30 Ways To Improve Your Creativity

From Brian Hunt at www.sanguma.com Issue 2, July 4th 2005 (note:this was
previously available from autoresponder at freeautobot.com

1. Exercise regularly. This will improve the blood flow to your brain.
2. Make sure that you get enough rest. Every hour of sleep lost leads to a
drop of one IQ point. Two more points go if another hour is skipped (see
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/300940.stm). And dreams can bring creative results:
Paul McCartney claimed that the melody for Yesterday came to him in a dream
3. Get rid of the rules you don't need in your life or your work. Ask your self
"What value do they add?". Start learning to break rules: “Creativity is inventing,
experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and
having fun." Mary Lou Cook
4. Try to find ideas in a different environment - if it's difficult to be stimulated
sitting at a desk in an office then take a walk. Empty your head of conscious
thought and let the ideas emerge like clouds forming in blue sky.
5. Change your routines. For example, take a different route to work and
note your different surroundings - what do your senses pick up? Creativity
comes from seeing things that others overlook and from questioning what we are
seeing and why.
6. Keep a small notebook and pen with you and record you ideas in this.
Leonardo da Vinci always carried a notebook with him - once you start doing this,
you'll be surprised how many ideas you can capture in a week. You can also use
a dictaphone, the voice recorder in a mobile phone or phone them to an audio
blog such as www.audioblogger.com/
7. Learn how to use mind mapping – see the wikipedia entry at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_mapping#Tools
8. Make time for reflection and daydreaming - give your ideas time to form.
9. Don't try and force creative thinking when solving a problem - spend time
collecting information about the problem and then sleep on it or come back to it
after a couple of days. Your subconscious mind then has an opportunity to come
up with a solution. This is the Eureka! Moment when you 'have a brainwave'.
10. Go for quantity of ideas first, and then look for the good ones. Each idea
will spark another one. Don’t start filtering out ideas too early as you may miss
the winners. IDEO (www.ideo.com) find that around 4000 ideas become 230
drawings, which become 12 ideas that get sold.
11. Develop and trust your intuition. This is what tells you when a person or
location may be a threat - when you feel that "something isn't right". It can also
tell you when your idea is a great one.
12. Visualise success with every sense and hold this vision in your mind as
you work towards it. Successful athletes and other competitors may spend
almost as much time practising mentally as they do physically. Try visualisation if
you are worried about giving a successful presentation or being interviewed –
see yourself giving the successful presentation, hear the positive response from
the audience, the colours, sounds and smells of the whole experience.
13. Don't expect Creative Thinking to be ordered or predictable - you can't
force a good idea. Try to ensure the conditions are right for creativity to thrive.
These are shown in my questionnaire at
www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=89941263708
14. Don't be put off if your ideas fail at first. Edison tried over 6000 filaments
before perfecting the electric light bulb.
15. Take a creative writing course. The online Writers Village University
provide some excellent courses on all types of writing. They also provide a free
writing course. See www.wvu.org/ for details
16. Don't be afraid of 'crazy ideas' "If at first an idea doesn't seem totally
absurd, there's no hope for it." Albert Einstein.
17. Look for ways to make a problem even worse - then turning these ideas
around can lead you to the solution. For every good idea there’s an opposite
one.
18. Think how someone else might solve the problem - The Terminator,
Indiana Jones, Superman, Bart Simpson etc. Using this different perspective can
help you break out of your normal way of thinking.
19. Get a different perspective by discussing your ideas with someone else.
Organising your thoughts to describe them to others can help you find gaps and
things you've overlooked.
20. Use your creative, imaging right brain to describe your problem or idea as
a drawing or metaphor - "it's like ...". This can help you see the problem or idea
from different viewpoint.
21. Do things you feel passionately about - so what if you appear eccentric.
Your soul can't grow if you have to fit into someone else's rules!
22. Look for unusual connections. If you are looking for a solution to a
problem, try and find a connection between this and something completely
different for example a film, car, rock group, banana or whatever. The wilder the
connection, the more the limits of your thinking are extended – and it's
somewhere within these limits that you can find the winning ideas.
23. Practice creative thinking each day - for most us, our 'creative muscles'
have weakened from lack of use and need to be built up again (or, it more
scientifically, stimulate your brain to make new neural connections)
24. Try listening to different types of music. There are several online radio
stations listed at www.creativeideas.org.uk/switchon_map.htm
25. Listen to Mozart and other baroque music – this is believed to help
creative thinking. Try it – it works for me. Find out more about baroque music at
www.baroquemusic.org/
26. Exercise your mind with daily puzzles. Try www.ahapuzzles.com/
27. Network - go out of your way to meet people that you don't normally mix
with. Creativity arises from the differences of opinions and perspectives between
people.
28. Write poetry - this a creative right brain exercise and even Edison wrote
the occasional poem. Haiku are great for this. Find out more about haiku at
www.toyomasu.com/haiku/
29. Have some random items or toys in you office to stimulate your creativity.
30. Remove your watch - the ordered left brain wants you to keep to a
timetable, while the creative right brain needs to be able to wander creatively
without obeying a schedule. Make some time in your week which is for you only
and for what you want to do. During this ‘free time’ the best ideas may come into
your mind.
31. Develop your creative thinking by finding of unexpected uses for familiar
products. For example, there are over 100 uses for plastic vending cups at
http://tinyurl.com/brtzn. If you can think of some new ones, please email me at
brian@sanguma.com and I’ll add them to the list.
32. Encourage laughter – pompous, over controlled people put a damper on
creativity. Did you know that Thomas Edison started every workday with a joke-
telling session?

For more on creativity see my website www.creativeideas.org.uk.