How to build your secret repertoire
As a creative, your repertoire is your secret weapon.
Think of your repertoire as the accumulation of everything you've ever seen or experienced, distilled down to its essence, ready to draw on whenever you need inspiration.
In one way, our minds are already a big part of this repertoire. The more experience you have and the more you've seen, the better you'll be at your work.
Creatives are expected to come up with ideas, but not just any ideas – original, refreshing ideas. A good creative has the unique skill of pulling good ideas "out of thin air." That's not a given for most people, so we have the luxury of making it our day job.
But the only way we can create something out of thin air is because we've built our own system (even if it's just in our minds) that allows us to capture material and references over a lifetime. We then connect these fragments and "milk" them for unexpected connections, which ultimately leads us to truly original ideas.