How to find ideas and develop your creativity?
18 January 2014
Read by 3919 persons
For entrepreneurs and managers who constantly need to use their creativity, the pressure to come up with ideas is high: it's the key to success, regardless of your position, profession, and field for expressing your creativity. Finding new ideas or angles on recurring problems... finding new business ideas... product ideas... process ideas... communication ideas: there are many areas.
However, sometimes you may run out of ideas. Even by discussing with others, even by doing research, even by looking at what is already being done, sometimes you find yourself facing "the blank page", and this feeling of emptiness 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 tips have been exhausted, and on the other hand, to develop your creativity overall.
Change your environment and the conditions of your reflection
If you are running out of ideas, it may simply be due to the environment in which you are thinking: in what places and under what conditions do you generally try to find ideas? During meetings, in the presence of colleagues, alone in your office...?
If you can't find ideas in these places and situations, completely change location to change 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 do not really matter. What matters is to change not the method of reflection, but the conditions and the environment of the reflection. In other words, starting to think in an impromptu place at an impromptu moment releases the pressure inherent in creative work.
Think... without thinking
This method involves doing any activity while letting your brain wander from one idea to another. The two activities are done at the same time. The advantage is that this frees up resources to catch a new wave of ideas, and to work intensely on polishing and building it. This without forbidding yourself from thinking about something else and then returning to the subject.
Once again, this releases pressure: you have less stress about time passing, or the idea not coming.
"Cut" an idea per minute
The other method for finding ideas or developing your creativity is the opposite of the first. It involves putting yourself in a position to have to find not one but a maximum of ideas during the activity you are doing. That is, during the duration of a jog, during the duration of a journey, during the duration of a shower.... It all depends on what environment you choose.
With this approach, the goal is to produce ideas like a lumberjack cutting logs. The approach is clearly quantitative: it is about volume, hence the objective of "cutting" an idea per minute... but be careful to be able to note these ideas very quickly. None must escape!
Then comes the qualitative aspect. You are certainly aware that no idea is bad in itself. Also, once your creativity session is over, specify those of the ideas you quickly noted, 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, reread your notes and see what you can do with them: if some ideas do not seem feasible to you, ask yourself why. And what could be the solutions to make them feasible. These ideas may be the great ideas you were waiting for!
Paola Tumbarello
Directrice ExeKutive.biz
However, sometimes you may run out of ideas. Even by discussing with others, even by doing research, even by looking at what is already being done, sometimes you find yourself facing "the blank page", and this feeling of emptiness 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 tips have been exhausted, and on the other hand, to develop your creativity overall.
Change your environment and the conditions of your reflection
If you are running out of ideas, it may simply be due to the environment in which you are thinking: in what places and under what conditions do you generally try to find ideas? During meetings, in the presence of colleagues, alone in your office...?
If you can't find ideas in these places and situations, completely change location to change 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 do not really matter. What matters is to change not the method of reflection, but the conditions and the environment of the reflection. In other words, starting to think in an impromptu place at an impromptu moment releases the pressure inherent in creative work.
Think... without thinking
This method involves doing any activity while letting your brain wander from one idea to another. The two activities are done at the same time. The advantage is that this frees up resources to catch a new wave of ideas, and to work intensely on polishing and building it. This without forbidding yourself from thinking about something else and then returning to the subject.
Once again, this releases pressure: you have less stress about time passing, or the idea not coming.
"Cut" an idea per minute
The other method for finding ideas or developing your creativity is the opposite of the first. It involves putting yourself in a position to have to find not one but a maximum of ideas during the activity you are doing. That is, during the duration of a jog, during the duration of a journey, during the duration of a shower.... It all depends on what environment you choose.
With this approach, the goal is to produce ideas like a lumberjack cutting logs. The approach is clearly quantitative: it is about volume, hence the objective of "cutting" an idea per minute... but be careful to be able to note these ideas very quickly. None must escape!
Then comes the qualitative aspect. You are certainly aware that no idea is bad in itself. Also, once your creativity session is over, specify those of the ideas you quickly noted, 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, reread your notes and see what you can do with them: if some ideas do not seem feasible to you, ask yourself why. And what could be the solutions to make them feasible. These ideas may be the great ideas you were waiting for!
Paola Tumbarello
Directrice ExeKutive.biz
