We all need to attend a daily creative gym

Creativity is a muscle you can exercise every day

Bonus: A creativity exercise you can apply in 15 minutes

When I look at the mirror, I do not see a creative person.

I see someone who is striving to be creative.

I am trying to get better by creating lots of ideas.

I am on a path towards establishing generative systems of work.

Creativity is a mindset: It involves a playful attitude to problem-solving and a willingness to explore multiple solutions.

We do not need to be artists to be creative. We can be more creative in our work as professionals.

Everyone can be creative. We were wildly creative when we were children. We were always playing, experimenting, imagining, and fooling around. Through an unfortunate exposure to uniformity and standardization in our educational lives, we lost our creative souls. We lost that open, foolish, curious sense of play in our lives. We need to reclaim our own creativity.

It all starts with a simple decision and some small actions that we can take in our daily lives.

We do not automatically receive some inspiration in our lives. Therefore, we should not wait for inspiration for great ideas.

Creating great ideas is a function of creating lots of ideas and connecting them together. It is not magic — it is just a lot of hard work.

To avoid mediocrity, we need to go beyond obvious and conventional answers. We need to practice generative thinking and open up the solution space as far as we can.

To do this, we need to approach a problem from at least 10 different angles and perspectives.

Can we reframe or restructure or redefine the problem we are trying to solve?

In how many unique ways can we solve it?

How can we go outside the box?

How can we get free of our bias towards what is familiar and conventional?

What are some of the less obvious alternatives?

How can we deepen our understanding and get to the essence of the problem?

How can we connect different perspectives to arrive at a holistic solution?

How can we draw or visualize our solutions? Can we describe it in a diagram?

In generating ideas, we should not think in terms of feasibility or usefulness.

It is pure play and adventure we are seeking.

We are in search of varied and rich perspectives. We are searching for what is non-linear, interesting, and novel.

We are also searching for a huge volume of ideas because we know that originality emerges from the sheer quantity of ideas.

Thomas Edison was immensely productive and he held more than a thousand patents. He tried to come up with a minor invention every week. Mozart composed more than 600 pieces of music.

If you want to be innovative, you should make it a habit of creating at least 50 ideas every day.

Most of your ideas can be crap — it is totally fine.

In order to create a diamond idea, you need to deal with hundreds, thousands of charcoal ideas.

Massive quantity means more chances for cross-fertilizations and novel combinations. You just randomly combine lots of ideas with other ideas. It is pure probability theory, and you are increasing your chances.

Bonus Creativity Exercise: Write a short story by connecting unrelated things

Creativity is about connecting unrelated things.

Here is an exercise for you below.

Please look at the poster below and do the creative exercises:

First, you will write a short story using the following words:

Cinnamon

Ladder

Soap

Cat

Pencil

Please make sure you use all the words in your story.

You will be essentially connecting these unrelated things — and that is the very definition of creativity.

Second, after you write your story, I want you to illustrate your story.

You can use doodles, diagrams, sketch work, cartoons, concept maps, or pictures— as you like.

What matters is you use a visual language to share your story.

This will help you to move into a different mode of thinking. Shifting among diverse methods, and experimenting with different media will help you to get more creative.

I hope you play, create, and experiment with new ideas every day.

Let us finish with the words of Einstein:

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.”

Sincerely;

Fahri

Fahri Karakas is the author of Self-making Studio.

You can explore more here.