Business Tips & How To's
5 Ways To Become More Creative
July 31, 2018 - Business Tips & How To's
Regardless of the kind of work we do, creativity is the spice of life and we must strive to extract its essence everyday. But not all of us are built to harvest this spice, either due to the fear of the unknown or because life never conditioned us to explore it.
In this blog, we’ll describe 5 ways you can juice your creativity, challenge it and push it to the limits, with some curated efforts.
1. Get Uncomfortable
Consume media content that’s way outside your comfort zone or area of interest. This could include watching unfamiliar documentaries or foreign-language films without subtitles, listening to offbeat music or even just reading YouTube or Twitter comments (in monitored dosage, it’s a different high altogether!) The aim is to activate the brain’s lateral thinking which often sparks creativity.
2. Create ‘Mood’
Listening to classical music is always great. The genre is designed to stimulate the mind and induce imagination. You can experiment with speakers or earphones – each has a different effect on the mind.
Lighting has been found to be another major influencer. Contrary to what might seem, dim light often helps the mind dip and wander off shamelessly.
3. Take A Walk
Going out on walks invites different mood accelerators. The ambience helps the mind lose a little focus, only to lift the intense pressure of thinking in silence.
Research suggests that the colours blue and green light up the creative corners of the brain; and where else would one find these in abundance more than the on streets and in nature?
You might be getting the idea that creativity has a lot to do with solitude… but not quite!
4. Expand Your Horizons
Engaging with people outside your ‘project’ results in brilliant ideas too. It can be surprising what comes out of a discussion with kids. Children think uninhibitedly; norms are rarely an obstacle to their wishes! Because it’s not ‘boxed’ thinking, often it spurns innovation.
Speak with a total outsider to your field of work and toss around some ideas for input. If nothing, you’ll at least get an insight into how convincing or flawed your ideas are.
5. Keep Moving
Steer away from stagnancy. Agreed that it sounds big and is much much harder to do. But there are so many ways this can become part of your system and who knows, you might actually develop a liking for it.
Keep restructuring your everyday routine: eating, sleeping, exercising, socialising.
Redecorate the space you live in or even better, move out!
Pick a character like Johnny Depp, Shashi Tharoor, Oprah or Spongebob Squarepants and take on their persona for the day. Become a method actor – walk like them, talk like them, try to think like them; give yourself the importance you ascribe to them.
Start talking to new people – the kind you would perceive as weird, uninteresting or with opposing views.
When you begin to feel extra comfortable in a setting, it can sometimes be good to move away from it.
Remember, creativity lies is in seeking new experiences, making connections and allowing realisations to strike. That’s how ideas are born.
Pahi Gangwar
Graphic Designer
