the challenge
Just in case you are following this open journal and wondering how I pick the Prism and the Seed every day, the answer is simple: it’s not me who pick them. I draw the Prism and the Seed (or Seeds) from the combinations generated by the Master Your Creativity channel. In other words, I am surprised by (and sometimes totally unprepared for) the challenge I am about to play with.
So, when I saw the Building with Blocks Prism I smiled. It’s been a while since I played with Lego blocks. Luckily, we are not in a shortage of Lego, but I had to postpone playing with the Prism until I got back home. Which gave me some time to think about the Seed I got together with the Prism: the Zoom Seed.
my insight
The first thing I thought about when I considered what to build from the Lego bricks was a large scale… Lego brick — like what you would see when you zoom in and look at a brick closely.
To be honest, I thought this will take about two minutes to build. But when I started, I realized there are some subtle details I should notice. The most obvious one was the scale. I wanted the model to be more or less with the right proportions, and somehow this was not trivial to achieve.
reflection
The ultimate goal of a Prism like Building with Bricks is to play — to do something we don’t do every day and experience it (and the world) like kids do.
Play is essential to creativity and unfortunately many of us are not spending enough time playing. That is one reason why building Habit Zero is so important — first and foremost it gives us the space to play on a daily basis.
But playing with the Lego bricks today was more than just a playful experience. It was an unexpected engineering experience. I didn’t plan to think about scale and proportions — another thing I rarely do. So, in fact I experienced two things that broke my routine. And breaking routine is another well-established creativity booster.
mental notes
- Plan to play.
- Plan to break routine.
- Use any opportunity to play and break routine, whether or not you planned it.
now it is your turn… be creative!