From the monthly archives: October 2011
So you’ve tried over and over to develop your ideas in your head. You may have even try to mentally visualise what your solution looks like. But if we go through the same processes in our head, we can sometimes become a victim of routined thinking and end up getting stuck!
This is where [...]
Necessity is the mother of invention. But do you really want to have all your ideas when you’re up against it?! We are equally able to produce great ideas when we are in a relaxed and happy state of mind. We can achieve this through being playful and maybe even recapturing some of our youthful [...]
The more information we have to draw upon, the more we are able to access new possibilities. If we stay stuck in a narrow minded world, when the time comes to solve challenges and explore new opportunities, our frame of reference is prohibitively restricting. It’s tough coming up new solutions using the same old information [...]
Looking at the opposite is a great way for reversing your perspective and provoking new solutions. There are many examples where a reverse viewpoint has led to a new solution:
Internet shopping comes to you instead of you going to the shop. Bashing the bottom of a ketchup bottle will only send the sauce to [...]
Sometimes, you just don’t feel creative. Everything seems to be more of a struggle than usual. Today is working out as one of those days for me.
My advice is not to fight it. Just accept that’s part of being human and look forward to tomorrow when you’ll have a fresh start!
To try and [...]
Yes it’s a classic. If you find a way of doing something that works, why bother going to the effort to change it? However, ways soon become outdated and there’s a slim chance of discovering new & better ways if you stay in your state of adequate bliss.
Here are a couple of examples of [...]
I’m sure we’re all very familiar with brainstorming. Get a bunch of people in a room and spurt out ideas until you find a new solution right?
But brainstorming seems to have become a throw away term in business and at worst becomes just another lackluster process for the meeting agenda. Unfortunately this means idea generation often gets conducted [...]
Today’s creativity tip is a little more philosophical than usual. Over the weekend I was working at an art fair on a stand with a quite inspirational sculptor. We got into some fairly in depth discussions about the meaning of creativity, self-realisation and the way in which we choose to live our lives.
Have you ever [...]
You wouldn’t skip a body warm up before a sports match, so why skip a mind warm up before thinking? A creative thinking warm up will loosen up your mind and get those synapses firing. It sounds simple but try it. It really will help improve the flexibility of your thought when working on [...]
The essence of creativity is doing something differently in a way that brings you joy.
Pure creative activities should bring you joy by their very nature… unless like me you try to smash your guitar in a violent rage when you can’t hit all the chords. But what about adding creativity to other less inspirational [...]
I was recently asked why children are so creative. After all, we’re still the same people we used to be. Why does our natural creativity disappear?
Well as kids, we don’t have any real pressures in life. There is no perceived need to be logical, sensible and always right (a skill that seems to develop [...]
Have you ever got so stuck in working away on a solution that you want to make it work whatever it takes? We can quite easily build up an emotional attachment to our ideas and this can be unhealthy. You just need to look at some of the people on Dragon’s Den who think their [...]
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