This habit helped me produce more original content while keeping me from burning out

Many creative people struggle because they don’t innovate and don’t know how to keep things fresh.

This leads to work that is ignored and burnout in the creator.

As a writer, I’ve had many moments where I felt like I was coming up against a blockade. I’d lost my spark.

Things began to gel only when I started thinking innovatively, and I’d find myself motivated again.

You can busy yourself putting things out all day long and not get very far because your stuff is like every other Tom, Dick and Nathan’s.

You will soon be exhausted because you aren’t making the progress that comes with continual innovation. You must continually invent new things to stay inspired and stand out.

This comes out of bringing seemingly disparate things together in inventive combinations.

Edward De Bono, the creativity guru, spoke about the value of making word associations to be more creative. The guy was onto something.

How about these:

• Squirrels and church steeple
• Mugs and death
• Mineral water and leaves

What creative associations can you make with these?

Creativity thrives in limitation, and using two words gives us a limited area to work within. But this will likely lead to creating interesting and unique connections.

Here’s a useful exercise that makes use of creative association:

First of all, make a list of things that are working in your life and that you are seeing work that has inspired you recently.

These are personal successes and wins you’ve seen elsewhere. Take two of these wins and put them together.

You can also use ideas that have been on your mind recently.

What interesting things happen when you combine your successes or random ideas into new hybrid projects, ideas or even products?

For example, maybe you noted down that you’ve been super inspired by Mr Beast videos and how much success he’s seeing, and you’re also passionate about writing.

Could you create a YouTube channel about writing using a similar approach to Mr Beast videos? Just one random thought.

Or how about the huge growing interest in drones and spirituality? How do we bring those together? Might our sense of consciousness and connectedness expand if we use drones to simulate a zoomed-out view of the world (we fly them and see what they see)?

We must make creative brainstorming like this part of our daily practice as writers, creators and entrepreneurs.

This is how to stay fresh, keep people watching, and — most importantly — keep us interested in our craft.

Combine seemingly disparate things, and you’ll always have ideas.

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