Creative is something almost all of us are constantly striving to be. It’s an eternal struggle to dig deep and pull out the best of what we have to create something inspired and that (hopefully) inspires others as well. If there were a way to unlock your most creative self regularly, you’d be interested right?
Well, thanks to a couple of great resources, we came across an interesting look on the creative mind and how you may be able to turn on the creativity with some simple steps. First, thanks to Lifehacker for highlighting Tony Schwartz’s work with The Energy Project, a company he founded to help energize the workforce with his techniques. We recommend checking out the company blog; titles like “The 4 Paradoxes of Great Performance” and “There’s no such thing as constructive criticism” should be intriguing enough and are great reads for anyone working with other people regularly.
Tony Schwartz looks at creativity as the end result of a particular set of steps the mind takes to arrive there. If there is a process, then the idea is that it can be replicated. Lifehacker summarizes the basic steps for being creative quite well:
- Saturation (left): Once you know the creative task at hand, immerse yourself in similar work created by the masters and study it.
- Incubation (right): Walk away from the task and let it sit in your head for awhile so the right hemisphere of the brain can process the thoughts creatively.
- Illumination (left): Do something to break up your day. If you’re at your desk, step away and go somewhere else. You likely get your best ideas away from your usual surroundings so put yourself in a new situation to let that “aha!” moment surface.
- Verification (right): Test your inspiration and create.