Relax, Breathe… Create.

October 13, 2009

It seems when I least expect it, my best ideas appear. Can you relate? Often while on a walk, taking a shower or relaxing in some way… bang! A great idea seems to magically appear. On the flip side, when I’m really stressed out and in need of a breakthrough solution, rarely does anything truly creative surface. If you’re like me, that’s when you return to the old idea well and crank up a predictable solution. It might be an interesting solution, but rarely original. It’s typically a modification of one of those good ideas that “worked” once (or twice…) before.

According to Nuno Sousa at the University of Minho in Portugal, there’s a good reason for why this happens. Sousa found when lab rats are stressed out; their responses to familiar routines become very repetitive. For example, rather than trying new maze paths that lead to food, chronically stressed rats repeatedly ran down the same dead-end paths. Read more

Write It Down!

October 3, 2009

According to what I’ve read and experienced, people who write down their goals have a greater chance of reaching them. I believe the same holds true for people who write down their creative thoughts and ideas. The chance of discovering creative solutions that work successfully increases significantly.

Creative ideas are fleeting gifts. The question isn’t whether you have them (everyone does), but whether you take these gifts seriously and record them. Since we never know where or when they’ll strike us (walking, sleeping, shaving…), it’s important to be prepared at all times.

A few months back, while taking a shower, I was struck by a childhood event that involved a broken plastic baseball bat. It came out of left field (no pun intended) and started connecting to a plethora of today’s so called “problems.” Read more