Get Creative Part 1: The Tools

April 4th 2007

Creativity is all about coming up with new ideas, interpretations and methods and involves thinking and exploring what goes through your mind. It’s a quality that should be encouraged at all walks of life. You need to feed your creative side with inspirational material, give it the time and attention is needs. Below are the 5 key variables you need in place to get those creative juices running:

Notepad (or some similar tool). So many ideas come and go through your mind, you will forget them if they are not noted down. Don’t constrain yourself with neatness, write whatever comes to your mind.
Stress and anxiety are all bad for a creative mind. They stop it from relaxing and keep it focused on negative, unconstructive thoughts.
Have no distractions. When you have a creative thought you run with it. Or you would if someone hadn’t just shoved past you, or the phone hadn’t rang for the tenth time…
Background noise. I originally wrote peace and quiet here but some people get more creative when they have music in the background, classical and jazz tends to be the popular choice as they are generally lyrics-lite. However, if you work better in a quiet environment go with that.
Location. Once you have your notebook, put all your stressful demons out of your mind, turned your mobile off (and if it works for you, put some creative music on your MP3 player), you don’t want to then find yourself boxed up at home. Find an inspirational location! In part 2 of this post I will give five places you can go to get that creativity kick.

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