Creative Thinking - How to Get Great Ideas on Demand

We spend some parts of our day on autopilot, barely noticing what is going on around us, one of the ways we can start coming up with ideas is to make a conscious effort to change that.

Some examples based on my day of using the Daytective Technique

Look back at your two previous days using the Daytective technique. To get your ideas flowing in a different way, think about the things you wrote down and use them to come up with the worst ideas you can. Then try and turn these bad ideas into ideas that could really work.

Another Daytective Day, but this time look for specific ideas that you need. So for example if you are looking for business ideas, see how what you notice can be applied to that. 

Choose a problem you are trying to solve or look back at one of your Daytective days. You may notice, that like me you have really narrowed your thinking. We tend to jump to conclusions too quickly and narrow our thoughts. There are lots of ways you can re-expand your ideas by asking different questions.

You don’t need to be a great writer to try Freewriting. Freewriting is essentially a braindump on a topic. The theory is that this stops us from censoring ourselves. This allows subconscious thoughts to spill out onto the page.

This exercise involves making connections between two objects to see what new ideas they could inspire.

Just like we did yesterday, you can do a similar thing with services. 

The exercise of splitting up two things and then combining some of their elements can be used on a lot of different things. Today try using the same method to create a story. 

This is a similar technique to “Offspring” except that you can introduce more than two elements.

Take a random card from each of the creative mash-up cards you made yesterday

Mind maps have many uses. They can be used in a very structured form to organise information, which you might have done before? But for idea generation you should keep things very free-flowing and scrap all the rules

Allowing your mind time to relax is important in creativity. It allows your mind to wander without pressure.

A random word can help break you out of your normal way of thinking and can be used for lots of different things. For this exercise I’m going to show you how you can use a random word for blog post inspiration. 

We can use randomness to spark new ideas with just about anything. Try using it in a matrix to come up with product ideas. Once you see how it works you can adapt it to come up with ideas for anything.

A matrix of ideas around you with added randomness

I mentioned before how useful randomness is to get fresh ideas random imagery is no exception. Once you try it you will be amazed at all the new ideas you can have, because you are not relying on your normal way of thinking.

Choose three of the ideas that you have generated from the past exercises. Write down one small thing you could do today to kick off the ideas. Then pick one and go and do it. Even if it’s as simple as reading an article, setting up a Facebook Page or Group, ringing someone or starting to doodle an idea based on a creative card.

This is a technique popularized by James Altucher. He recommends that everyone should come up with 10 ideas a day. To do this you create list headings of things you want to have ideas for. I will also show you my twist on this idea.

Allowing your mind time to relax is important in creativity. It allows your mind to wander without pressure. Allow the exercises from earlier in the week to percolate. Take a walk and see if that helps new ideas appear in your mind.

Create your own creative prompts with questions related to the type of ideas you need. 

Try out the creative prompt cards you made yesterday. Use them to help you generate ideas or get inspiration for a new project.

Try changing things up a bit to get some fresh creative input. It doesn’t need to be any thing big, just change something. New ideas come from connections between different things. So these new experiences gives us more potential connections.

An additional example using the SCAMPER Technique on a pet toy

The purpose of a moodboard is to provide you with visual inspiration for a project. 

Grab yourself some old magazines, news papers or leaflets. We are going to use them as inspiration for todays project.  The idea is to cut up bits of the magazine and use it to create something new.

Today you can either take a day off, do something fun or check our some creativity apps

Studies have been done that show that if people try to think like a child they become more creative. Children tend to be far more spontaneous and uninhibited than adults. They don’t worry that what they say or do might be considered wrong or stupid.