How to Use Creativity To Conquer The Everyday

Creativity is such an overused term! Does it have any use in our lives, or it just a beat up buzzword? If it’s just a cliché, when why are we still talking about it? Is it possible that thinking creatively can improve our effectiveness and provide an advantage for better decision making?

With predictions that AI will soon replace almost 40 percent of jobs in the next 15 years, creativity could just be the edge that lets us remain in the driver’s seat for at least another century or two.

Creativity Trumps Other Skills

We live in a world where AI is threatening our jobs. Very soon AI will be performing the majority of all routine production and calculation tasks. In the age of continuous AI development taking care of those repetitive tasks, it’s no wonder then that creativity has become the most important soft skill companies look for (and the second most important skill overall).

If you want to stay ahead, implementing creative practices in your everyday is crucial.

No ifs or buts about it – creativity can make us more productive, brilliant and influential as leaders and entrepreneurs. Forget AI – if you want to become more remarkable and make a positive impact in your life and the lives of others, consider embracing the Creative Thinking Mindset.

The results will surprise you, and you will wonder why you haven’t adopted this mindset earlier!

If you continue to think that creativity is just for artsy types like graphic designers, painters and writers – you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Everyone is creative. Well almost everyone – some are more creative than others. Although, as we’ve discussed above, creativity is becoming the must-have-skill for any human.

Believe it or not, most of us have the capacity to come up with new ideas and solutions. So long as we spend a long enough time trying to solve a problem of some kind.

How Can Creativity Help You Win the Everyday?

The problems we need to solve, and solutions we need to find can vary a great deal. It can be as trivial as trying to come up with a theme for your next party, as life-lasting as naming your newborn, or as challenging as starting your own business.

Here are only a few possible scenarios in your everyday, where creativity can help you reach your goals faster, and more efficiently:

• A major issue arises with one of your key clients and you need to find a resolution fast. And a simple ‘sorry’ and a promise of a future discount simply won’t do.
• Your competitor launches a product which will severely threaten your sales. You need a way to get back to winning, but it has to be something completely unexpected, otherwise customers won’t care.
• You’re trying to secure a proposal or applying for a job interview where you know you’ll be up against strong competition, so originality could be the only edge you have.
• Your 20 year wedding anniversary is coming up. You know that your partner will be preparing something special, and you can’t afford to be embarrassed with your lack of imagination and you lacklustre gift or gesture.

You get the picture! Without the capacity to generate creative solutions you will be left behind. The good news is, creativity is like any skill – it can be improved with regular practice.

Tools for Building Your Creative Muscle

Creative Thinking is in my opinion the most valuable skill one can develop. Creative Thinking is inherently different to Logical thinking. Logical Thinking is something we are taught from a young age, at home and in school, and Creative Thinking is seldom taught anywhere. In that sense alone, schools and formal education today is failing us!

I know that encouraging my future kids to practice creativity will be much higher on the agenda for me than keeping score of their Maths grades!

Good news is you don’t need any prior education or knowledge to improve your creativity. Here are some practical exercises you can implement in your everyday for improving your problem solving abilities.

Daily Cartooning

Director, producer and musician Robert Rodriguez uses a practice of daily cartooning. Even when ideas aren’t flowing, the focus is on putting pen to paper and just letting the drawings take shape themselves. This is similar to the Morning Pages routine by Julia Cameron. A powerful daily exercise like this can allow you to get to your most creative place, when you need it the most, to help you solve complex problems easier.

Creative Ideas Quota

American entrepreneur and bestselling author, James Altucher keeps a practice of generating a quota of specific ideas each day. Not all ideas are business-based, one day he might make a list of ‘10 old ideas that can be made new’ or ‘10 podcast ideas or videos to shoot’. The key is to have fun with it – all ideas should be written down, especially bad ideas. Besides this practice is aimed at flexing your creative muscle and increasing your ability to generate ideas, not be able to solve world hunger every time you write something down!

Other Creativity Boosters

When you have a specific problem to solve, check out the problem solving techniques and worksheet for generating ideas I use. I teach a class about it here: Creativity Boosters, Tools and Secrets for Solving Complex Problems.

Towards a Better, More Creative Future

As we have learnt robots are slowly taking over, because it turns out they are great at optimising old concepts. However the good news is that companies and customers still need creative leaders who can conceive the solutions of tomorrow. Fortunately AI hasn’t shown signs of tackling us in that area.

If you want to reach your full potential and become a remarkable leader, it’s time to adopt a Creative Thinking Mindset and implement creative exercises in your everyday. I would love to learn about a project or task where any of the techniques listed here helped you with solving a problem – please reach out and share your experience by emailing studio@studeo.com.au.

If you want to learn about incorporating the Creative Thinking Mindset into your own business, freelance practice or everyday life, visit the resources page or sign up to become a Studeo Insider.