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. Dont 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 theres 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 Ill 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 joketelling session? For more on creativity see my website www.creativeideas.org.uk.