15*15 CREATIVITY EXERCISE SERIES — 10

Invent 15 Things That Will Tremendously Accelerate Your Imagination

Ladies and gentlemen;

In this series (15*15), I am very excited to design and present you 15 adventures and challenges in 15 days. The goal of these challenges is to help you expand your imagination and exercise your muscles of creativity.

I am developing these challenges in real-time — I hope you do enjoy and benefit from these exercises. And I hope you are not tired. This is the 10th day and 10th installment of that series.

You can find the previous episodes/installments here:

Your Challenge: Invent 15 things that you can use as a bicycle for your imagination

In this challenge, I want you to think of and create 15 new things (products, tools, processes, or innovations) that you can use as a bicycle for your imagination. That is, to develop and exercise your imagination.

The inspiration for this challenge comes from Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs explains how tool building is one of the major factors that separate humans from animals and primates. He states:

“What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.” ~ Steve Jobs

You can see his talk on this topic here:

So, we will take inspiration from Steve Jobs in this challenge and think about 15 tools, inventions, or innovations that we can create to expand our imagination. These products or innovations will be used as bicycles for our minds.

Strategies to get started: How to establish a system to expand on your imagination

The wider challenge is actually about expanding our minds and imagination. How do we achieve this? Can we think of ways to extend our capabilities for imagination? Can we get support from any inventions, products, devices, tools, methods, or processes to expand our imagination?

To get you started, here are some potential ideas:

• You can create a personal system of creative habits. You can allocate time every day in your calendar for creating creative assets. This does not need to be long — you can achieve a lot if you do this for half an hour every day.

• You can use a voice recorder to capture your ideas and voice in real-time. You can use a camcorder to shoot short videos and share your reflections, ideas, or insights with the world.
• You can use your cell phone to innovate and create new things. You can create your own blog, Medium platform, podcast, or YouTube channel to expand your imagination and create a constant stream of new ideas.

• You can think of yourself as a one-person company (or small business) and you can create your own digital media. Here is a guide on this:

• You can use notebooks to capture your new and fresh thinking. You can use diary keeping or doodling to create new ideas, stories, or reflections. If you do this constantly, you will have a vast library of exciting ideas. Think of it as creating a catalog for your seeds for innovation.

• You can create a playlist of YouTube videos, songs, movies, podcasts, and documentaries that will inspire you and expand your thinking and imagination. For example, here is a great IMDb list of films to expand your imagination:

• You can create an inspiring collection of best books, web sites, thinkers, and articles out there. Who can help you jump to the next level of your thinking and creativity?

• You can follow the Journal of Curiosity, Imagination, and Inspiration to get inspired and expand your creative skills through exercises:

For the purposes of this exercise, please do not delve into too much detail. Aim for 3–4 minutes of writing for each invention, tool, or method. You do not need to put all the details — just provide a snapshot (you might list several bullet points). If you want to delve in and go deeper, leave it for later.

You will benefit a lot from exercising your creative muscles and getting out of your comfort zone. We need to give our brain creative challenges every day. If we make this a habit, the process will help us rewire our brains to be more open to creativity. It is important to start very small and treat these exercises as pure play. They are just small experiments in imagination.

All masterpieces start with small steps. Small actions are all that you need. You will jump in the water without thinking. Thinking too much hurts your creativity because it paralyzes you. Every creative act starts with taking a leap of faith into the unknown.

I hope we can all be inventors and innovators.

See you in the 11th episode of this journey tomorrow.

Fahri

Fahri Karakas is the author of the Self-making Studio. You can explore more here.