15*15 Creativity Exercise Series — 2

Invent 15 things using A4 paper

This is your opportunity to go on creative adventures of invention

I am delighted to continue my 15*15 creativity series with a new challenge.

In this series, I 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.

This is the second day of this adventure series.

As the challenges are not ready, my challenge is to develop them for you every day throughout these two weeks.

Your challenge will be to implement them. If you want to implement each 15-part challenge in detail, you will need about one hour.

Are you ready?

Our second-day challenge is entirely based on paper.

We tend to underestimate the power of paper in our lives. When we think about it, paper was one of the greatest inventions in history. It was the greatest force that shaped civilizations throughout centuries. Paper was at the heart of progress, learning, books, information, science, innovation, currencies, bureaucracy, technologies, and more.

Below is your paper-based challenge.

Your Challenge: Invent 15 things using paper

For this challenge, you will need 15 A4 papers in front of you.

Your task is to act as an inventor and create 15 different inventions made from paper.

You will use an A4 page for each invention.

You will repurpose each paper for one invention.

If you want a greater challenge on top of this; here is an additional goal: Your goal can be to increase the value of the paper as much as you can (through your inventions, products, artwork, stories, storytelling etc.). In other words, your goal is to create breakthrough value.

Remember: You can create breakthrough value by using your imagination. Your imagination has no boundaries. Think about the time when J.K Rowling first wrote her ideas on Harry Potter on paper. In a sense, this can be considered an invention based on paper. After thousands of iterations and several years, Harry Potter is now valued at $25billion. It all started with imagination and paper.

Now, it is your turn to imagine and increase the value of paper as much as you can. How will you do it?

What are some examples of inventions and ways to increase the value of an A4 paper?

Here are some alternatives to get you started and inspired:

• You can fold the paper in different shapes and do origami.
• You can cut the paper into pieces and reconnect them.
• You can create DIY projects or start craft projects based on paper.
• You can use a pen/pencil and write on the paper — which means you can create stories, poems, products, templates, a checklist, artwork, sketches, an invitation, a postcard, a CV, etc.
• Can you combine paper with other things to invent stationery products? Can you invent other things?
• You can color the paper or use multiple colors to make things exciting — you can create a painting or a flag for example.
• You can have a celebrity sign the paper, and voila! You are now holding something very valuable in your hands. It is all about perceived value and symbols (the same with money — which is just paper + meaning/symbol or institution/shared belief). Again, it all comes down to imagination and the story.
• To get more artistic inspiration check out the following resource:

Remember: You are doing this just to have fun. This is meant to be for fun. Just play and mess around. Improvise. Try to surprise yourself and your brain.

Are you ready for the challenge?

We benefit a lot from exercising our creative muscles. If you have done the exercise above, you will have strengthened your creative muscles 15 times.

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.

If you are interested, feel free to follow me for the next 15 days. Each day you will be involved in 15 small challenges. In the end, we will emerge from this process stronger and more creative.

See you in the third episode of this journey tomorrow.

I hope we can all be inventors and creators of breakthrough value.

Fahri

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