10 Ways to Increase Your Creativity

In my previous post, “You’re Creative, and I Can Prove it with Science!” we explored the science behind creativity and what it means to be a creative person.

In this post, I want to expand on this conversation by looking at 10 practical ways that you can reignite your creativity, even if you’ve completely lost your spark.

1. Seek Out New Experiences

In my video, “You’re Wrong About Creativity,” we explored the definition of creativity as “connecting the dots”– to gain experiences, look back on them, and generate new ideas from those experiences. Steve Jobs said this well:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” 

– Steve Jobs: Former CEO of Apple. 

If every experience in your life creates a new opportunity for connection, then naturally, having more experiences gives you more ideas to draw from, but doing more of the same types of things will only get you so far. It’s the unique and varied experiences that allow us to really innovate and bring out divergent thinking.

Research by Scott Barry Kaufman has shown that being open to new experiences can help increase our capacity to recognize new patterns and find links among seemingly unrelated pieces of information—connecting the dots.

Read novels, watch movies, visit museums, expose yourself to creative works, and try new things. Pick up a new hobby outside your usual interests, take a different way home, and make new friends.

Have you ever tried learning how to do a Rubik’s Cube or juggling? These might not seem creative or appear to have practical applications, but they are great exercises for training your brain to think differently.

By seeking new experiences, you allow your brain to explore different thinking pathways it wouldn’t normally take, allowing for more varied creative thinking. 

2. Build Creative Habits

Building a creative habit can look different to everyone. It might mean dedicating time in your schedule to focus on exploring new ideas. Many companies like Google are implementing this concept by giving their employees dedicated time for side projects. In fact, the Post-it note was invented by Spencer Silver (1941-2021) during his own project time at 3M.

Or maybe it’s about pursuing a specific creative goal with intention, such as booking classes to take on a new hobby instead of just doing it when you feel like it or when the mood strikes you.

While writing this, I am working on intentionally taking the time to learn to draw again, and after the first 50 days, I noticed a huge improvement in my skills and creativity when drawing.

You can see my creative drawing journey here: Learning How to Draw (in 50 Days)

3. Pay Attention

If you want to better understand the world and make more connections with your experiences, you need to make sure you’re actually experiencing them.

In a world where everyone is attached to their phone, it takes an intentional effort to stop and pay attention.

“Train yourself to see the awe behind the obvious”

-Rick Rubin: Author of The Creative Act: A Way of Being.

Learn to be more sensitive in the moment – be curious, ask questions, and look for connections. The world is constantly changing, so there’s always more to discover if you take a moment to look deeper.

4. Build a Creative Environment

When Walt Disney (1901-1966) worked on some of his earlier movies, like Snow White (1938) and Pinocchio (1940), he set up three physical rooms for different thinking processes within his team.

Room 1 – The Dreamer:

This is where ideas were shared without restrictions or limits, and every creative hunch was explored.

Room 2 – The Realist:

This is where the ideas from Room 1 were developed into a realistic plan or storyboard.

Room 3 – The Critic:

This was a small room under the stairs where the whole crew would critically review the whole project, holding nothing back. Criticism wasn’t personal because it was a team effort, and individuals weren’t singled out for their ideas.

Each project would cycle through these 3 rooms again and again until each idea was either ready for production or abandoned. This system has become known as the Disney method, separating the roles of dreamer, realist, and critic into 3 separate stages and 3 separate rooms.

Disney even arranged these spaces to change how the team interacted with each other during the process.

A 2007 study by Joan Meyers-Levy & Rui Juliet Zhu discovered that ceiling height affects how we process information. The study suggested that more confined spaces with lower ceilings may help us focus better, while large spaces with higher ceilings allow for more creative thinking. Even just adjusting the perception of space with furniture, décor, or mirrors can affect how we work.

Beyond this- sound, lighting, and even smell can also change how we work.

This can be different for everyone. Below, you can see a picture of my desk space where I do most of my art and filming for my YouTube channel.

This area works for me. I like to listen to music or watch a video while I create, and I like to be surrounded by color. But what you like and what works in your creative space will be unique to you.

Try different things and see what works best with your tastes and preferences. You’ll feel the difference.

When I need to wear my business hat, I sit at another desk with extra screens for my computer, my art tablet, and with my team beside me to bounce ideas off. I don’t mind interruptions and I’m usually juggling multiple projects at a time.

When I want to focus more or develop ideas like writing this blog, I find the best space is a small table we have set up in our other office. I give myself quiet time alone with no music or interruptions and with all my notifications silenced.

When it comes to idea meetings with the team, we try to treat them like Disney’s first dream room. We encourage even the biggest ideas, like the suggestion that always comes up—that we should visit the biggest art store in Japan. All those ideas are embraced to keep the creative conversation going as much as possible.

Your space is likely to be very different from mine, and we all work best in different environments. So, it’s worth exploring what this looks like to you and creating multiple spaces to help you switch from focus to creativity, whether that’s a couch in another room, a park, or even a café nearby.

5. Take a Break

Have you ever worked on something for hours with no solution and then suddenly solved the problem in your sleep or while doing something completely different?

If you remember back to the 3 networks in your brain that are responsible for creative thought (as mentioned in my “You’re Wrong About Creativity” video), the imagination network activity usually decreases as the executive attention network increases. This is why it’s often hard to come up with new ideas when you’re asked to focus on a specific task and why those ideas often come when your mind is wandering, and the imagination network has had a chance to kick in again.

So, think about giving yourself a rest from what you’re working on. It might be exactly what you need to move forward.

6. Daydream

We’ve been led to believe that daydreaming is lazy, undisciplined, and a waste of time. But research says that structured daydreaming and mind wandering are really good for your creativity. As our mind wanders, it activates that default network in the brain and can give us access to information that we couldn’t reach earlier. This can help us with creativity, self-awareness, a greater understanding of our experiences, and even compassion.

Daydreaming makes sense when you understand how the different parts of the brain work together. And personally, it’s not something I make nearly enough time for. It’s so easy to pick up our phones and keep ourselves entertained instead of letting our minds wander.

For me, this means that most of my big ideas happen in the shower because it’s the one time I’m not focused on anything in particular. So, I need to do this more, and I encourage you to do it with me.

Give your mind permission to wander. Try scheduling time for daydreaming, build a habit and an environment where you can remove all distractions, where you don’t work on any specific project, and just let your mind wander.

Try engaging in simple activities and see how this affects your ideas and thinking. Maybe that’s going for a walk, taking a shower, doing a puzzle, cooking, cleaning, or drawing.

7. Think Differently

Creativity is not just making art- it’s coming up with ideas, being open-minded, and having a willingness to try new things,

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was a big thinker who wasn’t afraid to challenge what everyone else believed. When everyone thought that the Earth was the center of the universe, he challenged the status quo and presented the idea that the Earth and other planets orbit around the sun. This new idea is now known as the and is taught in schools today. By asking questions and testing ideas, Galileo helped us learn a lot about space.

Almost every invention comes from people thinking differently. By connecting the dots with existing ideas and then thinking differently about solutions, we now have entirely new categories of companies and products; like smartphones, ride-sharing, and dairy alternatives.

Thinking differently is something we can all practice and train ourselves to do, even with small activities; like thinking of different ways to use common objects. Is there anything you’ve ever used in your chosen hobby that wasn’t meant to be used that way but led to interesting or valuable results anyway? In another of my recent videos “I Made a Masterpiece with TRASH” I use a bunch of different thrift store items and some creative dumpster diving to create what is now one of my favorite art pieces.

If you’re struggling to think differently, try to imagine yourself as a different person completing the same task.

Read your script in a different accent or a different character. Draw your art in someone else’s style. Imagine how you would approach the task if you had a million dollars or, again if you only had $10.

A super useful activity is to think about how you would approach the same task as if you were a child. Putting yourself back into your childhood shoes or trying some of these other ideas can unlock your natural creativity and help your mind find ideas and connections that you may have missed otherwise.

8. Find What Makes You Happy

Research by Sue Langley found that positivity can encourage creativity. Joy, love, awe, and connection build us up inside and can stimulate creative thinking.

Motivation is also a key factor, but not all motivation is the same. There are two types of motivation:

• Extrinsic Motivation: this comes from external sources like payments, awards, praise from others, or even negative things like threats that you’ll lose your job if you don’t perform.
• Intrinsic Motivation: which comes from inside us, from our hopes, dreams, goals, and satisfaction in our work.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the second has a far more positive effect on creativity. So, if you’re not feeling motivated, maybe that’s when a break or a change of focus can help.

“Start to take notice of the moments in your daily life where you get that tingle up your spine, where you get that little feeling of warmth in your belly, and you haven’t had a glass of wine. Take notice of those moments because I guarantee if you’re feeling that joyful physical reaction, there’s something that is inspiring you in your environment, but take notice! Take a note, have a notebook, and be like, ‘I was listening to a podcast, and someone was talking about this, and it made me sparkle a little bit inside because those are some of the things that you could go back to in your dull lack of creative moments and re-inspire yourself.”

-Kristy Rice, Paintcrush with Kristy Rice

Remember to always be looking to connect the dots, but don’t focus too hard, or you may just miss it!

9. Experiment

Learn to take risks, embrace failure, and get out of your comfort zone. Accept that not every idea is going to be good; but just create lots of ideas.

In this divergent thinking study, a group of scientists led by Rex Jung found that a higher number of responses on a divergent thinking task was significantly associated with higher creativity.

“The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas and throw the bad ones away.”

-Linus Pauling: American Theoretical Physical Chemist and the only person in history to have earned two Nobel prizes.

• James Dyson created 5,127 prototypes on his way to inventing the bagless vacuum cleaner.
• Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is thought to have made over 50,000 pieces of art in his lifetime.
• Hemingway (1899-1961) wrote 47 different endings to just one of his books: “A Farewell to Arms (1929).”
• Thomas Edison (1847-1931) tried over 1,000 different ways to make a light bulb before finding one that worked.

Bad ideas can often be stepping stones to good ideas. YouTube began as a video dating site; Netflix was originally a DVD rental service; Post-it notes were born from a failed attempt to create a stronger glue; Blu tack was also an accidental invention; and Playdough was originally created as a wallpaper cleaner.

It’s easier to start from a bad idea than no idea. This means being open to failure and not shutting down ideas right away. Just like Disney’s dream room approach to brainstorming.

The more ideas you let in, whether they’re good or bad, the more they will continue to come. So instead of waiting for the perfect idea, just start somewhere.

10. Surround Yourself with Creative People

If we think back to the idea of connecting the dots, collaborating with other people gives you a multitude of extra experiences to pull from. You can make connections easier and faster, bounce ideas off one another, and take advantage of your collective knowledge and experience to find solutions more quickly.

Working with other creative people can be a catalyst for new ideas. And if you’re not feeling creative, surrounding yourself with positive, creative people can be the very thing that gets your mind working.

We Can All Be Creative

With everything we’ve covered in this and my previous post we’ve still barely scratched the surface on what it means to be creative. Remember to check out my video on this topic here. Or, for an expanded version of this whole discussion (which includes a deeper look into some of the topics we’ve covered) check out the extended version on Nebula.

If there is one thing you should take from this, it’s that creativity is available to everyone and can be developed no matter where you’re starting from.

You’re Creative and I Can Prove it (With Science)!

Why Adults Find It So Hard To Be Creative