7 Easy Ways To Become Creative

How come some people always seem to have ideas, while others don’t?

Well, the truth is, creativity isn’t something you’re born with.

It’s something you grow and polish with time. Think of it as a muscle: the more you stimulate it, the stronger it gets.

How do you work out your creative muscle? Well, this is what this article is about.

Here are 7 techniques that will help you stimulate your creativity and come up with lots of ideas.

1. Get Tactile

Play around with some building blocks, like Legos. The act of working on something with your hands will spark creative thoughts.

2. Doodle with purpose.

On a piece of paper, draw a random shape. Keep adding to it for one minute. Then give it a name that describes it best. Once that’s done, rotate it 180 degrees and give it another name.

Iterate this exercise a couple times and be impressed by your creativity.

3. Play with words.

Scramble words and create new ones using scrabble times or a piece of scrap paper. Write down a couple of words that spring into your mind. You can try combining them directly, to create a portmanteau word, or scramble the letters completely to create an entirely new one.

4. Do something boring or tedious.

Tidy a desk, clean your room, do the ironing. Research shows that when we do something tedious or boring, our brains want to get busy with something else...and thus become very creative.

5. Stare off into space

Stare off in the distance and empty your mind. Feel free to mix up what you look at to keep your brain stimulated. This exercise allows your mind to wander and come up with really cool, unexpected ideas.

6. Listen or watch with purpose.

Try noticing patterns in things your brain usually glosses over. Hyper observation or listening will push your brain to see things it normally doesn’t, which can be the source of new ideas.

7. Sketch Randomly.

Take a piece of paper and divide it into 16 squares on each side (32 squares total). Set a timer for 3 minutes. Draw something in each square before the time is up (try drawing in as many squares as possible).

The timer is key, because it places moderate stress on your brain to come up with sketching ideas, beyond the obvious. Once that warm up exercise is done, your brain should be quite loose and ready to generate ideas.

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Try this at home and let me know what you think 😉