Are You Creative Enough to Build a Successful Business?
By Dave Origano
The most successful and revolutionary people in the world are often among the most creative. Think about that for a second — your favorite musicians, athletes, actors, most of them got to where they are by having a flair for creativity within their particular field.
Do you have that same creative flair that will drive you to similar success in your chosen field? If you don’t, fear not, because increasing your creativity level is not as hard you might think — follow these simple pointers and you will be increasing your creative output within days!
1. Try and designate an “idea time.” Whether while going for your morning jog or while eating lunch at work, setting aside a certain segment each day to come up with new ideas and improve old ones is an excellent way to increase your creativity. Conditioning our mind to do this will provide exponential benefits as time passes — the brain is our “thinking muscle,” and just like other muscles in the body, the more we work it in certain ways, the more responsive it becomes.
2. Increase your idea output. Each person has a ratio of great ideas to average ideas — it may be one great idea for every five or something like that. It follows then that if we can increase the amount of ideas we have in general, by default we will increase the number of great ideas. On some level it is purely a numbers game. The more ideas you generate, the more useful ones there will be, period.
3. Record your ideas. Not just the good ones, ALL of them. These will then become invaluable as you note your progress, because you can check over previous work for new ideas. In the future, when looking back on these notes, you will find them an excellent source as they can jog your brain into thinking differently and quite often enable you to combine a new idea with an old one into one super idea!
4. Focus your thoughts. Give yourself a target to aim for, and you will find that your ideas will be a lot more relevant. It seems obvious but you would be surprised how many people don’t try to focus their creativity.
5. Limit yourself. The human brain is a tremendously versatile organ, and is at its best when faced with limitations or complications. Give yourself strict time limits or conditions under which you need to come up with certain ideas or solutions — you will be amazed how this works. For example, if you are looking for a new business, sit down for one hour and come up with as many business ideas as you can. Don’t allow yourself to slack or wander, and there will be dozens upon dozens, I guarantee it!
Ideas are not limited to a certain type of person or exclusively the property of the successful — anyone can have a great idea if they just let their brains work. Hopefully these tips have given you insight into how you can improve your own creative output with just a few simple techniques!
Dave Origano runs the Daily Brilliant Ideas service, which gives you those insights that helped him and many others create highly successful businesses.
