{"id":4328,"date":"2020-10-06T14:06:53","date_gmt":"2020-10-06T14:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/?p=4328"},"modified":"2021-09-19T15:35:06","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T15:35:06","slug":"creativity-tools-and-techniques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/creativity-tools-and-techniques\/","title":{"rendered":"Creativity Tools and Techniques to Spark Inspiration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
We all want to be creative thinkers.
Not only can it help us with personal passion projects, but professionally too.
If you want to develop your leadership capability, for example, creative thinking is an underappreciated skill.
So what are the tools and techniques that help us think outside the box?
Let’s take a look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I worked as a physiotherapist, creative thinking wasn’t particularly necessary for the role.
Upon reaching a diagnosis, a treatment plan was followed until rehabilitation goals were achieved.
Lateral thinking was intermittently necessary in cases of misdiagnosis or stalled progress, but it wasn’t a skill I sought to actively develop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Upon changing careers, however, first to freelance marketing and now marketing, it’s become a far more important consideration.
The ability to creatively combine words into a compelling freelance article directly impacted my bottom line.
And so too, my capacity to craft engaging marketing campaigns is the difference between client success and failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whatever your role, developing flexible thinking skills and new mental models<\/a> will help you thrive. Some of the following suggestions may seem slightly esoteric, but remember, you’re trying to encourage creative insight, and if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get the same results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These might not be groundbreaking methods, but they’ve worked well for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It might sound obvious, but creative capacity is always enhanced by genuine curiosity. Creative thinking is simply a muscle which must be trained, and this technique employed by James Altucher<\/a> could be part of a Rocky Balboa montage for mental workouts,<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Many people need idea therapy. Not so that they can come up with great ideas right this second (although maybe you will) but so that people can come up with ideas when they need them.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Every day Altucher writes down 10 new ideas to exercise his creative chops. Possibly the single most useful tool for increasing creativity is journaling. I was fascinated to read that one of my favourite authors used this technique as a writing prompt to kickstart his creative process. In Zen in the Art of Writing<\/a> (a must-read), Bradbury explains,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The following creativity tools and techniques should do just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n11 creativity tools and techniques<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Curiosity <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
When you feel forced into something, dragged kicking and screaming, it becomes extremely difficult to generate new insights.
The internal resistance you feel manifests in a distinct lack of ideas.
This shouldn’t be the case for personal projects, it’s imperative to find a genuinely interesting angle when approaching professional problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n2. Ten new ideas a day<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Doing this every day just like stretching and stretching your physical body.
The first few ideas might be easy but the final few reps, or in this case, ideas, will become increasingly difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n3. Journaling<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
I approached this as a sceptic, and it was only after reading Julia Cameron’s<\/a> cult classic The Artist’s Way and experiencing the benefits first hand, that I finally admitted its value.
All day we exist in a state of perpetual thought<\/a>, which often becomes repetitive and stuck in unhelpful loops.
Morning Pages help release this blockage, providing the extra capacity to forge new mental connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n4. Wordplay<\/h3>\n\n\n\n