5 Ways To Improve Your Creative Thinking

Creativity is an important skill both in the workplace and outside of it. Creative thinking can help you develop innovative solutions to problems and take on new perspectives when working on tasks. You can improve this trait by learning about and applying creativity techniques and exercises. In this article, I will list 5 ways to improve your creative thinking!

What are creativity techniques? 

Creativity techniques represent methods that promote creative thinking and its associated skills, such as idea generation, open-mindedness and problem-solving. In the workplace, you may use these techniques for both collaborative and independent activities. For example, a team developing a new product, service or initiative may use creativity techniques to generate innovative ideas to pursue. Or an individual who encounters a workplace challenge may use these techniques to reframe the issue and devise creative solutions to resolve it.

What are the 5 techniques for creative thinking?

You can use various methods to improve your creative thinking. Here are 5 techniques that may help you generate more creative ideas and solve complex problems:

• Do something really different: You won't stimulate creativity doing the same things with the same people in the same old way. You need some stimulus to get people thinking differently. Invite some people to come in to the office who make their living in creativity. They might be musicians, artists, comedians, theatre people, or even a clown. Have them perform and then discuss their creative process. At the very least, your people will get a brain break from the doldrums of work. At best, they will pick up inspiration and practical technique that will get them to think outside the box.

• Ask more questions: I like to play "What If" games. Instead of just brainstorming, ask more specific questions. "What if we lost our biggest customer -- what would we do?" "What if we lost a (key driver) of our business -- what would we do?" "What if we needed every customer to be a repeat customer -- how would we set that up with the initial sale?" Or one of my favorites, "What is one stupid rule we need to kill today?" Then sit back and actually listen.

• Do something physical: Research has shown that physical exercise helps to force you out of left brain dominant thinking and instead adopt a more creative mindset. Exercise also increases blood flow and oxygen to the brain, which sharpen mental clarity. Here’s a fascinating article that claims aerobic workouts may help stimulate imagination and new ideas.

• Generate way more ideas than you think you actually need. Throughout my research, THIS is the single most common thread among super creative thinkers. People who are able to generate a lot of ideas (good and not-so-good) are much more likely to have a couple of brilliant ideas hidden in the mix than those who only come up with a couple of ideas to begin with. Block out time for free writing and come up with as many ideas around a problem as your brain can generate, even if they seem silly. Since creative people are prolific idea-generators, remember that they typically have more misses than hits. As Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”

• Make time for play. Studies show that when we fully immerse ourself in just doing what we enjoy — in other words, getting out of our own heads — it stimulates outside-the-box thinking and silences our inner critic. Tinker with toys, build something, get outside, and most importantly, think like a kid!

Bottom line

Creativity takes patience and perseverance. The more you practice, the more you learn and the more dedicated you are to your goals – the more rewards you finally reap from the process. Because that’s what creativity is – a perpetual process of various problems and different solutions and answers to them. Remember, every problem has more than one solution and your task is to find as many as you can.