Hack your Creativity

Often we are told be creative but most people have never been taught how to ramp up their creativity. In fact most people are more focused on trying to not change or innovate at all.



Here are simple techniques to use to hack your creative self.

Time: At least 20 minutes

Materials
Yourself
Your creative team
Other items listed below

Method

In the movie Dead Poets Society a high school teacher, John Keating, asks his students to stand on their desks. This is to make them look at the room they go to every day in a different way.

Doing anything a little differently sparks our brain to think differently. Move from your desk, put on a crazy hat or just rearrange your office, it doesn't matter. When I want to inspire staff to be creative I take off my tie and throw in the rubbish bin (I get it out later). This seems to magically hack people's brains into saying "I can do things differently today".


Colours affect both our moods and thinking. Red will make us work faster, blue will calm us down but green seems to make us more creative.

So to hack your creativity either take your laptop and sit in a park or just have a big green sheet of cardboard to put behind you desk.




When being creative people need a broad focus of attention. When we are stressed we usually focus very narrowly.

Anything that helps us to relax will hack our creativity. When leading creativity classes I usually ask people to stretch. Or often I wait to see if people are not being creative, then I make them stretch, and suddenly the ideas are flowing. Personally when I need to think of ideas I go for a nice relaxing walk.


As I said before, creative people tend to have a diffuse focus of attention. Creative people are easily distracted because they take inspiration from everything around them.



To ramp up your creativity sometimes you need a lot of stimulation. Try and make it relevant and not too distracting. I throw key words into a google image search and this sometimes helps.


One of the reasons why many people can't be creative is because they are trying to maintain everything that they already have. Instead try throwing it all away and start from the beginning. Your creativity will flow as you're now less constrained by previous work.

The best hack for this is having a blank piece of paper or whiteboard.


I have another little trick. When I want people to be creative I ask them to write down 20 ideas. Many people look at me with disbelief thinking that they can't possibly come up with 20 ideas.



The hack is to push yourself. Very rarely are people only able to come up with just 20 ideas. Usually they can keep going. By setting a high goal it pushes us. Often we are not creative because we are lazy and it is easier not to try.


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