YOU CAN be more Creative

By Shlomo Maital    

   I have taught innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship for decades. Often I found my main task was persuading students that they ARE creative, despite their years of doing more or less the same thing in their jobs.   Our brains are like muscles, I claimed;  exercise them, and your creativity muscles get much stronger.  A few, perhaps, bought the idea.

    In the latest issue of the APA Monitor, April-May 2022,  Kirsten Weir offers five simple, practical steps toward being more creative.  Worth a try?  Here they are:

  1.  Put in the work.  My recent book adds “perspiration” to “aspiration” and “inspiration”.  We all know idea-people, who never can muster the persistence and hard work to implement their creativity.  Work at ideation, work at implementation. 
  2. Let Your Mind Wander:   Daydream. But with a purpose.  Define a problem you care about.  Think about it.  Store it.  Let it rest, become dormant. Revisit it from time to time.  Dream.  Let your subconscious work on it.
  3. Practice Remote Associations.  So many great ideas involve X+Y – linking things that nobody else has.  Like, the Japanese engineer atop Mt. Fuji who thought of linking cell phones and cameras – now standard. 
  4. Go Outside.  Open the iwndows. Travel.  Get out into nature.  Talk to people.  Leave your comfort zone, explore unfamiliar things.  You can harvest ideas in remote places.  As in my case study of how a UK hospital children’s emergency room became more efficient by studying Formula 1 pit stop crews.
  5. Revisit Your Creative Ideas:   Keep tweaking, improving, working on your ideas. Make them better.  Revisit them again and again. NEVER fall in love with the idea as it is… only with its ideal form that you strive for.