

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Thanks to Softer Sounds, Saltbreaker, and Jess Herrera for their help making this podcast. If you'd like to support the show, please send it to a friend, leave a 5-star rating & review, and download the Creative Ideation Portal.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about systems and practices for creative work. I'm your host Cody Cook-Parrott and today we are talking about the Creative Ideation Portal. The Creative Ideation Portal is a free three day guide that over 4,000 people have downloaded. It is a guide that I created to pair with this podcast when the podcast started just over two years ago and I wanted to return to it two years later and just see what emerged in my own creative practice and sort of walk us through it again. So for those of you who walked through it two years ago, I thought let's go through it again. For those of you who are new to it, I thought let's walk through it for the first time. And I updated the Notion Document a little bit to have some new flair. If you're listening live when this episode comes out this Saturday, September 20th at 12:00pm EST, myself and Amelia Hruby, the host of off the Grid, are hosting a welcome Back to Common Shapes party on Zoom.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:01:25]:
It's totally free and we will go through the Creative Ideation Portal live in the Zoom party as well as do a Q and A about podcasting and give away some really fun prizes. So it's fun way to get to know me and Amelia as podcast hosts as well as get to know other listeners and win some free things and go through the Creative Ideation Portal in that way. So we'd love to see you on Saturday. And let's get into day two. So if you haven't already, head to the show notes or codycookparrot.com, click podcast and then you can download the Creative Ideation Portal again. It's totally free and we'll click through to day two. Moving the Needle Forward. So yesterday we identified our top three projects that we want to keep in mind this week and we picked one to focus on for today and tomorrow.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:02:26]:
So if you haven't already, pick a way that you will devote yourself to moving this project forward for the next two days. Habit tracking wise, your best bet is to do it now while you are looking at this email or at this notion document, even if it is for 10 minutes. Today is about inviting inspiration and ancestors into your process. Sitting down to work even when you don't want to, and doing one thing to move your project forward. So I want to make a little note on chronic illness. Living with a disability, living with chronic pain. I think language like sitting down to work even when you don't want to can be a little bit hard. I live with chronic pain Myself And I also want us to like stick with it a little bit and like see what kind of comes through and what happens.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:03:21]:
I think there's something really beautiful and really important about giving ourselves full permission to like rest and listen to the body and listen to the mind when it's like time to shut it all down and not push ourselves. And I find it like really interesting to do things when we don't want to. I think there's something else in there. I had a, a 12 step sponsor once say don't wait to want to. And that really helped me with things like my taxes. Like if I wait to want to do my taxes, I. I won't be doing them. So that's more what I mean than like push through a chronic health issue to do your work.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:04:09]:
So I just want to be clear about that. A side note that I write in the Creative Ideation Portal, but I would like to expand on here is I think you're awesome and so is your project. So I know I might not actually know you and I can't be totally psychic right now, but I have heard so many people tell me what they are working on and what they have put through the Creative Ideation Portal. And it is magic. Like, it's so amazing to me what people have made and put out into the world because they actually took the time to set the timer, to build the spiritual committee of creation, to make a project outline, to look at the why and to like put their work into the world. So I see you, I believe in you. You are magic. You are stardust.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:05:12]:
Let's go. So step one, I want you to open a fresh Google Doc folder, Notion database, or anything in the digital realm you like to use to plan out projects. Now, in the new and improved addition to the portal, I have made this for you. So if you scroll down, you can see this database that has the spiritual committee of creation, your project outline, and the service of this. Each of these you can click open and when you open it, you will be able to see this in your own notion. So if you haven't yet, this whole portal can be duplicated into your notion so that you can edit it. So you don't need to learn anything too fancy. You'll just want to click duplicate and then duplicate it into your notion account where you will be able to edit the entire document and it is yours to keep and edit as you would like.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:06:10]:
And again, if you are just wanting to look at this in a browser and not use notion, open a fresh Google Doc or Anything in the digital realm that you like to plan out your projects. I know people love Obsidian Asana. So many different places. So for my Evergreen course, I would probably make a folder in Google Drive and name it New Class. Or I might in Notion make a new folder and name it Evergreen Course. So then I will open up three separate Google Docs within the folder and name them those three things. So again, I have them here in the Notion portal for you. And then in step two, you're going to open up each page.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:06:54]:
So you'll open up the spiritual committee of Creation page. And I want you to take this time to write out who is on your team and why. So I call in chosen ancestors of writers, queers and soberkin, as well as blood relatives who are no longer on earth. You could also list living archetypes to be a part of your committee. So this exercise is to help you remember that while creation is often a solitary act, we have a whole host of help that we can call on beyond this realm. Okay, so if you're like, Cody, I'm not a new age freak. How does this have anything to do with getting shit done? Trust me, when you're blocked and all your little productivity hacks don't work, you might want to try God and dead people. And if this is still too spooky, just make a list of people who inspire you to call on their energy.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:07:44]:
So when I say like living archetypes to be part of your committee, you've probably heard me say this before, but I like to explain that myself as a mix of Ms. Frizzle, Carrie Bradshaw, and Clarissa, Darling of Clarissa explains it all. And it's like, those are my three sort of like archetypes, energy forms that like, I am like a mix of them. It's like I'm kind of like a weird art teacher who also has an advice column and is like sitting at my computer waiting for the local lesbian to climb up a ladder and tell me to hang out. So that's kind of the energy of this step. So who is on my spiritual creative committee? This is a list of artists and writers who inspire my own creative practice. So I have Octavia Butler, Joan Didion, Zona Gale, James Baldwin, Marty Mann, and Atel Adnan. Those are just some of my favorite writers, authors.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:08:50]:
Before, when I was working on this, I was working on my book. So I think I was really like, deep, deep in like, writers who are like, really bringing me forth in, like, writing. So those were who I picked. So anyone on your spiritual creative committee. So who is here and gone. Mine all happen to be people who are no longer with us, but they can be whoever is just on your spiritual creative committee. And then we move into our ancestral energy committee. So for me, I picked my four grandparents and my great aunt Grace.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:09:27]:
Grace and all of those people have also left the Earth realm. And they were also people I didn't really know. So I didn't ever know my great aunt Grace. I never knew my grandmother Marlis. My grandfather Mortimer died when I was three. My grandmother Alice died when I was nine. And then my grandfather Eldon died when I was in my late 20s. But we were never particularly close, so I sort of missed out on the, like, grandparent elders energy in a lot of ways.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:09:55]:
It wasn't something that was, like, deeply embedded into my life, grow, growing up. So I call on it, though. I can still call on it. I can still call it in into my creative process and get guidance through the other things. So like Marlis, my grandmother, my dad's mother, I get incredible guidance from her through quilt making, textiles, knitting, holding the family through warm things and the legacy of being a teacher and weaving in humor, that was a huge part of her life. So even though we never met, I get to bring in that lineage into my practice. So feel free to read through mine and think about that with yours. And then we have our archetypal committee.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:10:39]:
So here you can also make a list of living artists, activists, writers and humans who inspire you or who you look up to in their own practice. So again, that could be living people. Those could be your friends. I think about my friends like Tamara, Santi, Banyas, Lucasa, Bramfin, Verissimo. Like, those are two of my very dear friends. Those are people I really look to when there's crisis, when there's something big happens in the world. I look their direction to be like, how are they responding? How are they moving through the world? What are they calling us to turn our focus towards? And then how can I support their actions and the actions that they are leading us towards? Right? Like, how can I bring in that same thoughtfulness and rigor into the work? So think of those, like, living calm rads as well that you want to be in alignment with. All right, so step three, if you are writing a book, you can also check out my little exercise, the Bones of Book Writing.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:11:46]:
So that's just another resource that I have. But now we're going to open up the project outline. So today we begin outlining the project, the skeleton, the foundation, the bones of what is There and what you want to discover. So here are a few different sections to your project outline you can write out and begin to explore. So you're going to want to think of like a title, a subtitle, how often does it come out? If it's a podcast or a newsletter, and then sections of the project. So this could be chapters of a book, segments in a podcast, modules in a class. So I want you to take 10 to 25 minutes and just explore. I want you to write out lists of what the titles could be, pick a section and work on it for a while and do this even when you don't want to.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:12:31]:
This is the part where I. If you're like, Cody, I don't want to map on the sections. Like, I think just do it. Okay. So, yeah, I find that one of the hardest parts of my practice is I will wait to want to. But the muse doesn't actually come from me doing nothing. It shows up when I sit down to tend to the garden of my creations. I am then rewarded.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:12:53]:
Let yourself be rewarded by the discipline of sitting down to do the work. So that is my challenge to you is where is it time to just sit down and do the work a little bit. So take some time and start to outline your project. And you can also use the the project database as well. So work on a project outline or open up the project database to start dumping in the different projects if you want to use that foreign. So step four, we're going to open up the service of this project page and just journal for 10 minutes how this project could be of service, preparing for tomorrow's lesson. So I'm not going to give you too much instruction on this. I just want you to journal for 10 minutes.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:13:43]:
How is this project of service? What is the service of this project to the world, to the people, to you? We talked about this a little bit in day one, but I want you to go further in day two. And then in step five, I want you to make a list of three things to do in the next 24 hours to move your project forward. This is what counts. This is how we move the needle forward. So these could be emailing a potential collaborator, spending another hour working on the project, calling someone to talk about what you're stuck on. If there are any tasks you are avoiding to move forward, do that task. Free yourself and allow this new project, business or hobby to flow out of you. So again, day two, move the needle forward.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:14:33]:
Today is about inviting inspiration ancestors into your process. Sitting down to do the work even when you don't want to, doing one thing to move your project forward. So the Spiritual Committee of Creation, a project outline and the service of this project. You have all three documents already made for you. I'm making it easy people. Set your timers, go through the steps and get ready for day three. Art as Service I will see you back on the mic tomorrow. If you're listening to this in the future, feel free to just jump to the next lesson or wait till the next day if you want to pace yourself again.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:15:11]:
If you're listening live, I would love to see you Saturday, September 20th at noon. You can register for that in the show Notes. We'll also make sure that the link is in the Creative Ideation portal so you can just register there. It's free. Hang out with me and Amelia Hrube of Off the Grid. We'd love to see you. We'll go through the Creative Ideation Portal live in the session as well as do Q and A. Give away some fun free prizes.

Cody Cook-Parrott [00:15:39]:
Thank you to everyone who makes this podcast possible to Softer Sounds Studio for production, Salt Breaker for our music and Jess Herrera for for podcast art. If you loved this episode, I'd love for you to share it on social media, link it in your newsletter, text it to a friend, leave us a review, or give it a five star rating. Thank you for tuning in and listening to Common Shapes.