If you're tearing your hair out in front of your screen, searching for miraculous tips to boost your creativity, and you've landed on this article, you might as well close this tab and go frolic naked in the forest - it might be more effective.
In the collective unconscious, the "creative" is often associated with a somewhat eccentric artist, who spends hours creating frenetically, following the flow of their genius illumination. We imagine the reclusive writer in a cabin deep in the Siberian forests like Sylvain Tesson, or the toxic habit-ridden advertiser from "99 francs."
But the vision we have of this state of grace is about as false as a spectacular waterfall in a Bollywood film.
Your boss doesn't have time to wait for you to return from a spiritual retreat to produce that campaign or propose a bunch of original ideas to "create buzz." Whether you work in marketing, want to create a differentiating offer, or just want to paint a watercolor canvas to hang in your living room, you need to be creative, here and now.
So how do you see things with fresh eyes?
Legend has it that Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, took foot baths in his toilet to "clarify his mind" before pushing open the door to a meeting. We agree, it's a bit extreme, right?
In fact, creativity is far from being the prerogative of tortured geniuses. It's a skill that everyone can muscle and develop.
We're not talking about soaking in the toilet bowl.
We can learn to "think outside the box," as they say, by changing perspective and mindset. This is one of the key teachings we bring you in the EMPOWERED online training.
In the meantime, we give you here several methods to give a good uppercut to the blank page syndrome that may have brought you here:
And promised, it doesn't involve joining a band of quirky artists or trying to imitate Desigual.
Let's go!
Creativity is now one of the most sought-after soft skills by recruiters across all sectors of activity.
What researchers call "divergent thinking" is one of the most powerful skills to develop if you want to be more creative.
Yet, you've probably noticed that the brightest ideas often appear in unexpected moments: in the shower after a workout or while trudging through the pampas.
So how can you be creative when you need to be?
It may seem counterintuitive, but if there's one thing that blocks creativity, it's putting massive pressure on yourself to trigger it.
And that's the whole paradox. Because it's precisely by accepting this parameter that you can nurture your creativity.
More precisely, it's by abandoning the idea of being performant that you can let it explode.
Because what we often forget is that before arriving at a masterpiece, each artist has thrown hundreds, if not thousands of ideas in the trash.
Take Picasso, for example. He was so prolific that no one could count how many creations he produced. Estimates are around 50,000 works created during his lifetime.
The key, then, is to continue creating while detaching from the absolute necessity of performing.
In short, the more time you dedicate to creative activities, the more you'll refine your creative mind.
You feel like you're wasting long hours without achieving the expected result? Yet, this time you give yourself to try and fail is worth its weight in gold.
According to Thomas Edison, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." In fact, studies show that Nobel Prize winners produce on average twice as many works as their counterparts in the same field.
So, if lack of creativity gives you the impression of stagnating in the development of your business, you can start by trying to see things from a new angle, accepting that things take time, and work.
And that's okay.
Because creativity is above all a matter of patience and perseverance. In reality, we're far from the good genie who appears as if by magic to serve us a bunch of revolutionary ideas on a platter.
Let's take two filmmakers as examples:
Rather than trying to be creative when you need it, you can also get used to capturing your ideas at the right time.
You know Keith Richards' hit? You know, that catchy refrain that goes: "I can't get no satisfaction...". Got it?
It didn't come to him as he was going around in circles looking for the catchy rhythm in his studio. He tells of having composed and recorded it in the middle of the night, after a flash of inspiration in his sleep.
A good method is therefore to get into the habit of capturing your ideas when they appear, to feed your inspiration at the right time.
You can do like Beethoven and carry a notebook everywhere with you. Or use your phone's dictaphone if your hands are full when you're doing the dishes.
It's liberating to demystify this idea that "those who are creative" have 1,000 ideas per second. Because when we look closer, creativity is ultimately just a matter of work, methodology for capturing ideas, but also patience.
By seeing things through this prism, you can take a breather and detach yourself from this obsession with being productive. Because it's precisely this guilt-inducing thought that cuts the grass under the foot of the very essence of creativity.
In summary, one of the best ways to be creative is to let go by:
But you'll see that there are also other rather funky ways to stimulate it.
By studying grizzly bears for over 15 years, Bob Fagan came to a surprising conclusion: the warriors, those who survive the longest are not those we imagine.
They are neither the fiercest nor the most voracious.
They are those who play the most.
And when you think about it, it's rather logical: if you're a bear and you spend your days dodging your congeners' paw strikes, you muscle your ability to anticipate more perilous situations.
This habit allows these colossi to adapt to unexpected situations with greater agility, and offers them many more options to react in case of danger.
By the way, play is also an excellent way to calm stress. And if you've ever found yourself spending the night finishing a project, you know how much stress can paralyze creativity.
If we take a little tour in our brain, we can see that, when we perceive stress as a danger, it's our amygdala that gets into action.
The amygdala is the most primitive part of our brain, which allows us to survive when we are in mortal danger. The hitch is that when this part of the brain takes the reins to try to save our skin, we have more and more difficulty accessing a clear and organized mode of thinking.
By playing, it's your prefrontal cortex that activates, the area of the brain that allows you to plan, prioritize, make decisions.
Wouldn't we play a little Candy Crush before finishing this report?
If you feel guilty just at this idea, know that this technique has been polished by the greatest:
But before going to take revenge against the final boss of Mario, also take a look at these other methods, to say the least... surprising.
Mason Currey knows a thing or two about creative strategies.
For the needs of his book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, he interviewed more than 250 famous artists, writers, composers, painters and other creators to understand their work routines.
His goal? To collect as many tips as possible to increase creativity.
The conclusion of his work boils down to one golden rule: too comfortable habits kill creativity.
Adios to the repetitive morning routine, then.
To innovate, one should therefore get out of one's comfort zone, confront the unexpected, change and atypical situations - a bit like our playful grizzlies, in short.
But in practice, what does it look like?
Salvador Dalí needed a change of scenery to stimulate his creativity. He alternated between travels and chilling with his friends, without touching a single brush. Before locking himself in his studio to create for several days in a row.
But not everyone has the luxury of being able to afford this.
There are other alternatives a little more... discount - but just as effective:
It seems then that the simple act of giving a little shot of novelty to our brain boosts our creativity. There's a good excuse to interrupt a monotonous routine and go work in the nearby café from time to time, right?
In summary, the next time your inspiration remains as dry as a tomato plant in the desert, here are 3 keys to keep in mind:
When it comes to being creative or performant, there's one that has become a master in the art of putting sticks in our wheels.
Our brain.
It whispers in our ear (not so) sweet words like:
We spend our time comparing ourselves to others, being afraid of being judged, letting ourselves be dominated by stress when we could use it as a powerful tool.
Not great when we're trying to be creative.
If you're interested in learning how to master your mindset to stop letting these fears paralyze you, we've just released EMPOWERED, an ultra-complete online training, and the feedback is just crazy.
Thanks to 20-minute videos per day, you'll learn to transform your mind and build your self-confidence, on a personal but also professional level. But also to arm yourself with very concrete methods to take advantage of your stress and improve your ability to concentrate.
See you on the other side?
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