Explore Your Creative Potential
This week I finished reading Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelley. This book was a great reminder to challenge limiting beliefs such as “I am not creative” or “I don’t believe my ideas can have a positive impact in this world.” When we transcend doubt and fear to execute our creative ideas, we become more confident in our abilities. I highly recommend this book if you need the inspiration to implement your plans or to develop new ways of solving problems. Here are some of my favorite takeaways from the book.
- The Power of Belief:
Growth mindset:
If you believe that you have a fixed amount of creativity and intelligence, the view may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, if you think that you are a creative person, you are more likely to embrace learning, exploring the unknown and experimenting.
Self-belief
A belief that you have the courage to take action and create a positive impact can help you embrace the unknown.
2. Challenge Yourself:
- Create a system to capture ideas as and when it strikes. Our brains are always making associations between events and experiences. Carrying a small notebook and a pen or using apps such as Google Keep/ Evernote to save the idea immediately helps us store it for future reference. Writing the idea helps free the mind to come up with more ideas.
- Divergent thinking activates different areas of the brain responsible for creative thinking. The next time you want to come up with new ways to organize an event or solve a problem, try drawing mind maps. Compared to writing lists, mind maps help our mind visualize and generate various ideas.
- Set a goal to write an idea every day or build 2/3 prototypes for your project by this week.
3. From Ideas to Implementation:
Embrace the “Do something mindset.”
Minimize planning and maximize action. Start small. Is there a way you can tackle parts of the problem that can be done right now? Take small yet consistent steps towards the project.
Rapid prototyping
Is there a way you can create a quick prototype of your plan? Building a minimum viable product allows you to speed up the process of experimentation in the spirit of "Trial and Error." The earlier you can create a prototype, the faster the feedback you can receive.
Example: Companies launch pop up stores to test demand in new cities. Similarly, storyboarding a service can help gather immediate feedback so you can refine your idea. Creating prototypes via UXPin or Marvel can simulate the user interaction with the interface so you can make the necessary design/flow changes.
Are there any ideas/practices that resonated with you? I would love to hear from you in the comments section.
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Ditto! I normally keep a small memo pad handy to jot down thoughts. A creative concept can happen at anytime or place. Creativity, go for it!
Great article Ani, these are definitely some important pointers for people to expand and embrace their creative sides. I think the point that resonated with me most was about noting down various ideas that we get. I have always felt like we are more probable to get awesome ideas when we are lesser prepared to jot it down, e.g. - while driving or just before we fall asleep. I used to let it go at that time thinking, 'aah I'll remember it later and note it'. No brownie points for guessing what happened later. I have eventually at some point of time taken up that habit of noting it then and there. Either by parking the car immediately, or storing a voice recording.