How to Be More Creative: 10 Tips to Get Your Creative Juices Going
‘Crativity is intelligence having FUN’ – Albert Einstein
To some people being creative comes naturally, to some it doesn’t. But even those that are gifted with the wonderful artistic touch can’t always get their creative juices flowing. You might be tired, frustrated, sleepy, deconcentrated, or you might not even know what the problem is. Whatever the case may be, there are things you can do to get out of the creative rut and get the ball rolling.
Here are 10 tips that will help you become more efficient in creativity. You’ve hit the road block? No problem, we’ll teach you to jump over it, or sneak past it. This is how you invite creativity into your mind.
Get Organized
Nowadays, every advice or tip online for pretty much every job or task you are faced with tells you to get organized. And this is not without a good reason. Some people fall into the trap of thinking they don’t have to be organized and plan ahead if they are creative. ‘Artists don’t plan. They are spontaneous.’ This is for the most part, not true. When our mind is faced with a lot of daily tasks, it’s hard to get the right mindset and get creative, because all of this information scattered around our mind keeps disabling our concentration and creativity.
Before you start writing, painting, dancing or whatever it is you might need a little creativity boost for, make sure to plan ahead. Put everything on paper. Use a planner if necessary. Organize your mind. When your mind has certain actions scheduled for certain times, it will perform faster and better. So, plan everything at least one day ahead.
Step Out of the Comfort Zone
Whatever you do on a regular basis, you develop a habit of it. And once something becomes a habit, it can become monotonous and a creativity-killer. But luckily, boredom isn’t an eternal feeling and it doesn’t have to be if you decide to change it.
If you’re faced with creating a new presentation at work, and you’ve already done tons of them, you might feel like you’re always repeating yourself. If you need to impress someone, try and step out of your comfort zone. Do something different. Try new things out. It might involve trying out new ideas, tools, techniques, but whatever it is, break your habits.
When you always do the same thing in the same way you’re actually holding creativity on standby. Take a shot of change, and wake up. Doing something differently, can completely change your entire perspective.
Brainstorm
This is an oldie, but a goodie. When you’re trying to be productive and come up with creative and fresh ideas, you can’t use what you already know. That’s not creativity or innovation. You need to find a way to efficiently come up with new ideas and points of view that will inspire you to create something different.
For ages, companies, businessmen, and writers have conducted brainstorm sessions to get their creativity going. This is how it’s done best.
Take a piece of paper and start writing everything that comes to your mind when it comes to a certain topic. It doesn’t have to make sense, just write down everything until you are left with no idea in your mind. You’d be surprised how many great ideas you can get by putting it all randomly on a piece of paper.
Take a Nap
Sometimes, trying to concentrate and get creative is exactly what is blocking you from doing so. Give your brain a rest and take a nap. It lets you calm down, relax, empty out your brain of excess information and start of with a clean slate.
You never know. You might even dream something that’s going to inspire you to create. Whatever it is, napping is always a good idea. When zou brain is relaxed it’s worth to train it a bit with brain exercises to improve memory and other cognitive functions.
Get Away from Gadgets
Contrary to common beliefs, all of the technology around us isn’t always helpful. It might even create a counter-productive environment in which we can’t concentrate on anything but the sound of the TV buzzing, the mobile phone vibrating and the air conditioning wheezing away.
Next time you’re feeling unable to concentrate and solve a problem, work on a project or simply get started by thinking of creative ideas, turn off all your gadgets. That means, turn off your phone and TV, don’t pay attention to any notifications. Go outside, sit in your yard or porch and concentrate solely on solving your problem. Do this for fifteen minutes, then you can get back to checking your e-mails. Those fifteen won’t hurt your business in any way, but it can aid a lot in jumping over that hurdle that’s stopping you from being as creative as you can be.
Develop Your Own Perspective
‘The Creative Adult Is The Child Who Survived’. – U.LeGuin
While most of the times we strive to create new and original ideas, this can involve quite a lot of time and hard-work. Sometimes it’s not even possible. Instead of wasting your energy and time trying to come up with something revolutionary take a different approach.
Find an idea you really like and build on it. See how you can make it yours and what you can do with it. Not all creative work is original. Some of it presents just a different point of view, and it’s usually quite genius. Therefore, take advantage of already existing ideas and notions, and shape them into something new.
Have a Side Project
Although staying in a monogamous relationship with your project might seem like a good idea, we have to break it to you. It’s actually not. Real relationships are one thing, but when it comes to work projects, sometimes focusing too hard on just one can do you more damage than good. Instead , try focusing on a few side projects, that are smaller and easier to handle.
A recent study by Lile Jia and her colleagues at Indian University in Bloomington discovered that stepping away and creating a psychological distance from a problem, can increase your creativity.
That way you will give your mind a rest and when you go back to the project that you simply couldn’t get creative with, you’ll see that you now have a spell of motivation to look at the problem from another perspective and that’s exactly when you get creative.
Surround Yourself with New People
You might think that the one’s who inspire you most are your family members or friends, but sometimes it’s exactly the opposite. If you hit a creative block and you’re trying to find a solution in the same old place, but you’re not succeeding, change your habits.
A study published in Journal of Consumer Psychology, Construal Levels and Psychological Distance: Effects on Representation, Prediction, Evaluation, and Behavior, suggest several theories of inducing creativity, one of them being communicating with people who are dissimilar to us.
Get around new people. Or people that are different from you. Meet someone new, or start a conversation with someone completely random. When we surround ourselves with different people, we get inspired and motivated, and potentially find out something new. You’d surprised, once again, how your mindset changes simply by speaking to someone you haven’t before.
Stay Positive
When you’re pressured by deadlines or high standards, it’s easy to feel less motivated and creative. Due to all the pressure, you start thinking about failure and consequences, and can’t focus on creating something positive.
Because or mind controls how we feel and what we think, channel those thoughts onto something positive and think positive. You can’t think negatively and expect a burst of creativity to come along. Stay positive, and repeat positive affirmations that everything is going to resolve in time, and eventually, the positivity will lead to a more relaxed state of mind that is going to enable you to quickly get your creative juices flowing.
Ask for a Second Opinion
How do you get creative and see things from a different angle? Well, ask someone who actually sees it from a different perspective. Sometimes you’re not completely in a creative rut, and you just need a little push to get going in the right direction.
Ask a colleague or a friend what they think about your work. They don’t even have to be in that field or understand completely what your work is about. Their unique perspective and opinion can sometimes trigger your thoughts to come up with something you would have never before.
Everyone has their own way of nurturing and instigating creativity, and not all of them work for the same people. You need to experiment and see what works best for you and in which situations. If there are any other techniques that you use, that could really help someone, share with us. We’d love to hear them!
