Keeping Your Creativity Alive While Travelling

Wondering how to stay creative while travelling? 

Well I’m about to blow your mind with some TRUTH, so slip into something comfortable (pj’s for the win) and let’s get into it!

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Travel makes you more creative.

Repeat it with me

Travel Makes You More Creative
TraVeL MaKeS YoU mOrE CrEaTiVe!

You might wanna go read my other post on 5 reasons why. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

What people actually worry about when travelling, is not how to stay creative on the road, but how to produce creative work on the road.

Because it’s overwhelming when you’re in a new place. There’s incredible art, and museums with mind boggling exhibits. There’s monuments and architecture that have the power to render you speechless. And then there’s the culture; the food, the music, and the people. 

There are so many shiny new things to do and – OOOH SQUIRREL! – and see. It’s easy to have the attention span of a gold fish be distracted from putting your freshly inspired creativity into practise.

And I – dear reader – am as guilty as my friend’s doggo that time she stole an entire cooked chook off the kitchen table.

So what do we do? We do.

Enter: my foolproof strategy for how to stay creative while travelling…and actually make stuff!

Keep a Travel Journal

Don’t get it twisted, this is not your Mumma’s travel journal (though that would be fun to read!). This is a completely customisable visual masterpiece that makes journalling way more fun. 

My travel journals look like something a 5-year-old scrapbooked whilst drunk. But I love it! 

It channels my creativity into something productive whilst recording details of my trip for later. If you’re like me and forget things easily, it’s a life saver.

What to put in Your Journal:

The idea is to make the humble travel journal your own, so have a play with filling one out and see what style you enjoy most.

• Doodles / Sketches
• Writing
• Hand Lettering
• Quotes
• Snippets of conversations you overhear
• Instax or Polaroid photos
• Stickers
• Ticket stubs, postcards and other paper ephemera.

What Items to use:

To make journalling easy in the moment, I always carry a small pencil case in my day bag.

• Bostik Glu Tape
• Crayola Supertips markers (these are like a “poor-man’s” Tombow marker)
• Washi tape
• Pens (regular for writing, artliner for outlining doodles)
• A pencil, eraser, sharpener

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Keeping this kind of eclectic travel journal is good because it can just as easily be done whilst people watching at a sidewalk cafe in Paris, as it can in a cozy pub in London on a rainy day.

In other words, anytime you’re sitting somewhere soaking up the atmosphere, and don’t feel like doing your ‘proper’ creative work. In addition, the journal provides a perfect prompt for that ‘proper’ work later on.

If you’re wondering how to stay creative while travelling? Start with this ^

Meet Up With Other Creatives

Another great way to stay creative while travelling is to meet up with other makers! Particularly locals.

I met up with a friend of a friend in Tokyo, who’s a photographer. We didn’t even go out shooting photos, we just hung out. But he introduced me to a side of the city I wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and gave me a chance to see some of his work and drink homemade umeshu.

Also, he gave me amazing photography tips and location ideas, and because of this I came away with a totally different perspective on Tokyo. Just by seeing it through the eyes of a local creative rather than a regular tourist.

How to Find Other Creatives:

• You might already know one! After a few trips abroad, your network becomes more global. So don’t be shy to hit up that London based graphic designer you met in Kyoto!
• The world is smaller than you think; ask around to see if your friends & acquaintances at home have a friend or family member in the city you’re visiting.
• Shoot someone a DM on Instagram. I’d only do this with  people who follow you, or that you follow and engage regularly with, so you ‘kind of’ know each other – keep it safe boo!
• Use Instagram Stories to tell your followers you’ll be in their city. I.e. “NYC 1st-5th Feb if anyone wants to go shoot some photos”
• Ask on a Facebook group that you’re an active member of. I hear stories all the time of members meeting up through the Girls Love Travel Facebook page.
• Do a free/cheap activity offered by your hostel.
  I.e. “Photography tour of Vancouver”.

Set Mini Projects

Stay creative on the road by setting mini projects.

If you’re not at the full time quit-their-job-to-travel-and-omg-the-wifi-isn’t-working level digital-nomad – and have a day job – you might not have a lot of time on your holiday for bigger projects.

Like developing your film or Super 8 footage, or writing a fully edited and SEO optimised blog post.

So to make the most of your travel-enhanced creativity, set mini projects instead. That way you can work on the bigger ones when you get home, all the while staying in the flow of productivity – and keeping your brand alive.

Mini-Projects That Could be Daily Tasks

• Making one short (15-30 sec) video for Instagram Stories or TikTok (TikTok is amazing on organic reach right now, so don’t @ me lol)
• Editing and posting at least one photo to social media
• Writing between three sentences-500 words
• Making a beat on on your phone, i.e. in GarageBand on iPhone
• Recording a short vocal melody/lyrics idea into voice recorder on your phone.
• Recording a public audio journal into voice recorder on your phone
• Posting one simple graphic, sketch, lettering piece to social media.

Or do any Creative Medium for a set Time

• For example; you could sketch for say – 15 mins – and when your time is up, stop. Even if you don’t finish. Do this every day of your trip.

We get better at creative work the same way we get fit, through consistency. If you go to the gym consistently to get fit, then you should ‘make’ consistently to get better at making. Doing these daily projects will help form those habits.

Channel Your Inner 5 Year Old

Story Time: NASA

Did you know NASA developed a special test to measure the creative potential of NASA’s rocket scientists and engineers? 

They also tested it in a school, and of 1600 children between ages 4-5, a whopping 98% were in the genius category of imagination!

But when they measured at age 10? It dropped to 30%.

At age 15? Just 12%.

And in adulthood? A super crappy 2%! 

Don’t worry though, Dr George Land – one of the two people behind the test – tells us we can get it back. He gives us what I call the 5 Year Old challenge.

5 Year Old Challenge

“Tomorrow, you take a table fork, turn your five-year-old on and come up with 25 or 30 ideas on how to improve on the table fork.”

Kids are thrilled by the smallest things that happen to them, and have no qualms telling you about it. A ladybug landing on them is headline news. 

But I’ve seen creatives struggle to express small-yet-awesome things they’ve experienced halfway around the world because of a fear of judgement. Or worse, seen them judge others’ sense of wonderment. These people often hit a creative rut or burnout.

So to be more creatively productive when travelling, channel your inner 5 year old in just 5 easy steps;

1. Let go of a fear of judgement / other people’s opinions
2. Look up and relish in your surroundings
3. Feel the joy in the little things
4. Give in to your wide eyed, awe-struck, overly excitable moments 
5. And capture or record all of it!

For example; Say you love Disney. One day you go to DisneyWorld and meet Mickey, and practically die because he talks to you (yep, that happened). You should record that feeling of child-like joy in some way. Make a video reacting to it after the fact, write a postcard home, make a voice recording, whatever!

Don’t be scared of others judgement, it will only inhibit your practical creativity. 

Just DO!

Make stuff. It’s as simple as that. The only reason people struggle to keep their creativity alive when travelling – in a productive way – is that they stop doing.

You have to channel that inspiration into some medium. It doesn’t have to be fancy, and you don’t have to be an expert, just make stuff while you’re away. 

Here’s a list of easy & quick ways to capture ‘field notes’ during the day that’ll make creation easier;

• Take a camera everywhere: Doesn’t matter if it’s your smartphone, a pocketable GoPro, a DSLR or mirrorless, your grandma’s old film camera. The best camera is the one you have on you. Looking at the world from a different angle is always useful, even if you think your photos are trash.
• Use the voice recorder on your phone to capture sounds that will bring you back to the moment.
• Keep an ‘idea bucket’ in the notes on your phone. Add to it when inspiration strikes during the day.

All of these will jog your memory, or senses, when it comes to the ‘making’ part of your day.

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Recap

1. Keep a Travel Journal
2. Meet up With Other Creatives
3. Set Mini Projects
4. Channel Your Inner 5 Year Old
5. DO

The biggest obstacle is not keeping your creativity alive when travelling. Travel itself is incredibly inspiring and motivating, that’s why I want creatives to travel as much as they can. 

It’s staying creatively productive that is the issue.

The not-so-secret is to just do

Ideate. Create. Make.

By using the steps above, you should be able to easily maintain your creative process while travelling.

The MOST Important Thing

Enjoy yourself! Travel is about experiences. Immerse yourself in your trip and don’t judge yourself if you fall behind. Life is too short to waste time on that! We’re out here building our life story fam!

Let me know what you thought of this! And feel free to add some of your tips below!

Please pass this post on if it was useful. Word of mouth is this blog’s fuel.

Remember – every time you share, a creative gets its wings.

Amelia X