I expend a huge amount of my time working to keep my company innovative. I’ve developed an obsession with some of history’s most creative minds in the hope that I might learn some tricks to expand my own creative productivity.
Some of the things I’ve learned are more useful than others, and some are simply too weird to try.
BUT
These strategies stand out because they have the power to change the way you think about creativity. Give them a try, and you’ll reach new levels of creative productivity.
1. Wake Up Early
Not all creative minds are morning people. Franz Kafka routinely stayed up all night writing
For many creative people, waking up early is a way to avoid distractions. Ernest Hemingway woke up at 5 a.m. every day to begin writing. He said, “There is no one to disturb you and it is cool and cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.”
The trick to making getting up early stick is to do it every day and avoid naps—no matter how tired you feel. Eventually, you will start going to bed earlier to make up for the lost sleep. This can make for a couple of groggy days at first, but you’ll adjust quickly, and before you know it, you’ll join the ranks of creative early risers.
2. Exercise Frequently
There’s plenty of evidence pointing to the benefits of exercise for creativity. Feeling good physically gets you in the right mood to focus and be productive. Exercise also forces you to have disconnected time (it’s tough to text or email while working out), and this allows you to reflect on whatever it is you’re working on. In a Stanford study, 90% of people were more creative after they exercised.
3. Stick to a Strict Schedule
It’s a common misconception that in order to be creative, one must live life on a whim with no structure and no sense of need to do anything, but the habits of highly successful and creative people suggest otherwise. In fact, most creative minds schedule their days rigorously. only by having a schedule can we free our minds to advance to really interesting fields of action.
4. Keep Your Day Job
Creativity flourishes when you’re creating for yourself and no one else. Creativity becomes more difficult when your livelihood depends upon what you create (and you begin to think too much about what your audience will think of your product). Perhaps this is why so many successful and creative people held on to their day jobs. Many of them stayed at while producing their best work on a break out money maker while they still held a 9 to 5.
Day jobs provide more than the much-needed financial security to create freely. They also add structure to your day that can make your creative time a wonderful release.
5. Learn to Work Anywhere, Anytime
A lot of people work in only one place, believing it’s practically impossible for them to get anything done anywhere else. Staying in one place is actually a crutch; studies show that changing environments is beneficial to productivity and creativity. A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper. The same is true for any type of creative work. If you keep waiting until you are in the perfect place at the ideal time, the time will never come.
When you have a creative idea, don’t wait—put it into action as soon as you can. Recording that spark of creativity may very well be the foundation of something great.
6. Learn That Creative Blocks Are Just Procrastination
As long as your heart is still beating, you have the ability to come up with new ideas and execute them. They may not always be great ones, but the greatest enemy of creativity is inactivity.
Bringing It All Together
In my experience, you must get intentional about your creativity if you want it to flourish. Give these six strategies a try to see what they can do for you.
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