Creating for 100 days and more and less

For a design class, students were asked to design or make something for 100 consecutive days:

From Kottke: For the past five years, Michael Bierut has taught a class for aspiring designers where students have to record the results of "a design operation that [they] are capable of repeating every day" for 100 straight days.

From the Observer's Room:

Beginning Thursday, October 21, 2010, do a design operation that you are capable of repeating every day. Do it every day between today and up to and including Friday, January 28, 2011, the last day of the project, by which time you will have done the operation one hundred times. That afternoon, each student will have up to 15 minutes to present his or her one-hundred part project to the class. 

The only restrictions on the operation you choose is that it must be repeated in some form every day, and that every iteration must be documented for eventual presentation. The medium is open, as is the final form of the presentation on the 100th day. 

Does this sound like fun? I'm not sure. But some years, up to two dozen students start the assignment. And some years, more than half drop out before the end. Everyone starts with high hopes. But things get repetitive by day ten. By day twenty, no matter what you've decided to do, it feels like you've been doing it forever. And bridging the end-of-year break is always a big challenge. But the students who get past day thirty or forty tend to get in a groove that will take them through to the end. Here's a sampling of what's been done through the years, including some of my favorites.

I have fallen into a rut of describing creativity and not being creative myself.  Perhaps I need to set goals like this.

Or perhaps I should look at one month:

30 Days of Creativity was a social initiative encouraging people to create stuff, anything, every day for 30 days in June 2010 by folks in the Minneapolis creative community. 

Your brain is a muscle. When you exercise it, it gets stronger.

I WANT TO CREATE TOO:

Don’t put it off! Create stuff now! Follow #30daysofcreativity on Twitter. Make your pledge above to create. 

CREATE STUFF:

This is your excuse to buy that tub of Playdoh, unbox your Erector set, or dust off your Holga. You might be working on one huge project for 30 days straight. Maybe you are creating something new thing every day. (That’s the best way to participate!) It could be as simple as taking a picture of your outfit for 30 days to something as involved as a writing a song or making a movie every day

I can't tell if the owners of this website are organizing a similar thing or if it is an advertisement for a management and motivational speaker.  The spelling of international in the website's title is creative, at least.

At least two people have chosen to blog about 2011 as their Year of Creativity.

Belle Wong says:

2011 is my year of creativity.

I’ve missed being creative. Last year, I added writing back into my life, and it has been a very joyful experience. But there’s more to what I want out of life than the writing. There are a lot of things that interest me, and this year, I’m giving myself permission to enjoy exploring and playing with all the things that catch my fancy.

So this means:

More writing...

More art... 

More reading...  

For Jody Wright, the goal is to do more with her free time and feel like a kid again:

One of the main motivators for taking a break from training this year was that I was getting sick of seeing the same non-triathlon goals on my life list year after year, and never doing anything proactive towards achieving them. It took me a while to accept the fact that it just wasn’t realistic to seriously take on any new hobby – such as practicing photography, playing guitar, taking a pottery class, learning to sail, getting additional scuba diving certifications, or learning web design skills – “off the side of my bike”, as it were. Now that I have made the leap, everyday is full of new and exciting opportunities for learning and creative expression. I am LOVING being a beginner again it’s incredibly fulfilling to be taking on some of these goals I’ve been dreaming about for over 10 years.

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I have been too long on this blog a reporter of creativity and not much of a producer or a creator.  I am not ready at this instant to set a goal in this regard but but I can promise to set one by the end of this week.