People are creative in some areas of their life and conformist in others.

Creativity is about having unconventional, but feasible, ideas. Simply having unconventional ideas is not being creative. There are a very large number of potentially unconventional ideas. The skill is being able to have unconventional ideas that can work.

Don’t be put off by other people’s judgement or criticism of your ideas or outputs. Many good ideas are not appreciated by others at first, and it often takes courage and perseverance to see them through to acceptance.

It requires less skill and effort to knock something down than it does to create and build. It is easier to criticize than it is to create something that can be criticized. Thus don’t be disheartened by criticism since what you are doing is worth far more than what the person criticizing is doing.

Great ideas don’t succeed just because they are great ideas. They need to be developed and thought about, and need a lot of hard work and dedication.

Good and successful ideas are often ones that are simple but concrete, unexpected but credible.

Great ideas or words of genius rarely arise fully formed. They usually start out as half formed ideas which are improved a step at a time until they eventually emerge almost unrecognizable from their initial conception.

We are not all the same. Some people get creative by following a highly structured approach, others just leap about. Most of us are somewhere in-between. If it works for you then do it your way. If you struggle being creative then maybe you should try shifting to being either more structured, or less so.

Much seeming spontaneous creativity is the result of extensive and constant experimentation, most of which fails. One of the best ways of having a great idea is to have a lot of ideas.

You need to work at being creative. Many people who go through a highly creative phase can often become very conservative and fixed in their ideas. It’s nothing to do with them getting older, it’s all to do with them no longer making the effort to be creative.

You need to sleep well and get exercise if you are to be generally creative during the day. Whilst a lack of sleep may occasionally spark some off the wall thoughts, you are far more likely to be creative after having slept well.

We often have a natural tendency to be negative about new ideas. To counter this, first focus on the potential benefits of a new idea before you consider the negative. Often there are useful aspects of ideas even when in the round they are flawed. If you simply launch into the negative you will miss any potential useful ideas that may be contained within them. Note that even when an idea is flawed in the round there are often aspects of it you can make use of.

When a new idea comes up to be judged, start by focusing on the positive aspects of the idea, then on other interesting aspects of the idea and possible variations of it, and only when you’ve exhausted these move on to potential issues or negative aspects of the idea. It is vital to keep any negative thoughts until the end otherwise they will prematurely kill not only the idea itself but also possibly very promising variations of it before they can be explored. Lots of good ideas get killed prematurely because of a too early focusing on the negatives.

Don’t continually have noise around you. If you are plugged in listening to music all the time you are unlikely to get much in the way of creative ideas, except possibly if you are listening to calming background or classical music that leaves your brain free to have random thoughts.

Don’t fill all your time with TV and being busy. You’ll never give your brain a chance to make itself heard. Sometimes do things with relative silence around you. You could be surprised at the useful and creative thoughts going on inside your head that will stay hidden from you unless you give them a chance to be heard.

When someone comes to you with what they think is a good idea, the types of responses that will demotivate them, and will kill or discourage new ideas include (1 of 3):

◦ ‘It’s been tried before.’
◦ ‘It’s not my/your responsibility.’
◦ ‘It won’t work.’
◦ ‘It will be too expensive.’

When someone comes to you with what they think is a good idea, the types of responses that will demotivate them, and will kill or discourage new ideas include (2 of 3):

◦ ‘Now is not the right time.’
◦ ‘Put it in writing.’
◦ ‘You might be right, but …’
◦ ‘It will take too long.’

When someone comes to you with what they think is a good idea, the types of responses that will demotivate them, and will kill or discourage new ideas include (3 of 3):

◦ ‘Others wouldn’t approve/agree.’
◦ ‘What we have works. Don’t fix or change it.’
◦ ‘It’s a stupid idea.’
◦ ‘It wouldn’t work here.’

When someone comes to you with what they think is a good idea, the types of responses that will encourage them include (1 of 2):

◦ ‘What options are there?’
◦ ‘How could we make it work?’
◦ ‘It’s a great idea, now what can we do to get it going?’

When someone comes to you with what they think is a good idea, the types of responses that will encourage them include (2 of 2):

◦ ‘What other ideas can you come up with?’
◦ ‘Who else has any suggestions?’
◦ ‘What can I do to help?’

Ways we lose our creative powers (1 of 2):

◦ Letting the approval of others be more important than our own. Ie. let other people’s opinions drive what we do and think.
◦ Always putting other people first. The best way to help others is to help ourselves first.
◦ Asking for permission when we should be deciding for ourselves.

Ways we lose our creative powers (2 of 2):

◦ Holding yourself back because you don’t want to take risks.
◦ Demanding guarantees, only progressing if you expect certainty.
◦ Stretching ourselves too far.

Principles that give us creative power (1 of 2):

◦ Free yourself from the expectations of others. Live your own life, and find your own destiny. Pursue what you love.
◦ Reclaim your creativity. Become curious and freethinking. Free your imagination to deal with life’s challenges.
◦ Think big. Have big dreams and goals.

Principles that give us creative power (2 of 2):

◦ Don’t be apologetic about what you want. Have a dream and go for it.
◦ Suspend disbelief. See opportunities and possibilities.
◦ Create options. Create choices to give you greater flexibility.
◦ Persist. Keep trying again and again and again. Keep learning from your mistakes.

Groups can be more creative than the individuals making up the group, or can be less creative. To be more creative everyone in the group must feel they can voice their opinions freely, feel comfortable about sharing information, and not feel precious about their own ideas; happy to have ideas built upon and morphed into something new. Groups which feel group identity is more important than group output will be less creative, as will groups where individuals are looking to promote, defend, or be reluctant to share their own ideas.

Analogies play a key role in creativity, because they suggest new directions or variations that may be useful. Most creative ideas are variations on a theme, but the variation is one that others have either not seen before in the particular context, or have not seen with sufficient clarity to be able to take advantage of or make practical use of. If you have a challenge you are looking to be creative about approaching, then use brainstorming type techniques to come up with direct analogies, lots of them, then use the different analogies, possibly in some mixed up way, to generate different ideas about how you might tackle the original challenge.

Much creativity arises from making connections between things that hadn’t previously been connected in order to satisfy some need. Being able to make conceptual comparisons and analogies between things that are seemingly unconnected is an important way of identifying new ways to do things.

Try to identify particular attributes or characteristics of whatever it is you want to be creative about, and then look to vary specific attributes and characteristics, one at a time or in groups, and see what ideas it stimulates.

A particular aspect of creativity is to make use of objects for things other than what they were created for. For example: take advantage of the shape of something, using it as a container or holder for example; use something as a tool, almost anything can be used as a hammer; break something down into its constituent parts and use the parts for something, the material on old clothes for example can be reused as coverings; turn objects into ornaments, possibly after some colorful and bright painting.

A useful mnemonic to bring to mind when looking to create new ideas by varying the attributes of some thing or some things you already have in mind – SCAMPER: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, Rearrange.

Compressed conflict involves identifying 2 conflicting words that capture the essence of what you are looking for, then look to see what other situations or analogies are also faced with this seeming conflict, and how they have gone about resolving it.

Spend some time on your own. Creativity flourishes in solitude. But not if there are distractions such as TV or radio. You need to be able to hear your own thoughts. But you also sometimes need to interact with people to help develop ideas and get fresh perspectives.

The best way to get a good idea is to have lots of ideas. In generating good ideas quantity often leads to quality. When you start to generate new ideas, keep going. It is only by continuing to try to generate new ideas that we often start to get into truly novel ideas.

A number of small variations can quickly lead to something very different to the original.

Good places to look for opportunities are in the things that inconvenience or annoy you – there are usually opportunities for making things better. If something bothers you, rather than get upset, think about what you can do about it.

Opportunities often exist in the little things that go unnoticed by most people. Be curious about anything that strikes you as odd, no matter how small.

Talking things through with someone who knows little about the particular subject matter because they won’t be constrained by existing ways of thinking about it.

Always have a notebook and pen with you so you can immediately write down any creative thoughts or ideas or weird thoughts that come to you. Do not rely on remembering them. Such thoughts often fleetingly pass through your mind, and even if they momentary have a great impact other thoughts will usually very quickly crowd them out, and often they won’t come back again. Having noted down thoughts into a notebook, you should then regularly review them and move them to somewhere more permanent, such as an ideas folder, or an action list.

Creativity thrives on wide ranging knowledge, curiosity about different topics, being willing to challenge the status quo, and letting go of judgments.

Reading a lot, particularly on different topics, and having many different types of experiences, increases the potential for creativity since it opens the mind to more concepts with which to draw analogies.

Do things you wouldn’t normally do. Try new games or activities you wouldn’t normally play or do. Go to events you wouldn’t normally go to. You don’t need to make a habit of them if you don’t enjoy them, but you should at least try many different things.

Meet people from different backgrounds. They will give you different perspectives on life.

Walk a lot. It is a mild form of exercise and gets oxygen into your brain. Moreover walking seems to facilitate getting your subconscious in touch with your conscious leading to many ideas occurring to you that would not have otherwise done so. Other forms of light exercise have a similar effect, cycling, swimming, gardening, jogging, tai chi, etc, but they are not all conducive to you jotting notes down, which you need to do if you are not to forget them.

Discuss ideas with other people. A lot of ideas come about as variations on a theme, and if you are discussing ideas with others you may well find they open up new avenues, or new avenues suggest themselves to you as a result of their different perspective.

You can stimulate your creativity by taking two random objects and think of some way they can be used together. Or look up two random words in a dictionary or encyclopaedia and look for ways of linking them together. Or take two contradictory ideas and then look at how you can reconcile the contradiction.

Different means of communicating use different parts of our brains. Use different means: write things by hand; type things into a computer; speak to others or into a tape or even just out loud to yourself. You will be more creative.

Some ideas for stimulating your creativity in general (1 of 4):

◦ Buy plain pots and vases and decorate and paint them;
◦ Try new foods and drinks;
◦ Experiment with cooking;
◦ Read magazines on topics you wouldn’t normally consider;

Some ideas for stimulating your creativity in general (2 of 4):

◦ Randomly look up words in a dictionary or articles in an encyclopaedia;
◦ Take an everyday object and think of unusually uses for it;
◦ Visit museums, zoos, art galleries;
◦ Visit bric-a-brac shops;

Some ideas for stimulating your creativity in general (3 of 4):

◦ Take a trip to the theatre or opera;
◦ Listen to a range of different types of music that you don’t normally listen to;
◦ Listen to different types of classical music;
◦ Do an evening class in some subject you know little about;

Some ideas for stimulating your creativity in general (4 of 4):

◦ Go listen to some lectures or attend some event;
◦ Do some DIY projects;
◦ Go out and fly a kite;
◦ Learn a new language, it usually puts ideas together in a different way.

If you are looking for creative ideas for something in particular pick out an object at random and then try to force a connection with it.

People who remember their dreams are generally more creative. Keep a notebook by you and jot down what you remember of your dreams when you wake up. Regularly doing so will lead to you improving your memories of your dreams.

You can set your subconscious off being creative by asking yourself specific questions. By regularly asking yourself a given question you increase the likelihood of your subconscious mulling it over, and ideas can then simply occur to you when you are not particularly expecting them. You can strengthen this by writing the questions down, and regularly reading them, or recording them and listening to them, or simply saying them out loud to yourself.

People who are happy or in a good mood are more creative and less prone to making errors.

Creativity is stimulated by having a passion about what you do. By having a real interest in it. If there is something you find interesting then experiment with it, play with it, explore it.

Put down a problem you want to solve, or a goal you want to achieve, and on a piece of paper with pre-numbered lines keep putting down ideas until you have a minimum of say 25 or 50. Initial ideas might not be feasible but if you keep looking additional ideas will emerge, and by combining ideas, or taking variations on themes, some good ideas could well arise. You can look to add further ideas the day or days after. Sort out or assess your ideas only after you have finished generating them. Sift through them, maybe with a multiple pass technique whereby at each pass you just tick off the better ones of those that are left. If further variations on a theme occur then just get them down. Or if you can link ideas together to get a better idea.

If you are looking for ideas relating to particular topic then try brainstorming with yourself (1 of 2):

◦ Try to see things from the viewpoint of a different time or place;
◦ Try to see things from the viewpoint of a different person;
◦ What would you do if you were omnipotent, and could do anything you wanted?
◦ Pick some words at random from a dictionary and try to relate them to whatever it is you are brainstorming;

If you are looking for ideas relating to particular topic then try brainstorming with yourself (2 of 2):

◦ Do a SWOT assessment: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats;
◦ List down assumptions or barriers and then look at what needs to be done to overcome them;
◦ Look at the opposite of some of the ideas you have;
◦ Use exaggeration: make things bigger, smaller, fatter, thinner, multiplied;
◦ Write ideas that come to you very quickly one after the other without thinking.