How to be Creative Looking for the last piece of the puzzle? Try these 7 research-based techniques for increasing creativity. Everyone is creative: we can all innovate given time, freedom, autonomy, experience to draw on, perhaps a role model to emulate and the motivation to get on with it. But there are times when even the most creative person gets bored, starts going round in circles, or hits a cul-de-sac. 1. People often recommend physical separation from creative impasses by taking a break, but psychological distance can be just as useful. Participants in one study who were primed to think about the source of a task as distant, solved twice as many insight problems as those primed with proximity to the task (Jia et al., 2009). ◊ For insight: Try imagining your creative task as distant and disconnected from your current location. 2. Like psychological distance, chronological distance can also boost creativity. 3. The mind is desperate to make meaning from experience. 4. 5. 6. 7. Everyday creativity
6 Ways My Brain Stops Me From Creating – And How I'm Fighting Back I have a lot of ideas in my head. And for the most part, that’s where they used to stay. In my head. Where other people couldn’t see them, interact with them or build upon them. Where they were safe and untested and uncriticized. Sure, I’ve created some. Because the riskiest, most dangerous and potentially most interesting ideas are the easiest to hold back. And while it might feel creative to think of these ideas, they were dying a lonely death when I wasn’t doing anything with them. I lost out, too, with this arrangement. It wasn’t the best life I could give my ideas—or myself. So I decided to change. 1. The No. 1 thing that keeps me from creating is that the idea doesn’t feel complete yet. A former editor of mine called these “glimmers”—a little spark of an idea, not fully formed but on the cusp of being something. The main thing is that idea glimmers need nurturing, which can be hard to do. How to fix it: 2. And sometimes I don’t want a struggle. How to fix it: 3. 4. 5. 6.
CreativityRulz: Brainstorming Rules: What TO DO and What NOT TO DO... These two short videos are priceless! They were created by students at the Stanford Design Institute. The first one shows how NOT to brainstorm and the second one shows HOW to do it effectively. The worst case example happens all the time. Here is a video summary of what NOT to do: Here is a video summary of what TO DO: - Defer judgment- Capture all the ideas- Encourage wild ideas- One conversation at a time- Build on other people's ideas- Be visual - use words and pictures- Use headlines to summarize ideas- Go for volume - the more ideas the better!
Can You Teach Yourself to Be Creative? I pour a cup of coffee, sharpen my pencil, and get ready to create. I’ve dusted off a half-conceived novel outline I abandoned three years ago, but this time I’m not waiting for my muse to intervene. Instead I hit the play button on the Creative Thinker’s Toolkit, an audio lecture series from The Great Courses that I’ve downloaded on my computer. Gerard Puccio, a psychologist who heads the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY Buffalo State, and the voice of the toolkit, tells me to engage in “forced relationships.” I’m intrigued. After all, creativity may be the key to Homo sapiens’ success. Creativity is certainly a buzzword these days. “We’ve moved beyond the industrial economy and the knowledge economy. But can you really teach yourself to be creative? Some of the earliest scientific studies of creativity focused on personality. Above all, though, two personality traits tend to show up again and again among innovative thinkers. I try to be likable.
Neat vs. Messy: Which Is Better for Creativity? There's a general assumption--in homes, in workplaces--that neatness corresponds to productivity. It begins in elementary school, with the annual rite of buying school supplies. You have the intent of staying organized, subject by subject, throughout the year. In adulthood, the habit continues. Every December, you buy an annual planner or calendar. As it happens, the fine art of getting organized is an official profession, with formal certifications, a code of ethics, and an official industry group (the National Association of Professional Organizers, or NAPO, 4,000 members strong). And that's just the beginning. And all that is just a yellow brick in the road of America's $4.3 billion stationery industry. Yet it's possible--and even demonstrable--that you'll be more creative if your work space is disorganized and messy. The Argument for Messiness Last year, she described her work in the New York Times. What This Means for Businesses Of course not.
How to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing At Sketchfab, we’re always itching to find new and unique ways to stay ahead of the creative curve. We’ve dug deep on how the most creative minds around the world keep their creative juices flowing. Here are 5 ways you can begin to keep your creative juice flowing: 1. No, there’s no fire. What we mean is: Stop what you’re doing, Drop your pen, and Roll out of the building. Most of us are sitting down, staring at a screen for eight-hours a day. 2. While you’re out of the building, why not get some exercise? According to Psychology Today: “the creative process springs as much from the subconscious as it does from a conscious thought process. Exercise allows your conscious mind to access fresh ideas that are buried in the subconscious. Go for a walk, run, or even try some yoga poses, as long as it’s keeping your mind off of the task at hand. 3. Let’s face it. Not all of us were gifted with a photographic memory. 4. Good artists copy, great artists steal. — Pablo Picasso 5. Sean Kim
Managing Creativity and Innovation: Coming Up with a Perfect Brainstorm At Digital River, ideas are everything. So every Friday morning, at 8 a.m. sharp, CEO Joel Ronning calls his "entrepreneurs council" to order. For the next hour or so, about 45 senior employees of the Eden Prairie, Minn., e-commerce company huddle in a conference room and hammer out one suggestion after another, in hopes of hitting upon something, anything, that will add revenue or cut costs. n Over the past three years, the council has hatched new ideas for everything from training new hires to smarter selling strategies--ideas that Ronning says have saved or made Digital River hundreds of thousands of dollars. As for inspiring his team to strive for such creative heights, Ronning credits a fun, informal corporate culture, which includes, among other things, free beer on Friday afternoons. A $2,500 quarterly award for the best idea doesn't hurt either. Ronning is pleased with his results. An Army of One Asking the Right Questions That leads to poor results, says Paulus. Bad Ideas
The Science Of Great Ideas--How to Train Your Creative Brain Ah, ideas. Who doesn’t want more great ideas? I know I do. I usually think about ideas as being magical and hard to produce. The good news is that it turns out cultivating ideas is a process, and one that we can practice to produce more (and hopefully better) ideas. First, let’s look at the science of the creative process. How our brains work creatively So far, science hasn’t really determined exactly what happens in our brains during the creative process, since it really combines a whole bunch of different brain processes. The truth is, our brain hemispheres are inextricably connected. The idea that people can be “right brain thinkers” or “left brain thinkers” is actually a myth that I’ve debunked before: The origins of this common myth came from some 1960s research on patients whose corpus callosum (the band of neural fibers that connect the hemispheres) had been cut as a last-resort treatment for epilepsy. We do have a rough idea of how these processes might work, though. Set aside time
The Need for Sustainable Creativity Recently, more and more research is coming to light that indicates talent is a matter of time spent practicing, not a matter of innate ability. The idea that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master a skill is increasingly gaining mainstream acceptance. Personally, I’m a big fan of the idea because it gives hope to people who once believed talent to be a gift they had not been given. Even though this radical idea has massive ramifications for artists, I don’t think it has properly made a debut in the dialogue about what it takes to become a great artist. We are still asking “How do you draw that?” I believe making creativity a sustainable practice is one of the most important and difficult issues an artist deals with. Thank you for being here!
Creativity's Most Underappreciated Component: Persistence - Pacific Standard We all know how to get to Carnegie Hall: Practice, practice, practice. But that ancient punch line refers to honing one's technical ability, not developing greater creativity. According to conventional wisdom, you either are an imaginative thinker or you aren't, and if you don't have the gift, pushing yourself to come up with innovative ideas is simply a waste of time. A new study suggests that's entirely wrong. Researchers report that people consistently underestimate how many creative ideas they can come up with if they continue to work on a problem, rather than giving up in the wake of mediocre initial results. What's more, the study finds the most creative ideas tend to arise after many others have been considered and discarded. "People consistently underestimate the value of persisting on creative tasks," Northwestern University researchers Brian Lucas and Loran Nordgren write in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. So why do we doubt ourselves?
Three Creativity Challenges from IDEO’s Leaders People often ask us how they can become more creative. Through our work at the global design and innovation firm IDEO and David’s work at Stanford University’s d.school, we’ve helped thousands of executives and students develop breakthrough ideas and products, from Apple’s first computer mouse to next-generation surgical tools for Medtronic to fresh brand strategies for the North Face in China. This 2012 HBR article outlines some of the approaches we use, as does our new book, Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All. One of our top recommendations? Of course, exercising your mind can sometimes feel more daunting than exercising your muscles. Mindmaps are a powerful way to overcome fear of the blank page, look for patterns, explore a subject, come up with truly innovative ideas, record their evolution so you can trace back in search of new insights, and communicate your thought processes to others. TOOL: Mindmap PARTICIPANTS: Usually a solo activity
4 Principles That Will Lead You To Breakthrough Creativity Combing through the research, what are the overarching principles that we need to know to be more innovative thinkers in everyday life? Here they are, with links to the research backing them up. 1) Relax What is most likely your daily creative peak? Just being happy can make you more creative for days; seriously, just smile. It’s probably no surprise that boring work is better done at the office and creative work is better accomplished at home. Being in nature relaxes us and even a mere potted plant in the office can increase creativity. Sleep is good. 2) Expose Yourself To New Ideas And New Perspectives Unusual or unexpected events increase creativity. Imagining you’re a child again or that you’re solving a problem for someone else was enough to increase creativity. Being exhausted or drunk increases creativity because they make you look at the world differently. 3) Get Ideas Crashing Into Each Other You want a mix of fresh and classic. 4) Work Hard Sum Up Four principles: Related posts:
This column will change your life: Helsinki Bus Station Theory I've never visited Finland. Actually, I probably never should, since it's a place I love so much on paper – dazzling, snow-blanketed landscapes, best education in the world, first country to give full suffrage to women, home of the Moomins – that reality could only disappoint. Even the staunchest Finnophile, though, might be sceptical on encountering the Helsinki Bus Station Theory. First outlined in a 2004 graduation speech by Finnish-American photographer Arno Minkkinen, the theory claims, in short, that the secret to a creatively fulfilling career lies in understanding the operations of Helsinki's main bus station. It has circulated among photographers for years, but it deserves (pardon the pun) greater exposure. So I invite you to imagine the scene. There are two dozen platforms, Minkkinen explains, from each of which several different bus lines depart. There are two reasons this metaphor is so compelling – apart from the sheer fact that it's Finland-related, I mean.