Techniques to Increase Your Creativity

This quick course in creativity is designed to give you a platform to stand on as we look at the various ways you can handle home, social and workplace situations, job-search details and career-path decisions. Let's examine what creativity might look like.

Here are some of the ways in which creativity expresses itself. Perhaps the creative idea is one that mixes and matches items or ideas that haven't been combined in just this way before. A wonderful example of this comes from Anita Roddick, who founded the Body Shop, a chain of personal care products and stores. She combined the need to help underdeveloped countries earn income with the need to avoid destroying their resources and environment. She built her business by using natural products produced by these countries.

Or, perhaps the same item could be used in a different way. Which came first, the ballpoint pen or roll-on deodorant? Both use the same idea - a rolling ball that applies liquid to a surface.

Perhaps you can take a new approach that works. This was the case, for instance, with Arm & Hammer Baking Soda when it was discovered that putting an open box into the refrigerator would soak up odors.

Finally, you might use your creative powers to develop special mastery in areas that can contribute to workplace effectiveness. For example, you might try opening yourself to new ways of experiencing life, increasing flexibility and open-mindedness. There are lots of ways in which creativity can be fostered to produce really great outcomes. And all it takes is practice. We all have the abilities...what we need to develop are the skills, the methods, the focus.

1. Look after yourself.
Sleep well/Eat well/meditate/do what you enjoy and do it more often (if it is life enhancing!). Creativity is reduced when your senses are dulled.

2. Do something different.

We do so much on auto - the route we take to work, newspaper we read, TV programmes we routinely watch. Vary one element of your regular routine for a while. If feasible, take a different route to work, read a different newspaper (especially one you would never read!).

3. Be curious about your world around you.