Be Creative Follow-Up

I'm periodically checking back in with some folks who have completed their 365 projects...

Ines Häufler in Vienna, Austria completed her yearlong Be Creative project on December 31, 2011...

What are the biggest lessons/skills you learned from doing your project? I learned a lot about myself during this project, here are just two of the most important points:

1. I was very worried at the beginning that I would not have enough time for this project between my work and my social life. Turns out: it was no problem at all. If I am really passionate about something I find time to do it. Simple as that, but as a workaholic person this came as a huge surprise for me.
2. I have never been to art school. And I am a perfectionist. That seem to be quite an awful match for a project that is all about drawing, painting and a lot of other creative skills. But it turned out that this project was not about being perfect at drawing or painting. It was simply about the creative process and the fun of trying something new. And guess what? No one complained about a line that was painted the "wrong" way. It was all in my head, and in the end the process was much more important than a perfect outcome.

In what ways did the project change your life? For the first time in almost eight years (this is how long I work as a freelance script consultant now) I had no sign of burnout due to being overworked. In fact I had the feeling that that I worked less, which is not true if I look on the number of film projects I did this year. I think the reason is that I finally had something equally important to me - my life did not only consist of work anymore. I felt a shift in priorities, but without losing passion for my work nor for my creativity projects. 

Now what? I have already started a new project called "Be Creative 52", which is a weekly creativity project. I hope that I can do some projects that were too big for my daily project, and to have time for learning new skills and develop some concepts more thoroughly. Also I hope I can do more collaborations with my creative friends, which often need more than 24hours to prepare. It is still hard for me to change the rhythm from daily to weekly projects, but I am very happy that I did not stop being creative on the 31st of December.

Read her original 365 interview HERE.

See all of her past & current Be Creative projects HERE.