Reading stimulates thought process

Reading mainly stimulates an individual’s thought process, making one think harder while sharpening comprehension and memorizing skill. While reading we try to guess about the content of next pages and understand the situation better, at the same time recalling characters and storyline. Reading also strengthens an individual’s concentration level.

Builds vocabulary skill

Voracious reading exposes a reader to numerous new words, phrases. Such exposure definitely sharpens vocabulary skill and develops command over the language.

Expertise on a subject

If you want to master a subject, don’t forget to read it first. Reading will build your knowledge and who knows tomorrow you may have your own book. Suppose you want to gain optimum knowledge in Anthropology, start reading books of the same subject. Soon, in 5 years time you will be an international Anthropology expert. If you are a research aspirant, it will help you too.

Reading helps writing

You can pen down great things only when you are filled with great knowledge from within. We are like a pitcher, always thirsty for knowledge. Fill yourself with knowledge, read voraciously; then only you can write great things tomorrow.

Travel world through books

If it’s not possible for you to travel the whole world on your feet, book is the best choice. If past enchants you, different cultures and places haunt you; why not grab a book and see the world through pages? Even while seeing the world on foot, you may miss many things and won’t come to know historical detail, but reading won’t disappoint you. Quench your thirst through books.

Keep it simple and relevant

Simplicity is the key to success of web writing. Unless your message is well comprehended by all, the whole purpose of writing will go in vain. Keep it simple yet strong, crisp yet impactful, creative yet relevant. No one is interested in reading pages after pages, so keep it short but powerful, including all important things you wish to communicate to your visitor. You can’t beat around the bushes and for the sake of creativity commit the mistake of losing focus. Stick to your topic, stay relevant.

It should be informative

Often web contents are seen repetitive, vague, and lacking concrete substance. But if a website is not informative, doesn’t convey anything meaningful even a good style of writing can go wasted. So, know what all to be included, what are the important points and include them all. Don’t beat around the bushes.

Make it tightly knit and avoid disconnection

Structure your write up properly, in a smooth flow moving from one thought to another. One sentence should be well connected to the next, but shouldn’t convey the same thing. A well-knit writing with a smooth flow will make reading pleasurable and beneficial for the reader. There shouldn’t be any disconnection. Many writers often use too many conjunctions to make the write up well-knit. But conjunctions show writer’s weakness. Instead, you may change paragraphs to convey different things.

Next time keep these few simple tips in mind while writing web content. It will be easier for you to craft captivating and effective web content.

Here are some tips to evolve as a better creative person.

A pair of thirsty eyes

Change your vision, change the way you look at things with a pinch of newness. Get rid of pre-occupied ideas and notions. Look at things like a child with sheer enthusiasm, curiosity and eagerness. It will definitely help you to overcome your bias, see the world from a new perspective and develop a creative mind.

Stay active

Stay fit and active. An active mind only nurtures creativity and helps creative ideas to evolve. Exercise daily, fresh ideas can evolve anytime. Physical activities will also sharpen your mental acuteness.

Break the rule

A creative person can never be average and conventional. Challenge rules, conventions. Don’t make your life as like others. Try to be different. Break the monotony. If you normally go to movie every weekend, this weekend indulge yourself with a puppet show. Challenge your own understanding and see how you perform. Variety is the key to creativity. Don’t restrict your mind. Explore the world. Don’t follow route, create your own route.

Question everything

A curious mind always learns new things, cultivate creative ideas and innovate new things. Question everything around you. The answer may lead to some creative ideas.

Study things, read more

Learning is the key to creativity. Experience of life is enriched with studying the surrounding, studying art and music, voracious reading etc. It will expand your horizon and help you to evolve as a better creative person. Study people around you, their lifestyle, places, nature. It will give you many ideas. Reading will sharpen your vocabulary power and command on language. It will also help you to come across with better ideas.

Just go with the flow. Nurture your creative mind.

But how to keep the creative juice flowing? Here are tips below regarding where to get creative ideas from.

Choose an area of interest

Choose an area of work, which interests you. Don’t do what everyone is doing and is counted as trendy, or what brings money. Follow your heart and aptitude. You should do things which interest you, what you are passionate about. Then work will never seem like burden, it will be enjoyable. Within your passionate field further choose an area which you are good at. Like some artists are best in oil painting. So they excel if they go to the same field.

Draw inspiration from a source

You should be inspired by someone, to get going. It could be anyone – a mentor whose work inspire you or a famous person, a renowned global personality whose creations and success have always driven you crazy. Don’t imitate them blindly, get inspired by them.

Challenge yourself, do something new

Don’t end up doing what the rests have been doing. Challenge yourself constantly. Even if it seems impossible and full of hurdles in reality, if you think your idea is good and you can do it, go for it. It may take time and patience, but all great things come after long wait. Don’t be nailed down by failures. Failures will take you to success. If breaking rules help in procuring something good, let it happen.

Write down your ideas

Whenever something unique comes to your mind, pen it down and keep safely. It will keep you involved, focused, motivated and will help you to measure your progress.

Consult outer sources

Stay humble and open to new ideas. Don’t think you know it all. Tomorrow while talking to someone you come up with a better idea than before. So keep learning from others, books, films, articles – whatever is relevant for you. Even in an informal chat over coffee, great ideas may spring up.

Stay creative!

We notice only few advertisements because we relate to only a few products somehow, or some of the advertisements are done creatively, or they have some unique placement innovation. Apart from classified advertisements, rest of the display advertisements have started showing less of overwhelming response in comparison to others forms of media of advertising. Mostly they go unnoticed. Have you ever thought despite of being most credible medium, offering benefits like refer back value why this medium is not doing well in terms of advertising?

Too many advertisements in newspaper, that’s advertisement clutter, may be one big hindrance on the way of its success. Too many advertisements make us feel irritated and we don’t bother to see each of them. So the message goes unnoticed.

News paper advertising has also become quite expensive. To save expense nowadays people advertise within a small space and compromise with the creativity, making mandatory things like logo, brand name, package shot prominent within the small space. So dearth of creative advertisements has made it quite obvious for the people to ignore them.

In a busy day an average person spends around 20 minutes in scanning the newspaper. In that short time grabbing attention of the person towards the desired message is really challenging act. And also daily news papers stay with us just for a day. Relative short life span of the medium is disadvantageous for the advertisers. So multiple insertions are required to get noticed.

Newspapers generally do not use high end quality of paper, which limit’s the production quality. Poor production kills the creativity.

News paper is not a target market customized medium, rather it’s a mass medium, it talks to all. Several times it may reach all unwanted people, who may never buy your product or service and you may miss out your target market. It always has the risk of reaching out the wrong people.

With growing popularity of internet lot of people have switched over to e-paper from newspaper in hand. Online version of publication may not carry all pages bearing advertisements. And in this case print ad turns into online ad, which is mostly ignored and not remembered.

Hopefully some innovation will change the fortune of news paper advertisements.

-Make sure that you have a good schedule, and that you stick to that schedule.  If you’re a writer that works from home, the biggest part of making that transition is remembering that this is still a serious job.  Just because your environment is the comfort of your own home, doesn’t mean you can slack.  Schedule out your projects and stick to them, in the long run this will help you feel like you’re in more of a professional environment, and you’ll be more apt to get your writing done.

-Know when you need to take a break.  Because writing is so creative, sometimes you need to take a break to keep the creative juices flowing.  Give yourself 5-10 minutes when you’re feeling especially unproductive.  Take a moment, go outside and get some fresh air, then go back to work.  You should feel calmer, and more willing to resume normal duties.

-Don’t get down on yourself, or bully yourself into writing.  Everyone goes through phases where they don’t feel like writing.  You just have to stay confident and positive, and keep plugging away.  The feeling will pass, but don’t give in and stop working because of it.

-Finally, try making a reward system for yourself.  If you have a lot of articles to do, map out the articles and make up rewards for completing a certain amount.  Like if you desperately want to take a break, set a goal to finish four of those articles before you do.  If you’re hungry and really want to eat lunch, make sure you complete another two beforehand.

Well, being as active as possible is a start.  Having no internet identity can be just as bad as having a negative one.  Employers want to see positive extra curricular activity, and work history.  These are cues to what sort of employee you are, so make sure an interviewer can easily find them.  Be active in professional forums, maintain a personal blog, and keep a professionally oriented social networking page.

Make sure that everything you put out there puts you into a positive light.  Anything you want an employer to see needs to be about creativity, positive, and showcasing commitment and hard work.  Don’t bash old employers and bosses, because that’s a big turn off to anybody interested in you.  In fact, don’t bash anybody, or have anything negative on a page that’s intended to be professional, because it will only show you in a bad light.

But don’t forget, what you put out there is only half the battle.  You need to search your name to see what other people are putting out in relation to your name.  Do a search, see if anything comes up from past employers, or if anything you wouldn’t want a potential employer to see pops up.  Takes steps to correct these, or have them removed from search engines if you’re uncomfortable with the material.  Most of the time places like Google are more than willing to work with you, so long as you’re polite and patient.

So obviously the first step to earning more money from your writing, is to write more.  Writing as much as possible is the truest way to get better, and to create enough content .  By writing more, you create more opportunities for yourself, by being more available.  The presence you make online is the most important factor at being a successful writer.  The more renown you have, more jobs will become available, and they will pay higher rates.

Take all the opportunities you can to read others writing.  Especially writing that’s in the same field as yours.  See what the competition is doing, and where the trends are in writing.  By participating in these, and using them to influence your topics and style, you stay current.  Staying current in an ever changing medium on the internet, is paramount. Especially if you hope to be successful.

Write outside your comfort zone to develop your skills.  By writing about topics, or in styles that you’re not familiar with, you grow as a writer.  This way you can use what you’ve learned in your own work.  You’ll be a more solid writer because of it, and your writing will reflect that.  There’s really no better way to find your own unique voice than to attempt everything you can.

Invest in yourself.  This means time and money.  Have faith that your hard work will pay off.  That’s why you are a writer, because you know where it can take you if you work hard.  So keep on going to that end.  You never know how far the road will take you, if you’re too afraid to invest the necessary efforts to get there.

Creativity plays an important role in web designing and so does intuition.

What did I say…intuition?

How could intuition possibly be related to web designing?

Role of Intuition

Well, do not get bogged down by thinking that intuition does not matter in the process of designing a website because it does and it does a great deal. Talk of anything creative and you are talking of intuition playing a role in how it comes about. In terms of web designing, intuition play a significant part when:

• We chart out navigation map for the website. How users move from one place cannot be known by any other mean if not intuitively. You cannot explain how you know that the website visitors will go to c from a then come back to b then again to a then d and so on and so forth. An experienced web designer just knows how a visitor is going to interact with the website.
• We chose the color scheme. Indeed color theories are there to assist us on which color will look good with which color and which will look awful. But you cannot explain why a certain type of website works well with certain color scheme, while it fails when other color scheme is chosen. And why one color scheme works well with one type of website and does not work will with another kind of website.
• We decide the placement of elements in the website. There are many elements that are important for our website, but not all the elements will work at all places. Some elements work well when placed at the first position on above-the-fold while other works at eye-level. Can you explain why this subtle difference matter?

Can you help me find where else intuition plays an important role? Use the comment box and help me know more about this.

Start out simply with easy tactics, such as a casual day, allowing employees to actually think about their clothing choices, affording them the opportunity to dress however they want, as long as it’s still kept professional.  Seems like a simple tactic, but has been proven effective for many corporations.  Your team and you will feel better and more motivated if you are free to wear more comfortable clothing that you get to choose.

Any memos that you personally write down, try doing so in crayon every once in a while.  Sounds simple, but is proven to reconnect yourself to that inner child, sparking a new viewpoint and renewed energy and creativity towards the work you are doing.  Try this yourself, and suggest it to your team.  Sort of a silly idea, but that’s part of the fun, and bringing in fun helps keep morale up so you all stay motivated and positive while accomplishing your tasks.

Try having periods of time where you play music in the background, allowing your employees to relax and feel a bit more at home.  Keep the music at a low decibel, so as not to disturb the workplace to the point you can’t get any work done of course.  But even this simple change can make your team feel more at home, allowing them to relax and perform better.  Taking down that barrier of keeping too professional at work is key to getting that creativity to flow.

Keep magazines unrelated to work in employee areas.  This way on breaks and such, the employees are free to browse things outside of the work environment, keeping the brain working and churning on different topics all the time.  That keeps them awake, happy, and inspired.  Those sorts of employees are just the kind you want to get the most done, and they’ll do that work better and faster.

I am sure you’ve heard of de.li.cio.us. It redirects to delicious.com, but as a .us domain and social bookmarking site, I can’t help thinking that their creativity was first sparked from the lack of interesting domain names available. If you can take something short and to the point from your search on word navigator, your next step would be to check it’s availability. The following guidelines can speed up the process:

• Since there are 3,563 words that end in -us at the time of this posting, the easiest thing to do would be to copy and paste each list (by length) into a text document, which took me about 7 minutes. You probably won’t take as long, if you copy and paste only half of all the words.
• In the document, click Edit and Select All. Proceed to toggle the bullets off. Then use Ctrl+F and type us into the search box. Click on Find All. You will notice that the -us ending has been selected for all of the words. Now click on Replace All. Your document should no longer have any of the -us endings.
• If your document is 75 pages long, perhaps it would be best to weed out words before continuing. Or you can copy and paste the words in only chunks (maybe 30 words) at a time into this domain name regristration search (clicking on the us extension, while unselecting the com extension), so that your internet browser doesn’t freeze up during the process.

Of the first thirty words I submitted, 14 were available. Here is my example chunk with unavailable .us domain names crossed out:

fagaceo.us                          furacio.us
felonio.us                          furfuro.us
feracio.us                          garrulo.us
ferocio.us                          gingero.us
fervoro.us                          glaireo.us
filaceo.us                          glamoro.us
flavoro.us                          globulo.us
fractio.us                          gluteno.us
frivolo.us                          glutino.us
froufro.us                          granulo.us
fugacio.us                          gummato.us
fulgoro.us                          gumptio.us
fulguro.us                          hazardo.us
fulmino.us                          hilario.us

Honestly, if I were a business looking for an attractive and modern domain name, gumptio.us would be my first pick! If you don’t know, gumptious is an adjective that means enterprising (synonym to energetic, industrious, up-and-coming). Or how about furacio.us? Hurry up, domain names like these will soon fill up the Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0) scene! If you really don’t care what the domain name is and just want to set something up quickly, your best bet would be to submit one or two words into a domain name suggestion tool.