We all have our preferences for organising our private spaces. Some people like to surround themselves with their favourite objects, pictures, photographs, books and plants. Others prefer a bare and functional décor.
It is worth thinking about which kind of 'nest' you prefer: somewhere you feel entirely at ease with yourself, and where you work most effectively.
It is all too easy to 'make do' with what we have already—but often a small change can make a world of difference—something as simple as changing the position of a table or desk, re-arranging the books, putting up a picture or photograph, buying a better reading lamp, changing the colour scheme, adjusting the temperature, burning incense or bringing in a pot plant.
You may consider these questions to initiate changes:

• What kind of chair is best for you?
• What kind of writing paper, notebooks, pens, electrical equipment, including lighting, work best for you?

One of the biggest obstacles to doing anything is time. Of course, we all have exactly the same amount of time available each day.
It is how we decide to use it which differentiates us. It is a fact that for most of us, the immediate takes precedence over the important. There is an infinity of small things which act as distractors—and which we perhaps subconsciously welcome because we can use them as reasons for not tackling what is important.
So it is worth re-prioritising our activities.

• Is it really so urgent to answer all those trivial e-mails?
• Do we really have to go shopping today?
• Is it necessary to watch the TV news tonight?
• What real difference will it make if we don't call our sister this evening?

So try to reserve at least some time for doing things outside our regular schedule of distracting activities. This might mean getting up an hour earlier, or staying up a bit later, or making space at some time during the day.

• Once you have decided on what you want to explore (see the suggestions below), find a time of day for it. You might like to think about the time of day when you are most alert.
• When is your energy peak?
• How long is your ideal attention span?
• Do you need to take breaks?
• Do you ever take a nap—widely acknowledged as a restorative activity, which also often gives rise to unsought, creative ideas?

But, important as it is to establish a routine so as to focus on whatever preoccupies us, it is also healthy sometimes to break that routine so that we do not get into a rut of mere habit. 'A rut is like a grave – only longer' as the folk adage goes. By disrupting a routine, we often see things afresh, from a new angle.

The world we live in has largely abolished the need to remember anything. If we need an item of information, we just look it up in Google. Or for regular items we need, we keep them on our iPhone or computer. They are there, only a touch away. This means our mind's memory muscles are a bit slack. Yet the ability to call things to mind at will is one of the greatest accomplishments of the human consciousness—and can be the source of enormous pleasure. Here are just a few suggestions for things you can do to re-activate your memory.
• Sit quietly and think of someone you know quite well. This might be a friend or relative, or a public figure like a TV announcer. In your mind's eye, try to see the person in great detail: their physical appearance, their posture, their typical gestures and facial expressions, their clothing, the way their voice sounds (or sounded).
• Think back on a house you lived in at some time on the past. Close your eyes, and try to reconstruct the place in your mind's eye, walking from room to room, noting detail by detail.
• Think of a film you have seen (either recently or in the past). Try to reconstruct the film in your mind's eye—episode by episode—focusing on the visual aspects and on the soundscapes. Some classic films seem to lodge themselves deep in our memories but an effort is required to excavate them.
• Keep a journal or a day book. This can be much more than a diary recording your daily doings. The commonplace book was a very popular institution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in particular. People would record books they had read, places they had visited, quotations they wanted to remember, ideas that had come to them, jottings for poems, stories, speeches or experiments, reports of conversations they had had overheard, musings on sketches of places they had been, jokes they had heard, talk they had overheard and so on.

Learning to be alone is important. But forming close friendships is also greatly beneficial to the having of good ideas. However irritating they may sometimes be, we need other people. Friendship has taken on new connotations since the advent of Facebook: but what we are talking about here is not quantity but quality, which means having a relatively small group of people you can trust to react honestly and interestingly to whatever you agree mutually to talk about. These quality conversations have become even more important in the age of triviality in which we increasingly live. They can serve to generate ideas: conversation has a way of evolving collaboratively and unpredictably—we go where the conversation takes us. They can serve to monitor ideas: the friend becomes a reliable sounding board to bounce ideas off. They can serve as a support and source of advice, when we are unsure of ourselves.

Join something which will bring you into regular, if infrequent, contact with people who share an interest with you. Singing in a choir is richly rewarding. You experience the music as a tightly knit group with a common focus. Taking part in a drama production has similar rewards. Joining a professional association also affords opportunities for shared action and for new learning. Darts, bridge, bowling, swimming, local history or archaeology, tennis—clubs, associations and teams are all there if we choose to get involved in them.

Looking at things closely. Our lives are so busy these days that we rarely take the trouble to really look at things. Some things we see do not register at all. For others we adopt a kind of visual shorthand—That's a car, That's a tree, That's a rose, That's a bird, It's sunny today, There is a crowd at the bus stop and so on. Yet if we take the trouble to look at things really intensely, to get inside them, our lives can be greatly enhanced, and we develop a greater awareness of what is around us, greater powers of observation and of people in general.

Techniques for Developing Visual Awareness
• Choose a portrait photograph of someone with a really striking face. Focus all your attention on the details of the portrait—the eyes, the hair, the ears, the shape of the face/head, the quality of the skin, the mood of the expression, the possible age, the likely personality, the possible life history and so on. Spend at least 5 minutes doing this. Then turn the picture over and write down all you observed.
• Choose a video clip about 3 minutes long which has a scene in which two, or maximum three, people are interacting. Play the clip through once with the sound off. Then try to visualise it in m your mind's eye. Then play it again. This time focus on just one of the characters—their movements, facial expressions, type of camera shot (close up, zoom, etc.), lighting and so on. Then do the same for the other character(s). Play the clip as many times as you need to soak up every smallest detail. Make notes about what you observed. If you have a freeze-frame option, stop the film at points where you want to observe a detail more closely.
• People watching. A good way of developing observation skills is to find a favourable spot where you can be sure of seeing a large variety of human specimens going about their business. Coffee bars and restaurants, railway stations and airports, art galleries and exhibitions are all good places for this. You need to sit in a place where you have a good view of what is going on.
•Keep your notebook handy to jot down your observations. Select just one person at a time to focus on. You can then decide to observe different aspects of your subject: clothing and gadgets, physical appearance, gestures, manner of standing, sitting, moving, walking, ways of relating to other people around. You may even be able to overhear snatches of their speech (not difficult in the days of ubiquitous mobile phones). The main point is to hone your observation skills but when you re-read your notes, you may find you have material for a poem, or a story.