7 Simple Ways to Turbo-Charge Your Creativity
By: Andrew Zenyuch - Innovative Issues Editor
I had the good fortune to attend the first day of the 2009 American Creativity Association (ACA) annual conference. And good fortune is probably too light of a term - Philadelphia, where the conference was held, was experiencing a Noreaster that threatened to dump between 6 - 9 inches of snow on the city. Despite Mother Nature’s best efforts to keep me away, I was able to attend along with Anne Orban and Kevin Miller with little or no hardship.
The conference was attended by thought leaders and practitioners of creativity, as well as business professionals who were hoping to learn more about creativity to apply it to their jobs and companies. It’s an international conference, so many nations were represented. The 3-day conference and was made up of breakout sessions, workshops, keynote speakers, networking, and all-around creative fun.
During the conference, I attended a breakout session called “How to Turbo-Charge Your Creativity Using Science-Based Techniques.” The instructor introduced 7 tips based on neuroscience and psychological research and have been proven to enhance creativity. I have a PDF of references for these tips if anyone is interested.
The tips are:
1. Warm Up Your Mind
We started off the session with a task: Increase Paris Hilton’s IQ by 100 points…..by 12pm tomorrow. Pretty tough, huh? The group I was working with came up with a few ideas - color her hair, change the way we rate IQ, get her a detox program - in the minute or so we were given. This technique is called “Fat-Chance”, which is an impossible task set in a very tight timeframe. The time limitation forced us to throw logic out the window and take wild shots at how to accomplish the task we’ve been assigned. This got us new and unusual ideas very quickly. Anything else we were given to ideate on after that would seem like a piece of cake.
2. Warm Colors
Next, we were asked to think about what color our offices were. Eighty percent (80%) of us worked in offices with gray or neutral-colored walls, which is interesting because research has shown that warmer colors help creativity. Warm colors, such as yellows, oranges, browns, yellowish greens, and orangish reds make you feel happy. When you’re happy, your brain releases dopamine - a key ingredient to creativity. We learned there are simple ways besides repainting to introduce warm colors into your office, like using red folders instead of manila and decorating with posters or artwork with predominately warm colors.
3. Expose Yourself To A Wide Amount of Information
Next we were asked whether or not we’ve been to a conference whose topic we knew anything about. While we were confused by this, there was a point. Exposing yourself to something unfamiliar gives you more information to pull from when you’re trying to solve a problem. It gives your mind a lot of data to compare and look for connections in. Creativity and humor are related this way - by drawing a connection between two unrelated things. Some examples my group use in their everyday life are: subscribing to multiple news sources; visiting random websites they know nothing about; buying a bunch of magazines they have no interest in; and changing the way they go to work everyday to see some new sights.
4. Artificial Constraints Provide Direction
We remembered back to our first task of improving Paris Hilton’s IQ in less than a day. We could have just focused on improving her IQ, but that may have taken a little bit to get started. Our minds really got going when we were told we had to do it in less than 24 hours. The reason is because constraints provide direction. It’s tough to ideate when facing a blank slate. By popping a big, fat constraint in the middle of our problem, our mind was forced to think of creative ways to get around it. Artificial constraints work just as well as real ones.
5. Deviant Images Increase Creativity
No, we weren’t shown pictures of devils or ill-behavior. We were given the task of coming up with a name for a new chocolate bar that has 0 fat. Then, we divided everyone into 2 groups. The first group was shown the top image to the right on the screen while my group had their backs turned. Then, we switched and we were shown the image on the bottom. After that, we started ideating names for the chocolate bar. Once we were done, we were shown the images each group saw. Our minds act consistently with the image we were shown. The image my group saw was a little more abstract than the first group’s image, and we came up with more abstract names for our chocolate bar, while the first group’s names were a little more functional.
6. Imagine You’re On A Date
When we first came into the session, even before the introduction, we were told to close our eyes and imagine we were on a hot date with either Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt. Then we got started with the session. We cycled back to this towards the end. Apparently, imagining you’re on a date helps you be more creative. It taps into Evolutionary Theory of when you’re on your game trying to attract your best mate. My group thinks it is the arousal that triggers your creativity.
7. Squeeze Your Left Hand
Last, but certainly not hardest, was squeezing your left hand. We didn’t have to squeeze it for long - maybe 30 second at a time. This activates your Extension Memory System located in your right brain, which makes you more creative. My group thought that this is why lefties are considered to be more creative.
Overall, these are really good, simple steps that were pretty effective in the short time we used them. I plan on incorporating some of them into my everyday life, and I hope you can too. I’ve already signed up for a few new news feeds, and I’m trying to squeeze my left hand more (which is making typing especially difficult. This explains any typos you find above, I swear!)