Have a power failure.

Really. Go unplugged.

Since the Mac computer was unveiled in an Apple Computer commercial during the Super Bowl on January 24, 1984, designers and creative ilk have been attached at the hip with electronic devices that were supposed to make their lives easier. In reality, it turned processes that 25 years ago took days or weeks and made them tasks that now take minutes or even seconds. They also allowed clients to expect work or edits completed virtually immediately. The computer has also become a crutch. Designers, writers and artists now rarely sit in front of a sketchpad or a notebook and create without the aid of some plug-in or digital tool.

It's wrong, and it's a bad way to be creative.

We all are guilty of it. We need to bang out a brochure or a logo, or write some new copy for an ad, and we sit down in front of the computer, open our favorite Adobe or Office or iWork product and we start moving things around hoping they fit.

It's backwards, and that's not how we were taught to create new things or generate ideas and concepts.

With presentations, like anything else created, we should begin with ideas—from our heads—not a computer. Inspiration can be found in many places, but rarely is it offered by your computer. Computers lack creativity. Computers have no personality. Computers can't be emotional.

Computers are stupid.

So unplug.

The first step to creating something new should be with a notepad or a sketchpad. A pen, a pencil, a crayon. Post-it notes work. Napkins. The back of your hand. Anything organic that can be a canvas for ideas—good ones, bad ones, weird ones, and things that you don't even give a chance to work. Explore, sketch, brainstorm, create and develop ideas in your head and with your hands, not with a mouse or a keyboard.

Your rewards will be in the results.