Has your imagination dried up a touch recently? Want to keep thinking of new ideas? The secret is to keep daily habits that make our brain burst with ideas natively. Let’s run over a few.
Use Structured Exercises
Creativity thrives on structure, creative energy needs to be channelled through some sort of structure or discipline. There are lots of exercises to try out but my favourite one is creating a storyline. Pick four words at random and create a story from them. You get to be a bit silly and creative, what’s not to love. Try some of these exercises to boost your creativity in just 10 minutes.
Collaborate With Others
Working with other’s really helps with creative thinking, two minds are better than one after all. The more minds that are involved, the more ideas are generated. An exercise you try is you have one minute to write a story but every ten seconds you swap with the person next to you and they add to the story and repeat that over and over again when you read the full story out loud. Could be the best or worst story ever but it’s still it gets the creative juices flowing.
Read More
Ideas usually develop from known facts, rather than being plucked out from thin air. Read a fiction novel or check out a new blog or read a newspaper. If you get distracted, that’s great! When your mind begins to wonder, that is your brain processing thoughts and generating ideas.
Be Curious
Great ideas don’t just come from sitting indoors all day doing nothing. Your brain needs an activity to feed off. Take a lunchtime walk or a nighttime stroll, go to the gym anything to get your brain pumping with ideas.
Use Metaphors
Metaphors compare two things to explain or to entertain. The pairing of words makes us think beyond a boring explanation causing us to think about apt comparisons. This causes our creative thought to deepen.
Teach
There’s no better way of mastering a subject than being present and teach it. Teaching forces you to deepen your research in this subject in depth – this causes new thoughts to be generated. Next time you’re asked to present – step out of your comfort zone and get stuck in.
But don’t forget too…
- Jot down any ideas you have – we all have our eureka moments and then frustratingly forget what your idea was.
- Give your brain time and space to work for you.
