How To Be More Creative
Everybody is capable of coming up with great ideas. We all have the ability to generate dozens of ideas in mere minutes. If you doubt your own inventive talent and imagination, try using the following 5 creative strategies. They will increase the amount of creative ideas you come up with significantly.
Explore Variations
Ideas seldom appear perfectly shaped. Most of the time they will show up ugly, unappealing, weird, vague and incomplete. That’s the beauty of it. The beauty of an idea is in the eye of the beholder.
As a creative you will have to continuously come up with better versions of your idea. Kill your darling. Be prepared to make tiny changes and keep an eye out for similar yet better ideas.
Find Alternatives
After exploring all possible variations, it’s time to abandon your idea. Explore the world and search for alternatives. Remember, there is always a better idea. You might find it just behind the corner.
Perhaps you should be looking for something completely different. There is no harm in discovering new ideas and creating other possibilities. Give yourself options to choose from.
Use Concepts
There lies a tremendous power in concepts; vague ideas that can be implemented in different ways. Ideas that can be understood in several ways often lead to original insights and ideas. One concept can be an endless source of fresh ideas.
Working with concepts is a great trick to come up with many ideas in a short period of time. All you have to do is start with a vague idea and come up with as many interpretations as possible.
Discover Value
Every idea is valuable. Yet, it can be really hard to see the value in a clearly bad and outrageous suggestion. That’s what you need your imagination for. If you don’t see it, you’re not looking hard enough.
If you force yourself to look for value you will be surprised at what you will find. It’s often those funny and unrealistic ideas that lead you to amazing insights and wonderful solutions.
Seek Originality
So you have some ideas, that’s wonderful. Yet, how original are they? Have you never ever seen anything like this before? How surprising is your idea really? Most of the times our ideas are just the same old, same old.
Challenge yourself and see if you can turn your existing idea into something more exiting. Can you make it bolder? Smaller? Faster? Louder? What would make it truly unique? What would make your idea really memorisable? Give your idea some unique features and never be afraid to be too novel.
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Flickr Creative Commons Image via Snugg LePup.
