Post based on the book: Creativity Now: Get Inspired, Create Ideas and Make Them Happen!
Getting in the state of mind that invites new ideas:
Music – Baroque music with 60 cycles per second (frequency of alpha state) is frequency associated with creativity, for solving problems or putting yourself in better mood choose upbeat music because you will always get better results in anything after thinking positive thoughts. Lastly if you want to experiment a bit, whenever you are already feeling creative put a song you would not normally put and do that two or three separate occasions, each time using the same music, then when you lack creative thinking just put that song to create the mood by association.
Go away – if you don’t have time for a vacation somewhere on the remote beach just take a walk to the park, lay in your bathtub, find an unpopular coffee shop, go to the library or a church or if you can swap home with a friend for a couple of days. Go away, find your peace, increase your blood flow by walking and clear your mind.
Play – you have to enjoy the process and you will probably come up with unexpected ideas, to return to the state of creativity that children have naturally we have to do what they do – play. Try also expressing your ideas on the paper first, like you used to just draw anything, after all reconnecting your hand and your brain stimulates creativity.
“Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once we grow up.” -Pablo Picasso
Which leads me to a very interesting video I saw that is just about that:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjwUn-aA0VY&w=420&h=315]Surround yourself with images and items that can stimulate your creativity like inspirational quotes, posters, postcards, plants, streetcomb photos (your photos of interesting things along the streets you are walking on), swipe files (collection of interesting ads), goals board… change them now and then because ofter some time they will lose their power.
You know there is for sure someone who already went through the problems you are going so the best and the shortest way is to find a mentor who can push you or read the books on how other artists overcame this problem.
Allow yourself to daydream and record interesting night dreams. A lot of artists got their biggest ideas in their night dreams. For increasing creativity it helps even to just take a nap.
Actual methods:
When brainstorming remember that quantity counts, no judging is allowed, write every idea and don’t be afraid to build on other ideas. When you need fresh ideas you can always turn even to people who are not from your field/culture, children or elderly people.
Force a word or picture association. Pick random words or pictures and try to connect them with your challenge, it may spark a new idea. However when you come up with the idea don’t stop for the first one because you can most probably come up with even better one. Set yourself a limit on how many ideas you have to produce in a limited time. Even better – combine ideas!
Explore the problem with questions like Why?, Who?, What?, Where? and When? and improve it by relating the important trends of the time to your product (www.google.com/trends).
Breakthroughs are usually result of teamwork so try to collaborate as much as possible and try to make your team diverse because the best collaborator has strengths that you lack.
You can get this book here:
