How to find ideas and develop your creativity?

For entrepreneurs and managers who constantly need to use their creativity, the pressure to come up with ideas is high: it's crucial for success, regardless of one's position, profession, and field for expressing creativity. Finding new ideas or perspectives on recurring problems... finding new business ideas... product ideas... process ideas... communication ideas: there are many areas. However, sometimes we experience a lack of ideas. Even by discussing with others, even by researching, even by looking at what already exists, sometimes we find ourselves facing "the blank page" and this feeling of nothingness is a source of uncontrollable stress.

Here are some tips that will allow you, on the one hand, to find new ideas when all the classic methods have been exhausted and, on the other hand, to generally develop your creativity.

1- Change the environment and the conditions of your reflection
If you are experiencing a lack of ideas, it may simply be due to the environment in which you are thinking: where and under what conditions do you generally try to find ideas? During meetings, in the presence of colleagues, alone in your office...? If you don't find ideas in these places and situations, completely change your location to modify the conditions and environment of your reflection. If you usually think alone in your office, go outside and go to any other open place: parks, streets, nearby cafes. Or wait until the end of the day and go for a good jog or a bike ride or a walk. The place and the methods you choose don't really matter. What matters is to change not the method of reflection, but the conditions and environment of the reflection.
In other words, starting to think in an impromptu place at an impromptu moment releases the inherent pressure on creatives.

2- Think... without thinking
This method involves carrying out any activity while letting your brain wander from one snippet of an idea to another. The two activities are carried out at the same time. The advantage is that it frees up resources to catch a new wave of ideas, and to intensely work on polishing and building it. This without forbidding yourself from thinking about something else and then returning to the subject. Once again, this relieves pressure: you have less stress about time passing, or the idea not coming.


3- "Cut" an idea per minute
The other method for finding ideas or developing one's creativity is the opposite of the first. It involves putting yourself in a situation where you have to find not one but a maximum of ideas during the activity you are carrying out.
That is to say, during the duration of the jog, during the duration of a journey, during the duration of a shower... It all depends on what environment you choose. From this approach, the goal is to cut out ideas like a lumberjack cutting logs. The approach is clearly quantitative: it's about doing volume, hence the objective of "cutting" an idea per minute... be careful, however, to be able to note these ideas very quickly. None must escape! Then comes the qualitative aspect.

4- Evaluate your ideas
You are certainly aware that not every idea is bad in itself. Also, once your creativity session is over, specify the ones you quickly noted down, so that you can immediately remember what they were later. Then let some time pass: a few hours, a night, in any case enough time for your mind to have moved on to many other things in the meantime. The next day, review your notes and see what you can do with them: if some ideas don't seem feasible, ask yourself why. And what could be the solutions to make them feasible. These ideas may be the brilliant ideas you were waiting for!

Philippe Montant CEO ExeKutive.biz