Being creative is not always something you’re born with, but the truth is creativity is a skill that can be developed. When your creativity seems to utterly disappear, it could be from an accumulation of stress or from being incredibly busy. Sometimes it’s not only hard but impossible to get those creative juices flowing. It’s happened to us all. You need to stay creative, but it’s just not happening. The inspiration that got you started is gone. Well, here are some tips that you can use to restart the creative genius within you and finish that task:
- Move On to Another Activity: Often our best ideas come when we don’t even realize we’re thinking about a problem. If you move on to another activity, your mind will continue to work subconsciously on the problem you left behind. Even a simple walk can be the perfect remedy.
- Keep Notes on Everything: Writing down everything, no matter how small or insignificant, might save you one day. Jones suggests using a white board or idea board to keep your ideas prominent, and constantly writing and rewriting words and phrases. Snap a picture before you erase your ideas, and keep them in a special folder that you can easily navigate later.
- Collaborate: Collaborating with and learning from others may be just what you need to give your creativity a boost. To be most creative, teams should have people of differing skills, talents and backgrounds, but with similar values and motivations. Everyone should be united behind a common goal.
- Brainstorming: Brainstorming can be a highly effective way of coming up with new creative ideas. Combine this with a mind map by writing your general problem in the middle of the page. From there, think of some very general areas to focus on, drawing these as offshoots from the central idea. Branch out further from these outshoots and continue breaking down ideas into more digestible bits until you’ve started to find what you’re looking for.
- Don’t have deadlines: Deadlines have been shown to make people less creative. So, while you may at times be forced to be creative when an 11th-hour problem strikes, you’ll probably be at your creative best in a more relaxed environment.
- Meditate: Some of the benefits of meditation include increased focus, patience, calmness, clarity, insight, and perspective. Improving all of these can greatly increase levels of creativity.
- Intentionally Stop During the Middle of a Project: Similar to Ernest Hemingway’s approach to warding off writer’s block by finishing his writing sessions with stopping mid-sentence, it can be equally powerful to intentionally take a break from projects unfinished. Giving your mind the opportunity to mull over the problem while you’re relaxing and doing other activities can have immense benefits.
- Become open to new experiences: Openness is a personality trait that is most highly associated with people who are creative. Creative people are open to ideas and experiences, as it’s these new experiences and events that allow them to explore new possibilities in unfamiliar environments.