note: This article is taken from the writer “ERIC JACKSON”, in which he tells us about his experience in practicing some exercises that help the flow of creative ideas.
But the idea that creativity is something we are born with is just plain wrong, and there are certainly people who are more creative than others in certain areas. But creativity is always the result of hard work and deliberate practice, not just mere coincidence.
If you’re an advertising executive, you probably aren’t interested in trying to be a great musician. But you are definitely interested in finding ways to promote more flexible creative thinking, whether in yourself or in your team. Luckily for you, there are several ways to promote creative thinking, and they are easy, simple, and usually free, and all you have to do is try them.
Here are the top 5 exercises to increase the flow of creative ideas:
1. Going out for a walk:
This exercise is considered one of the traditional exercises for enhancing creativity. But it is actually a very effective exercise. For starters, going for a walk greatly reduces anxiety in the short term. Most people find that their ability to think is constantly clouded by their ever-growing to-do list, email piling up, or the constant ringing of the phone. Therefore, a brisk walk helps eliminate these sources of stress and allows you to focus on the task at hand.
But walking has a much stronger effect on creativity. A study by psychologists at Stanford University found that walking directly contributed to increased creative thinking, and interestingly, it’s walking itself — not just being outside — that boosts inspiration.
Study participants who were either walking at the time or finished walking recently performed significantly better at creating new comparisons than those who were just sitting in the same environment. However, walking outside seemed to produce the greatest improvement in all groups tested.
2. Keep your hands busy:
There’s a reason so many successful people keep games and puzzles on their desks. When you face a difficult problem and lose the ability to find a solution; Doing something with your own hands is often a good idea.
The most obvious reason why this works is distraction; It is really difficult to withdraw from a difficult problem, but when you get your hands or your hands busy with something you don’t want to throw yourself into something completely mentally exhausting; You just need something relatively simple and numbing to allow your mind to recover, however, and there is an even stronger reason why keeping your hands busy can help with creativity, and the idea of embodied cognition is gaining popularity in psychology (although it is far from new). ).
The basic idea is that we don’t just think with our heads; but also with our hands, so our cognitive processes are embodied in our physical movements, otherwise it is true; Doing something complex with your hands like playing with a Rubik’s cube, squeezing a ball, or playing with dice excites different parts of your brain and can effectively change the way you think.
3. Listening to music:
Of all the ways to get creative ideas flowing, listening to music is perhaps the most effective. Music has been used by artists as an inspirational tool since the dawn of time, and yet it is not just a myth or metaphor. Listening to music actually opens up different pathways in the brain and allows for more flexible creative thinking.
As this article shows, musical training can have a profound effect on the physical structure of the brain. More specifically, young people who had undergone musical training had stronger connections between the left and right hemispheres of the brain than people who did not; We’ve long known that creativity is born when we connect common concepts in new ways, and having better connections between the analytical and creative sides of the brain can make you a more creative person.
4. Throwing a ball back and forth:
This exercise really does work magic; There’s a reason why companies that find time for their employees to relax and unwind rely on a person-to-person throwing exercise to break the ice and routine; Throwing a ball evokes a sense of camaraderie, makes people feel more connected, distracts you from everything else even if you’ve been stuck on a tough problem for three hours, and often getting a relatively simple and amazing break from a problem allows you to come back to face your problems from a different angle. Just as taking that break with other people will improve your mood, as well as create the kind of environment where collaboration can really foster, and at the very least it will keep your hands busy, which, shall we say, is a great way to boost creative thinking.
5. Write a poem:
Many of you may criticize this exercise; But writing about your day in an abstract and challenging way can really put you in a more creative mindset. So try writing a simple poem about something easy like your day, your job, or your dinner last night. It doesn’t matter. Rather than thinking about these ordinary things in an abstract and new way, a simple poem might be the spark you need to solve a problem you’ve been working on for days.
