Read This is You Want to Boost Your Creativity: 7 Tips For Improving Creativity
School has killed your creativity. It is time to get it back
I want to be more creative. Creativity seems to be a very cool skill to have.
It is essential for problem-solving and innovation.
Studies show we’re born creative, in fact, five-year-olds are as creative as NASA scientists, but when we grow older we’re put into this thing called school which ruins our creativity.
(I talked about it over here: Everything That’s Wrong With Our Education System)
So how do you increase creativity? or How do you stay creative?
That’s what I wanted to know, so I did a little research.
Here’s what I’ve learnt.
(Disclaimer: I have not implemented all these tips, half of them I’ve written so I go and implement them, now that’s out of the way, let’s go ahead)
First I think it’s best to define what is Creativity??
What is Creativity?
Some say Creativity is “the ability to create new things or do old things in new ways,”
Others say creativity is a characteristic of someone or some process that forms something new and valuable.
So how do you do that?
By connecting the dots, asking the right questions, and having the right sources of input and inspiration.
Keep in mind there’s a difference between creativity and imagination.
Creativity involves two processes: thinking, then producing. If you have ideas but don’t act on them, you are imaginative but not creative.
1. Learn To Connect the Dots
Creativity is just connecting the dots
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. — Steve Jobs
No invention is new, it’s just a mashup of several old inventions or ideas.
The printing press changed the world. It was a revolutionary piece of technology. It was just a mashup of olive and wine presses with the existing woodblock printing and some movable metal letters.
Creativity is just connecting the dots.
If you can connect the dots, especially between unrelated fields, that’s when things get cooler.
An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements [and] the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships. — James Webb
I’ve noticed most best-selling books just knit together stories, texts and ideas which can be found in other core books and articles. Most of their ideas aren’t really that unique.
Sir Richard Branson has a mantra that runs through the DNA of Virgin companies. The mantra is A-B-C-D. (Always Be Connecting the Dots).
2. Let your Mind Wander and Use the Power of Your Subconscious Mind
The subconscious mind can process 11 million bits of information!
That’s far greater than what the conscious mind can process.
The greatest geniuses know how to tap into the unconscious mind.
This is why Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates wash dishes, it lets their mind wander and come up with ideas.
Warren Buffet Schedules time to do nothing to allow thoughts into his mind.
Elon Musk gets some of his best ideas when he’s just chilling in the shower.
Tim Denning, who’s like the number one writer on Medium has a warm shower before he writes.
Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow — Henry David Thoreau
Going on walks is probably the most common habit among philosophers, scientists and writers.
Steve Jobs, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Henry David Thoreau, Einstein, Nikola Tesla, and Darwin all went on walks and let their mind wander.
“Never go to bed without a request to your subconscious.” — Thomas Edison
Have you experienced that moment when you couldn’t solve a problem and slept over it and got it the next morning? It’s because the unconscious mind worked on it while you were asleep.
Edison used something called the hypnagogic state to solve problems. It’s the state in between sleeping and being awake.
He would hold a metal ball in his hand and fall asleep on a chair and then when he was just about to fall asleep, his muscles would relax and the ball would fall off his hand, waking him up.
Einstein would sleep a lot, and a fun fact he also came up with the theory of relativity in a dream first before he completely formulated it.
3. Ask questions
‘How to represent 3D images on a 2D plane?’
That’s a question which dominated Leonardo Davinci’s life. It resulted in him painting some of the greatest masterpieces in history, like the Mona Lisa.
Steve Jobs just took an existing cell phone and asked a very simple question: how can we improve it to make it better — or the best?
It’s just sometimes just these simple questions running in your head which get your mind to think and come up with great ideas.
The question which drives Mr.Beast is just; How can I make this video better?’ Pretty simple, but it works.
School has subconsciously taught us to think of only one possibility, as for tests there is only one right answer most of the time.
This is why asking questions which make you think in different ways is important.
Ask yourself what other alternatives or ways of doing it are. One thing Edison did was he never settled on one possibility, he would think of as many options as possible.
That’s why I wrote like 10–15 headlines before choosing this one.
what-if questions can be supremely useful to think of multiple possibilities.
Some examples-
- ‘What if I sing this song at two times the speed?’
- ‘What if I sing this song with a high pitch?’
- ‘What if I sing this song like Justin Beiber?’
or even just asking-
‘What are five other ways of doing this’
Questions are supreme.
4. Watch What You Consume
I mentioned creativity is connecting the dots. But to connect the dots we need to have dots in the first place(no shit Sherlock).
This is why what you consume matters a lot. The more diverse the sources of input, the better.
Ideas build off ideas. You need to consume to produce ideas.
Your thoughts are the inputs of your sources of input —
What you read/watch/listen to, who you talk to, and where you are etc.
It’s no surprise, Thomas Edison would read so much that watermelons were squashed to dust. (don’t ask me what that was)
“I didn’t read a few books, I read the library.” — Thomas Edison
(if that quote doesn’t sound cool idk what does)
“When I want to discover something, I begin by reading up everything that has been done along that line in the past.” — Thomas Edison
Creative people seem to have a diverse source of input, as they followed their curiosity and weren’t limited to a single field.
Steve Jobs had an interest in arts, literature and tech. It was the way in which he combined art and technology that made him the innovator of the century.
Edison had a diverse source of interest which helped with connecting the dots. He was happy to combine electrical, metallurgical, and chemical knowledge (both practical and academic) along with machining skills to solve problems.
Just to think of ideas no one else Mr beast would literally just go through a dictionary and use random words he read to come up with ideas.
5. Lower your standards and Create The Frick Out
There’s a famous story about a university classroom.
On the first day, the students were grouped into two groups — The quantity group and the quality group.
The Quality group had to submit one perfect image at the end of the year, while the quantity group had to submit a hundred images.
Guess where all the best images came from? It came from the quantity group.
Quality does matter. But I think for beginners like me the best thing is to just experiment and create. That’s how we get better and more creative.
Try new things, make a ton of mistakes, and learn from them.
There’s no use if you read this article but don’t set aside time to do the most important thing — create.
Just choose your medium of expression (sport, painting, writing, music whatever) and create the frick out. Block some time in your calendar and just create.
One of the reasons I’m uploading daily this week is for this reason.
I had high standards. I said to myself I was a perfectionist, and I’m trying to make something worth quality.
Perfectionism was an excuse. I just cared too much about what other people thought of me.
The truth is as a beginner there was no chance I would create anything award-winning.
Learning to lower my standards and even upload a mediocre(by my standard) article felt uncomfortable, but I’m glad I did it.
Picasso created thousands of pieces of art, and few are considered to be his “great works.” Edison had 1,900 patents, and only a handful we would recognize. Albert Einstein published 248 scientific articles, only a few of which are what got him on the map for his theory of relativity.
If you do enough experiments, the odds are in your favour.
I published a new article every Monday and every Thursday at JamesClear.com. The longer I stuck with this schedule, the more I realized that I had to write about a dozen average ideas before I uncovered a brilliant one. — James Clear(bestselling author)
6. Create Constraints to boost Creativity
Creative deadlines should be hard enough to make you stretch, not hard enough to make you snap
Dr. Seuss was challenged to write an entertaining children’s book using only 50 different words. The result was a little book called Green Eggs and Ham.
The more we limit ourselves, the more resourceful we become.
“You can’t improvise on nothing, man; you’ve gotta improvise on something.”
— Charles Mingus
In football, if you limit yourself to less space you have to force yourself to get better at skills and depend less on speed.
Creating constraints helps you in thinking in ways you usually never thought of.
There’s also creating deadlines which has helped me punch writer’s block on the nose and write more.
We tend to finish work by the deadline we give ourselves. Set a deadline 10 days later and you will only finish work 10 days later. Set the deadline in two days and you will complete the work in two days.
7. Choose Your Environment
The environment you are in influences the way you think.
- Larger places act as catalysts for thinking big.
- Spending time in nature also helps, some of the greatest thinkers spent a lot of time in nature.
- If you work in places where you meet other people and end up sharing ideas that are even better.
- Having green or blue colours in your environment is said to help(Tho I don’t think it’s that big of a deal).
That’s Seven Things which can help boost your creativity.
Writing this article was of help to me and I hope it was for you too.
(If you liked this article you just might like this one:
3 Counter-Intuitive Ideas That Will Change the Way You Look At Productivity)
Thanks for reading, I’ll catch you in the next one :)
