4 Uncommon Powerful Ways to Boost Your Creativity

Try something new, unique, and powerfully effective to boost your Creativity skills

Stop saying that again and again.

Stop saying “I wish I was creative” or “I wish had your creativity”.

Creativity is not like blue eyes or perfect cheek bones. You don’t have to be born with it. Creativity can be built, nurtured, developed, strengthened, matured, boosted, and even evolved.

Also, creativity is not like bone density or alcohol tolerance. It doesn’t weaken with age. In fact, like the ability to spot bullshit, it may even improve with age.

If one broadly defines creativity as the ability to come up with new ideas and ways of thinking, then it is built on two mental factors –

1. Database of Ideas

2. Linkages between the Ideas

Creative folks firstly need to have a gigantic database of ideas in their head from all walks of life. Some of it may seem useless now but the bigger the repository of ideas the more one can draw from. If you think about it, the truly creative sorts know a little bit about everything – from architecture styles to advertising trends to Oscar winners. You never know where inspiration may come from.

For example, fashion designers are sometimes inspired by the architecture they see, and music composers are inspired by how they felt on their vacation in the Maldives.

In short, the first part to being creative is to have all your senses open and receiving all the time. Don’t expect to come up with anything fresh or new if you don’t read, see, hear, or travel beyond the same old.

The second component to creativity is the ability to draw connections between these ideas. The mind needs to be trained to extract and apply ideas from everything it sees and experiences.

This is usually a little harder and takes practice and perseverance. It takes a little time to train one’s mind to remember and see the parallels and synthesize two very different sources. For example, a branding guru’s ideas may be shaped unconsciously by the artwork they see at museums and also by the rock formations outside their garden. But if practised regularly, forming those linkages can easily become second nature and instinctive.

This article is therefore about helping you build that library in your head and practice forming connections regularly, easily and effectively.

I won’t bore you with usual tips and exercises like thinking of ten ideas every day or reading one library each year. Instead let’s try four odd tips that are actually quite easy, but also highly effective, and if nothing else, unusual enough to intrigue you into trying.

1. Read Unusual Magazines

This was a crazy idea suggested by the author Gretchen Rubin, and it was crazy enough to work superbly.

Basically, every month, pick a magazine from a completely unfamiliar area and browse through it completely. Maybe pick up something on Horse racing, or Coffee Connoisseurs, or Motocross GP.

It may seem difficult and even physically painful at first, but keep an open mind and just flip through. Even if you don’t read all the articles, read the headlines and the first couple and last couple of paragraphs. Understand the key developments in this area, the issues, the innovations, the concerns, and of course, the ads. Enjoy the ads to the fullest!

This is the kind of reading that doesn’t pay out right away, but is like adding a whole new memory chip to your brain. This isn’t just a little more knowledge, this is like opening a new window in your mind.

2. Go People Watching

One of my favourites. Go to a coffee-shop or food court at the mall and just watch the people. Watch them come in and out, or just walk by. Choose the right day and spot and you will be mesmerized by a bewitching array of colours, clothes, statements, emotions, expressions, and styles. Watching the world go by, as it were, will reward your mind with multitude of options and alternatives to expand the list you previously held.

Engage your mind further by asking yourself questions such as who is this person, or do they remind you of someone or something or can you classify them into a type or can you sense what they’re trying to do there and then.

Hopefully you’ll be cool and not stare and make someone uncomfortable. If done right, you’ll find this activity quite relaxing and your mind will have a wealth of new inputs to work with.

3. Play with toys

Playing with building blocks, or cars, or dolls, or anything else activates a whole new portion of your brain – the motor and muscular functions. Playing with anything relaxes the mind and turns a problem that was on a document to something one can feel tangibly.

Building blocks are especially good at helping someone visualise a problem or a solution, and communicate the subtler elements of what one had in mind. But any toy will do, as long as the play is built around just one question and minimal rules.

Scientific studies have repeatedly shown that engaging more than one of your senses while working on a problem leads to improved thinking, communication and problem-solving.

4. Write / Draw / Doodle

Just start scribbling and sketching anything on any paper you can find.

Even doodling your name will help focus your mind. The best creatives actually carry around a little notepad with them at all times to not just take notes but also to ideate when they need to. The quality itself doesn’t matter, and so express your ideas in any form or shape and just keep at it like a child given a white sheets and crayons.

Creativity doesn’t emerge by staring at a page or a white-board for a couple of hours. You’ll hit a mental brick wall really soon, because what you see is a composite of many minds. But once you start interpreting the situation with your own mental models, you mind will begin to see ideas and breakthroughs. You’re now playing the game on rules that your mind is most comfortable with.

And yes, it’s not a bad idea to involve colouring pencils too.

I wasn’t kidding when I said they were uncommon.

I hope you found this article useful. Do share your views in the comments below. Remember, this is the “Creativity Challenge Week” #CCW, and so do share ideas your feedback on trying out these and any other ideas.

And as always, stay cool and keep building a better life! Cheers!

________________________________________________________________________

By the way, if you liked such discussions on career-related topics, be sure to Connect with me or Follow. I publish full articles only once a week and so no danger of spamming. 

Some of my other articles are right below, if you're curious.

I also find and post useful and fascinating articles from varied and reputed publications on Twitter —@ArifMansuri006.