What is Creativity?
Creativity is the process of realizing problems and making new, valuable ideas to solve them. By using divergent thinking, as in developing thoughts in new directions, you can create by using fluency, originality, elaboration, and flexibility.
Why Should You Improve Creativity?
If you want to be a writer, you cannot simply copy word-for-word others’ work. You must create. Antonette Oloo writes in her 2023 blog post “14 Ways to Increase Creativity, Backed By Research [And Why it Matters]” that
- Increasing your creativity improves your problem-solving skills
- Increased creativity leads to more innovation
- Increasing creativity also increases your productivity as it allows you to work smarter, not harder
- Creativity is an in-demand skill and will give you an edge in the job market and most career paths
You may consider yourself a creative person, or you may wish you were one. Creativity doesn’t simply grow on trees, but, like muscles, it can be strengthened. By the end of this blog post, you’ll be better equipt to enhance your own creativity using these proven methods to get you there.
1. Spend Time Alone
Nowadays, humans are constantly distracted. We have a plethora of options when it comes to entertainment, such as video games, TV shows, and our phones. When the end of the night finally comes, it is usually the only time people spend sitting with their own thoughts, processing their feelings and emotions, and thinking ahead to tomorrow.
If you struggle to sit with yourself while waiting to sleep, this is a good indicator that you need to spend more time alone.
By being away from distractions, you are allowing your brain to amplify what you actually want to be thinking about. To be creative, you need originality. To be original, you need to let your thoughts speak for a change.
Designating time spent alone encourages creativity. With the absence of outside stimulation, you are allowing yourself to be the entertainment. Think back to when you were growing up. How often did you play pretend? Imagining worlds outside of your environment? Picturing yourself as a fantastical creature or character?
Children have massive creativity because they allow their imagination to entertain them. They turn boring errand runs they are forced to accompany into terrific battles. Waiting rooms into the theatre. Their backyards into life-or-death situations.
How often do you let your inner child come out to play? Do you give yourself space when waiting to simply think, imagine, and entertain yourself without outside materials? Try it the next time you have a moment when you could be thinking rather than passing the time.
2. Take a Walk in Nature
Nature has healing elements that allow for creative thought. Taking a walk in a natural environment not only improves your health long-term but also enhances creative thought.
The visual aspect helps create a soft stimulation, which restores your attention fatigue that is commonly caused by overwork in your daily life, problem-solving, and ongoing distractions (such as your phone, urbanization noises, and work environment).
Psychiatrists Chin-Wen Yeh, Shih-Han Hung, and Chun-Yen Chang wrote in their 2022 research article The influence of natural environments on creativity,
“A restorative environment provides a sense of escape from the usual, recovery from attention fatigue, and the potential to generate ideas through mind-wandering (e.g., daydreaming or freely thinking). Studies point out that a natural setting with “fascination” stimulates ideas and influences creative ability, which is associated with mind-wandering. That is to say, natural environments easily attract involuntary attention, allowing the mind to roam freely and recover directed attention.”
Walking in nature allows a break from the usual. To be creative, you need to diversify your environment. If you want to be creative, you must be original. You can’t think of new ideas if you are only exposed to the same things every day.
3. Brainstorm Ideas
When a thought pops into your head, write it down. If you think you’ll remember it, chances are you won’t unless that thought recurs consistently and you go back to it over and over again. How to fix this? Carry a journal!
I highly recommend you take a journal or notebook out with you. You never know when an idea will suddenly arise and you’ll be wishing you remembered it for later. When you take a stroll in a new location or a walk in nature, your creativity will start to bloom, and that will be the perfect time to sit down and write about it.
You may also take out your phone and type your message down. However, research shows typing buttons that correlate to letters doesn’t help you process information the way writing them down does. If you aren’t fully comprehending, it will be harder to produce more on the new idea that has just arisen.
Yadurshana Sivashankar, a cognitive neuroscience graduate student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who studies movement and memory, is quoted in Charlotte Hu‘s 2024 article “Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning,” saying your brain has to,
“Activate motor programs in the brain to create a specific sequence of hand motions.”
Therefore, the act of writing down your ideas will help you not only remember them better but also think through and better elaborate on them.
If a blank journal intimidates you, why not try one that gives you a little help in organizing your ideas? Try a guided and predesigned notebook to arrange your thoughts more thoroughly.
4. Exercise
You can imagine that after sitting at a desk all day, your brain feels pretty fried. Not only is your body stagnant, but so are your thoughts. Get up and get some blood flowing!
Exercise not only boosts your mental and physical well-being but also your creativity. You don’t need an extreme H.I.T. workout to get this result either.
In the 2023 article by Johnny Wood, “Exercise not only helps with mental health – it makes us more creative too, say scientists,” they reported that vigorous exercise versus moderate gives you the same result, which is the release of endorphins, a chemical in your brain which boosts your mood and reduces your stress levels, or
“Increased blood flow and other physical attributes of regular exercise produce a happiness boost, which helps fuel original or abstract thoughts.”
Just a simple break from your day and thirty minutes of moving your muscles can help you think through and find solutions to problems you haven’t worked out yet.
5. Collaborate
My last suggestion to improve creativity is diversifying your ideas through the help of others. We all have lived differently from those around us. Whether through location, identity, or circumstance, what has happened in our lives shapes our view of the world and how we problem solve.
There may be a problem with a simple solution, but if you ask multiple people, their perspectives could all outline various different ways to reach the end result. By collaborating with others, you can allow those perspectives to help you when you are in need of breaking your artistic block.
Talk to your friends, family, or even strangers in a shared area. Be brave and go to spaces designed to share feedback with others. Whether that’s a club, class, or online setting, the help of others can be immensely significant.
Even bringing in another to help you create can improve your creativity. Think of such novels as
- Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
- Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton
- The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
- Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam.
These stories have become widely popular enough to be showcased as TV shows and films! Two brains can be better than one when it comes to creativity.
Summary and Conclusion
If you are looking to be a writer in the future or simply wish to have more diverse, abstract thoughts when tackling a creative outlet, you need to make a habit of these fundamental choices.
- Firstly, try to make time out of your day to let your thoughts speak for a change. Enjoy your alone time.
- Walk outside in nature, reduce your stress levels, and change the scenery of your normal day-to-day routine.
- Don’t forget to write down your ideas and make time to sit with them and brainstorm more.
- Keep your blood pumping regularly to boost happiness and activate creative thoughts.
- Lastly, if you’re stumped, why not ask for help? Collaborate with others, listen to their perspectives, or even work with them to generate creativity into your pursuits and help problem solve together.
Creativity is a necessary skill we all need to help us through life, especially if you want to be a writer. Start implementing these habits and strengthen your creativity!