Creativity

I rate myself 10/10 in creativity.



You scored 66 out of a possible 100 points. That means that you are:

Pretty dang creative!

Holy smokes! You have a knack for being original, and you tend to do or create things that fuel your creativity.

A lot of people are trying to be as crerative as you, but they're just not cut out for it.

Find quiet time for your mind to process

Get up early and watch the sun rise

Make an event out of watching the full moon come up

Light a few candles after dark and just sit. Don’t meditate if you don’t want to. Just sit quietly and listen. Watch the candles. Allow for more silence in your life.

We are a noisy people. I hear people say they can’t stand silence. But it is in silence where we can hear the voice of our creativity. Maybe not at first. But it will come.

Drive with no music on. Make dinner in silence. Pay attention to your hands as you slice the veggies. Just be quiet.

Read 

Poetry is meant to be read aloud. The words and phrases will tilt your brain and open doors like you never thought they would. 

Ask the right question.

Sawyer tells the stories of the beginnings of Starbucks and Instagram. Neither company would be what it is today if its founders had continued to try to solve the original questions they sought to answer. Instead of asking "How can I recreate the Italian espresso bar in the United States?" Howard Shultz eventually looked at what wasn't working with that idea to instead ask "How can I create a comfortable, relaxing environment to enjoy great coffee?" And while Kevin Systrom originally pondered how he could create a great location-sharing app, a better question turned out to be "How can we create a simple photo-sharing app?"

Sawyer offers plentiful techniques for generating lots of questions.

• Quickly, without overthinking it, write 10 variations of the same question. For example, for the classic question "How can I build a better mousetrap," you might ask questions such as "How do I get the mice out of my house?" and "What does a mouse want?" or "How can I make my backyard more attractive to a mouse than my house?" One of your new questions will likely be a better one than your original.
• Debug your life. Brutally criticize an imperfect product or situation you come in contact with every day. Once you have a list, think of ways to eliminate the annoyances. This can amp creativity because little problems are often symptoms of bigger ones. Steve Jobs, a genius innovator, excelled at finding bugs that distracted from a user's experience of a product.
• Make something then reinterpret it. Sometimes before you get at the right question, you have to make something. Once you do, think of your creation being used for purposes other than your original intent. This process throws away your first assumptions, forcing you to consider new perspectives.

Be open and aware.

Creative people are always on the lookout for possible solutions. You can do this by becoming more aware and practicing mindfulness, which involves intentionally noticing things and not pegging people you meet based on your expectations or the categories you have established in your minds. Instead, try to be open and curious and resist stereotyping people.

• Create your own luck. Researchers have found people who describe themselves as lucky tend to notice things more than self-described unlucky people. They also act on unexpected opportunities and network well with others because they're curious. Unlucky people tend to be tense and so focused on narrow goals that they miss opportunities.
• Don't let accidents annoy you. Plenty of inventions--such as Penicillin, The Slinky and chewing gum--came into being because someone didn't brush past an accident, but studied it instead.
• Play with children's toys. Playing children are really good at making new connections. "I'm not the least bit self-conscious about my toy collection," Sawyer writes. "If you walk into just about any supercreative company, you'll find toys all over the place."
• Play and pretend.
  When you play, your mind can wander and your subconscious has time to work. This is why time off from work is necessary for creativity to bloom.
  • Explore the future. Imagine yourself being wildly successful five years from now. Write down as many details about what this success looks like. Then write the history of how you got there asking yourself questions such as, "What was the first step you took to move toward your goal?" or "What was one early obstacle and how did you move past it?"
  • Leave something undone. If at the end of the day you leave a task slightly unfinished it may be easier to start on the next day. That's because cognitive threads are left hanging in your mind and as you go about your non-work activities your subconscious might hook onto them and give you a sudden insight.
  • Become a beginner. Learn how to do something new, such as Hula-Hooping, juggling, carving wood, or archery.

Fuse ideas.

This involves combining things that don't normally go together. In a recent study British neuroscientist Paul Howard-Jones asked people to create stories by giving them only three words. To one set of people the words were related, such as "brush," "teeth," and "shine." Another set of people received unrelated words such as "cow," "zip," and "star." The people who received the unrelated words made up more creative stories.

• Make remote associations. Go to page 56 in two different books and find the fifth sentence on each. Now create a story that tells the connection between the two.
• Use analogy. Find similarity between two things that on the surface seem different. Find something that's removed from your problem, then define five structural properties of it. Instead of listing "sharp" or "metal" for a knife, for example, you'd want to identify things like "requires downward pressure to cut." How can these characteristics apply to whatever you're trying solve?
• Engage with people who are different from you. We hang out with people who are like us, and while doing so may be comforting, it's not stretching. Also try imagining yourself as someone else--such as a chef, a foreign student, a building inspector. How would such people see the world?

Activity:  Think of three things you really enjoy doing.  Think of a need you see in this activity?  How could you creatively solve it? 

1) I really enjoy going on nature walks. I need more places to walk than just the park. I can creatively solve this by traveling a little ways out and going to different areas.
2) I really enjoy fishing. I constantly need to keep up with my gear as I am always loosing hooks and bait. I can creatively solve this by keeping a spare tackle box full of supplies.
3) I really enjoy playing video games. I need to balance my time between school and video games. I can creatively solve this problem by setting a timer as to how many hours a day I am allowed to play games.