When I was younger I would look at artists and musicians and wonder: “where does their creativity come from?”
“How can they have so many ideas?”
In business school and even when I entered the workforce, it was an often discussed topic.
How to generate more ideas?
How to be more creative?
I’ve heard many people say “I’m not creative” or “I have difficulty coming up with ideas”.
They think creativity is an innate ability.
From my personal experience, it is not.
As with most things in life, creativity can be developed.
Like a muscle, it requires reps.
It’s surprisingly simple to train: it’s a matter of connecting dots from unrelated fields.
How to do so?
Exposure and action.
Exposure can come from anywhere.
Real-life experiences via travelling, doing certain activities for the first time, picking up a new hobby or interactions with friends.
But even from home you can be exposed to something new: YouTube, podcasts, books, blog articles… even Netflix shows can prove a source of inspiration if used correctly.
Frankly, simply living your life often gives you the exposure needed to be(come) creative.
It’s the second step where many people fall short.
At first, you have to consciously make connections.
With time this becomes second nature and I often find myself having an idea while talking with someone or listening to a podcast, which I quickly note down for further exploration later.
If you want to train in a focused manner, think of a problem you’re trying to solve.
While doing so, think of what you’ve experienced the past 1~3 days.
Is there anything you saw, heard or experienced that can relate to the problem somehow?
How would someone you heard on a podcast or who you spoke with solve your problem?
You can tackle the issue from as many different angles as you can conceive.
The more you try to relate experiences to the problem or place yourself in someone else’s shoes to solve the problem, the easier it becomes.
Alternatively, you can train in an unfocused manner.
This blog is one example.
It can be done publicly or privately, in writing or audio format.
Simply sit down, grab the tools you need and think “what did I experience?”
“What do I want to share with someone or with my future self?”
If this is too unfocused for you, before you go to bed write down a question you asked yourself that day or your most memorable experience.
The next day you can use those to start writing or speaking.
You’ll notice that the start is the hard part.
Once you’ve got your first sentence down, everything else becomes easier.
I often catch myself writing for half an hour straight.
It just starts to flow naturally.
Everything I’ve explained so far has to do with synthetic imagination – as Napoleon Hill calls it.
This is the type of imagination that connects experiences to bring forth ideas.
Most are not revolutionary, but they allow progress nonetheless.
On the other hand, we have creative imagination.
These are hunches, a gut feeling or ideas of which we often can’t explain their origins.
I haven’t found a way to easily practice and train this.
But, again from my own experience, I find this to happen more frequently as I continue to do more creative work and stretch my mind creatively.
I find meditation, walks outside and deep thinking about a problem (without any output) in solitude to be beneficial for this.
Having said that, I feel that these ideas come from my subconsciousness and are likely an accumulation of experiences and exposure to information – in any form – that I have consciously forgotten or have become unaware of.
The moral of all this is: I believe creativity and the ability to generate ideas can be trained and it can be done by simply exposing yourself to more, novel experiences and using these to solve problems and/or giving yourself time to do creative work.
The more you do this, the easier it becomes and you’ll soon find yourself having more ideas than you can pursue.
Just like working out develops your muscles, creative work develops your creativity.
You just have to put in the reps.