How to Boost Your Creativity & Innovation Muscles.

7 easy techniques to spark creativity.

Last month was WCID — World Creativity & Innovation Day! If you have not heard of this event before, then let me illuminate — this is a date designated by the United Nations (April 21) to raise awareness about the importance of creativity and innovation in problem solving. The aim is to get the whole world thinking out-of-the-box to help advance UN’s sustainable development goals, also known as the “global goals”.

You might not have such lofty goals, or time to solve world problems. However, everyone can agree that a dose of inspiration and innovative ideas do have many personal benefits — promotions, higher income, higher job satisfaction. If nothing doing something new just brings back the joy in our lives.

It is easy to get bogged down in daily routines, so here are 7 easy exercises to boost your creativity and innovation, irrespective of age or gender. Most can be done from home, so you can practice them even during the self-isolation that is currently being enforced in most parts of the globe!

Techniques to increase creativity:

1. Stop firefighting — Guard your Time 2. Fuel your brain. (Books) 3. Ditch technology. 4. Kitchen Challenge. 5. Play with Kids. 6. Look for inspiration. 7. Role Play.

1] Stop Firefighting.

One major reason why we never have time to “ideate” or implement new ideas is a severe lack of time. Modern society seems to revel in becoming a martyr to “busyness”. Unless you work in a hospital/law enforcement or have young kids at home, or work in the White House you should have pockets of free time. But most folks don’t and run around with 10,001 items on their to-do list. Most people don’t even know where time flies and spend entire weeks just doing chores!

Creativity is stifled if you are firefighting all the time!

So make a rough daily calendar, and assign time slots to all mandatory items like cooking, working, sleeping, exercise. Don’t schedule every minute, broad slots will do. You will be surprised how much time you waste on unnecessary items and tasks that you hate — eliminate as much as possible. When I first did this, I found I was being so inefficient about a couple of items and had accepted events because I was too lazy/embarrassed to say I did not want to go. Seeing my calendar bursting with unwanted items hit home.

Guard your time. With the exception of family time, would you do it if you had an alternate gig paying $1000/hour? If not, then reject it!

2] Fuel your brain.

There is a principle in software and programming — GIGO. Stands for garbage in, garbage out. This is true for innovation as well. Unless you open your life to new people and ideas, you cannot expect genius results.

The simplest and cheapest way to achieve this are through books. Read multiple genres, read for the joy of reading, read to escape into new worlds and ideas. You will be surprised how much you can learn from new authors.

For example, Agatha Christie (mysteries) taught me about human nature and motivations far more than any psychology book. Robin Cook’s thrillers taught me tons about medical practices, hospital administration and being healthy. Illustrated children books have shown me how simple ideas and vivid colors in a 10-page book can spark endless laughter and joy, so kids are addicted to read the same book in an infinite loop! :)

If you don’t want to spend a fortune on books, then look in your local library, visit Netgalley for early reviewer copies or visit the website for Project Gutenberg.

Excellent book recommendations are listed below:

3. Ditch Technology.

I work in software, and absolutely agree that internet and social media have made tremendous positive impacts to our life. However, the occasional detox is a great way to boost creativity.

You don’t have to become a sage in the Himalayas, but at least ditch electronics for a couple of hours on the weekend, or practice a 15-minute slot of “daily offline time. Gadgets allow us to multi-task so much, that we cannot focus on any single item and end up doing everything in mediocre terms. World famous, rich personalities like Bill Gates and Tim Ferris recommend solitude as an exercise for innovation, so why should we mere mortals question its effectiveness?

I will be honest, the first time I tried a digital detox, I hated it and caved in within 5.5 minutes. But over time it can actually be quite enjoyable. Some tasks to try instead are: >> write long-form. Build a gratitude journal or daily diary or color a crayon book. >> Take a 10-minute walk around your house, but leave your phone at home. Enjoy the gorgeous sounds and views of spring. >> Daydream. Meditate. Or spend 10 minutes reliving a joyous moment in your life — the day you met your significant other, your first day at work, birth of your child, your last vacation, etc. Just use your brain for thinking your own thoughts, instead of inundating it in external stimulus.

4] Kitchen Challenge.

Choose 2 random items from the fridge or kitchen closet and create a full meal (Lunch or dinner) using those ingredients as the main items. This seems silly, but it allows us to work with our hands, and be creative.

Or like me, decide not to buy any groceries for 2 weeks and just eat what is already available in our homes. Most Americans throw more food than they eat, so this is a great way of clearing your shelves and exercising your brain in new ways. It is also so much fun for the whole family! You might also find new recipes you love that you would never have tried otherwise. For example, my husband and I found that sweet potato tastes 1000x better when cooked in coconute oil and that brussel sprouts fritters taste better than potato chips! Also, adding flax seed powder enhances the taste of Dosa batter (and indian pancake mix) Yum!

The side benefits is that because such type of cooking helps us step away from thinking about work deadlines and items, we are so much more productive when we get back!

5] Play with Kids.

Kids are filled with curiosity and wonder. Only after we grow up, do we start to lose our creative impulses in an effort to “fit in” with society. I love going to the park with my niece as she is bursting with questions and notices things that I would never ever have registered.

Sure, kids ask awkward questions and can often get cranky, but spending focused “play time” with them can take you back into a world of unbridled imagination and joy that nothing else can match! If nothing, you will have a whale of a time!

6] Look for inspiration.

Innovation is everywhere, if you know to look with the right lens. You will be surprised how many mundane things have made millions of dollars in revenue for their inventors, ideas without patents but filling a market need.

Some places to look are sites like Kickstarter, Product Hunt and Etsy. Just look at the top selling items. Or choose a random word from the dictionary, type it into Amazon and look at the top 5 results. Note the categories they belong to, like electronics or garden furniture or anything else. Now click the category and look at the top selling item in those categories.

Art museums and public gardens are other evergreen sources of inspiration. You don’t even need to visit physically, as many of the world’s largest museums have virtual tours and videos posted for free online. It does not matter if you are an art buff or not, the physical act of watching something new will fire new neurons and thinking pathways that will help you think out of the ordinary.

7] Role Play.

If you ever stuck on a problem or suffering from writer’s block, use a role-play exercise. Imagine you were Bill Gates or Leonardo ds Vinci, what would you do? If you were a tribal chief from the Amazon jungle, and this was your first visit to a cosmopolitan city, how would you approach the problem?

This seems like a bizarre way to innovate, especially as tribal chiefs would never think about creativity exercises. However this method strangely works very well because stepping into a different skin often allows us to shed the mental models that hold us back. Just like actors find tremendous success when they use a stage name, so they can perform without inhibitions.

So, what are the techniques that you use to turbocharge your creativity and sense of innovation? Does your company have any best practices to spur innovation? Respond via comments.

Tags: #WCID, #WCID2020 , #Creativity , #Innovation , #Inspiration