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What do you do to be creative?

Or get creative? Some people who are naturally gifted don’t need substances to be creative. Then others need something to induce creativity. What do you do?

  • Make friends with people who aren’t like you and are passionate about their craft.

    Read magazines, books, academic research, and other trade publications not relevant to your core competency.

    Go for walks, daily, and reflect.

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  • Each person’s creative capacities and abilities are wired differently. For what it’s worth, this is what works for me:

    Passively think about what it is you want to create, or the problem you’re trying to solve, at all times; but like, “at all times”, as in, have it in the back of your mind, not the front. Mentally and emotionally commit yourself and energy to doing it, without knowing how it will turn out. You can’t just force the ideas for whatever it is you want to create, whether that may be: ART, CODE, MUSIC, BUSINESS STRATEGY, PRODUCT, anything. It needs lots of time to ruminate and run around on the playground of your mind.

    After you’ve had enough time (a day, a week, etc.) with your creative purpose in the back of your mind, (this is what I personally do next:) verbally announce the problem, challenge, goal, or purpose….. and then go for an EXTENDED brisk WALK, or RUN outdoors. The body fuels the mind, and motion helps you to create and visualize. As you do this, you have to PLAY with the problems, ideas, and possibilities (aloud, verbally) like a child plays with a TOY – with a sense of curiosity, playfulness, and fun. If you’re not having fun, I believe we stymie our potential creative output. Don’t expect one walk or run to get the job done either, it could take many. Anyways, this is what works for me, and I hope it helps. I’m curious what other people do (?), because there’s always more room to learn and improve. I’ll end with this:

    “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” -Pablo Picasso

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    • For the most part your creative process is the same as mine. Without sounding like I’m bragging, I consider myself a creative person. Ideas come easier to me than they do to most people. However, I can’t just make them happen whenever I want.

      They usually happen when I’m doing low level thinking tasks like walking, brushing my teeth, driving, but it’s only because I’m trying to solve a problem in the back of my mind like you were saying.

      Another thing that helps me is paying attention to other people and what they say; usually you can get clues about human behavior from that and come up with an initial idea.

      If you’re working on a specific area that’s technically advanced then paying attention to other people won’t help you that much but if it’s a consumer product it might since ultimately you’ll be selling to people.

      Like another person said, reading material outside of your specific discipline helps, but I think it should also be a closely related discipline or else you might not gain as much value.

      So, for instance reading about life in France during WWII will not help me if I’m trying to build an intelligent robot for instance, but reading about the human brain and how it works most likely will help me since ultimately the human brain is itself a very complex machine and there’s logic to it.

      It stands to reason that if we can figure out how the human brain works then we can replicate it to create an intelligent robot. Anyways, I think you get the point I’m trying to make.

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  • Make a moodboard to start with. Choose an inspiration. You need to be focused. Keep an open mind, be curious. carry a pad around.. don’t judge your ideas. just go with the flow, be excited !

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