How to become a creative genius in only 10 minutes

Those who struggle to find new ideas often look up at people who consistently manage to come up with the most brilliant ideas. Little do they know that the difference between them is fairly minimal.

This is what extremely creative people do differently

There is one thing highly creative people certainly do differently; they generate loads of ideas. Instead of aiming for ‘one good idea’, they strive for quantity. They stretch their imagination and are not easily satisfied. This hunt for abundance is hardly a talent. It’s a habit. And like any habit, it can be acquired.

How to become a creative genius with one simple exercise

Becoming a creative genius is simple: teach yourself to generate many ideas. And when I say ‘many ideas’ I don’t mean ‘more than three’. Challenge yourself. Make it a habit to consistently generate (at least) 10 ideas per day. This is how you go about it:

Make a list
If you’re going to generate 10+ ideas every day, you need challenges. So the first thing you’ll want to do is create a list with all the challenges you’d like to solve. Don’t make this list too exclusive. Write down as many challenges as you can think of. Big and small, personal and business-related, urgent and non-essential. Some challenges you could put on your list are for instance:

– How can I save money?
– How can I sell more products?
– How can I make sure my employees arrive at work on time?
– How can I make sure I always have a parking spot in front of my house?

It doesn’t matter what kind of challenges you put on your list, as long as you have something to work with.

Choose your moment
To make it easier to stick to your resolutions (and to prevent yourself from skipping a day), it’s smart to pick a fixed time of the day. Ask yourself what’s right for you. Perhaps you’d like to start the day with this creative exercise …but it’s equally conceivable you’d rather do it in the evening, before going to bed.

Generate 10 ideas …EVERY day
Every day, set aside 10 minutes to do this exercise. Grab a pen and paper and look at your list of challenges. Pick one challenge from your list and generate (at least) 10 ideas to solve it. The solutions don’t have to be brilliant; they don’t even have to be reasonably good. Just write down any idea that comes to mind. Don’t judge. Write down boring ideas, unrealistic ideas and ideas that are so far out of your comfort zone that you’re pretty sure you’ll never implement them. It doesn’t matter. You’re aiming for quantity. Writing down 10 ideas shouldn’t take you more than 10 minutes.

Are you struggling to generate 10 different ideas? Try using a thinking technique to force yourself to come up with original solutions.

Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a flow and you’ll have written down 10 ideas before you know it. Don’t stop. Challenge yourself and try to reach the 20. Consider using a thinking technique, like ‘the wise proverb’ to squeeze out a few more ideas.

Make it a habit
If you keep doing this every day, at some point it will become automatic. For most people doing this short exercise for 30 days in a row will be enough to form a new habit. Of course, this seems easier than it actually is. Did you skip a day? Start counting from zero again.

Don’t forget to keep adding to your list. Our lives are dominated by all sorts of problems and it shouldn’t be hard to keep adding challenges to the list.

How a 10-minute exercise will make you a 100 times more creative

Only one month after the implementation of this new habit, you’ve generated AT LEAST 300 ideas to tackle your challenges. Of course, not all of them are brilliant, but what if only 1 in 10 ideas is a good idea? In that case, you’ll have 30 good ideas to choose from each month! And how many of the ideas will be brilliant? 1 in a 100? You’ll have 3 of those…

Even if you’re a pessimist, and you expect only one in a thousand ideas to be brilliant, you’ll want to try this. After all, even this cautious prediction means that every year you will have generated 3 or 4 of those gems! Ask yourself what you would be willing to invest for the guarantee of some ingenious ideas to help you tackle your biggest challenges… 10 minutes a day? Sure you would!

Generate 10 ideas per day for only one month and not only will you have generated hundreds of ideas for the challenges that keep you busy, but you’ve also created a completely new habit. From now on you will strive for quantity. A habit that makes you more creative than anyone around you. Never again will you have a shortage of ideas. When others generate only a few, you will generate hundreds. The incredible abundance makes sure you always have original approaches to choose from.

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