Most of us believe creativity is innate but it isn’t! It’s just the misconception associated with its meaning.
Creativity is not all about art & design, but it’s simply giving to the world something they never had. Like Steve Jobs’s iPhone, before iPhone nobody thought about portable phone devices & now almost everyone has it or Pablo Picasso’s work of art which is now a part of human legacy. Even Android OS that revolutionised Smartphone industry & changed our idea about mobile phones.
I’ll give you a simpler example I recently read somewhere. In a physics class, the professor asked a question “How do you measure the height of a building with a barometer?” Well it’s a complex one if you follow the conventional scientific approach taught at school. One of the simplest answers given by a student was “You take the barometer to the top of the building, tie a rope to it & lower it to the ground, then pull it back & measure the length of the rope.” This is simply out of the box thinking!
Sometimes you need to deviate from the conventional ways to come up with something new. In today’s age, every business needs innovation to survive. Nokia initially rejected the idea of the Smartphone & today you know where it ended up or BlackBerry a victim of its self created market trend of feature rich mobile phones.
So how can you be creative?
It starts with your subconscious mind, back there you might be thinking that you are not creative; you need to get that thing out & start believing you’re creative. Things you put in your subconscious mind affect your abilities drastically, it’s a totally different topic you can simply Google it to know more.
“If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will.”
Be humble & passionately curious. None of us are knowledgeable enough to know everything. So just gather as much knowledge & data as you can. Just glance through but read as much as you can. Having a reading habit will help you come across a lot of new things. Don’t avoid fiction! It’s creative so please don’t miss out on it.
Tip: Try Speed Reading & Mind Mapping.
Learn new words; you’ll get creative once your brain starts associating things with new words. You haven’t done this so since long, & this process of the human brain is one of the reasons why we are more creative during our childhood.
“The more knowledge you have; the better you’ll improvise.”
Get out of your comfort zone. The next two will tell you how.
Avoid being monotonous whenever possible. Take a new route back home, unschedule your weekends, impromptu shopping sprees, try out a new cafe or a new dish, a hiking trip on weekend. Listen to different genres of music.
“Variety is the spice of life.”
Ideas are like puzzle pieces; you have one piece while the other ones are just floating around & you need to find them! These other pieces may be anything from an event to a simple new word. So visit new places, meet new people & get to know them.
Go & sit at a cafe, absorb the ambiance and observe the big idea crowd. Attend a Stand-up comedy show or see an improve piece, a trip to the art gallery, painting or photography exhibit. There’s a lot happening around, you’ll never know if you never visit;
“You never know what’s around the corner until you are there.”
It’s all about working smart. Drudgery doesn’t add to your productivity, it’s just wasted time. Start your projects early so that you can come up with ingenious ways but don’t forget to keep extra time for contingencies. If your project permits, add some creativity but definitely not when it comes to accounting!
“There’s always a better & easier way of getting things done.”
Now with all that stuffed into your head, your imagination won’t have any boundaries! And that’s what you actually needed to be creative.
“Boundless Imagination”
Article by Avik