I suppose I’d have to say I’m on the fence when it comes to how I feel about inspirational sayings or mantras; they might work, if one used them enough, but it seems a lot of the inspirational stuff floating around out there today is questionable to say the least. But I was intrigued by [...]
I suppose I’d have to say I’m on the fence when it comes to how I feel about inspirational sayings or mantras; they might work, if one used them enough, but it seems a lot of the inspirational stuff floating around out there today is questionable to say the least. But I was intrigued by the Creative Whack Pack app based on Roger von Oech’s popular creativity card deck of the same name.
The Creative Whack Pack is filled with around 84 creative, mind-jogging sayings designed to help you bust out some great new ideas or help remove any blockages to ideas you’ve been kicking around for a while. It’s like a quick creativity jump start. And these aren’t a collection of fluffy, power-of-positive-thinking quips either. That’s where I was pleasantly surprized; each whack has a simple high-impact message to ponder. Most are quite philosophical and have a tendency to make you go, ‘Hmmm’, or try to get you to slow down for a moment and take a few breaths. Stop and smell the roses so to speak. And many times, that’s just what you need to refresh your creative batteries.
When you open up the app you can either elect to get a random whack, which will be a random card and its accompanying story, or you can opt for a mini workshop on a variety of potential issues: build motivation, improve on an idea, make an action plan, find inner peace (yes, that’s really one of them), or how to really explain to your guy friends that you like Barry Manilow (that’s not one, but it should be) .
When you do a workshop and choose your issue or difficulty you get a series of four cards that the Creative Whack Pack picks for you from the philosophies of different personality archetypes like philosopher, or artist, or explorer, or sewage treatment operator. In that way it’s kind of similar to a tarot card reading (taken from a quote from Elle Magazine) for your creative mind, but without candles and mysterious artwork.
I can see this app being helpful at times. As a matter of fact, I just might play around with it some more, do a workshop or two and report back to you on whether it helped me or not. It’s $1.99 at the app store though, and there’s the rub. I’m not sure it’s worth two bucks, but then the original product is over 10 bucks on Amazon, and there is the possibility of updates to the app with new strategies and/or workshops. In fact, it looks as though they added some 20 new strategies in a recent update.
To conclude, Creative Whack Pack for the iPhone [iTunes link] is actually pretty interesting, and like I said, potentially useful. I’d say give it a look if your creative muscles have atrophied a bit and you find yourself struggling to produce.
Nikki Reed
Elisha Cuthbert
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