5 exercises that will improve your creativity

If I give you two words -“Museum” and “Sauce” – and ask you to come up with a mini-saga of at least 140 characters,  what would you write?  What can you create with and around these two words?  How about this:

The local dinosaur museum also has an in-house restaurant that is famous for their special “Museum Sauce”. Little do the consumers know, the tasty sauce is made of ground up dino bones that can’t be paired with their original skeletons for unknown reasons. Come on out and have some 200 million year old dino dinner!

Creative brilliance is a phenomenal thing to witness when it happens. Whether it’s a work of art, a scientific theory, an invention or in an everyday brainstorming session. Many believe that you are either creative or you’re not, but the truth is it can be learned and improved over time.

We’ve conducted extensive studies on this subject and here are five scientifically-proven daily exercises that, if used consistently, will improve your creative juices.  Note that, these exercises can be done anywhere and any time.

• MapIt: A mind-mapping exercise, which effectively gets the ideas in and out of your head.  It is a well-known exercise where you are given a central word or phrase and it asks you to brainstorm out of it. This exercise can be done by yourself.   Look around you.  Pick an abstract idea.  Then map out of it in multiple directions.

 

• LoopIt: An object-usage exercise, where you are given an object and think of creative ways you can use this object. This is a common exercise used in many divergent thinking tests such as TTCT or rCAB.  You can do this  exercise by yourself. Get a flashcards of objects.  Each day, choose one and simply practice it.

 

• TieIt: A mini-saga exercise. where you are given two objects, phrases or ideas, then write a “mini-saga” of at least 140 characters about it. This exercise challenges your story-telling. You can easily practice this exercise, by choosing two unrelated objects or ideas, and then come up a story that links them together.

 

• ImproveIt:  An exercise where you are given an ordinary object and asked to come up with ways of improving the object. It can also be done by yourself by obtaining flashcards of objects.  Everyday choose one and come up with ways to improve it.

• OddIt: An Odd-man-out exercise where you are given a set of items, objects or ideas.  Randomly, choose one of them.  Create a story around it as why the selected item is unique and different from the rest.  Again, don’t look for a logical reasoning.  Come up with a scenario or a story.  You can do this exercise by yourself.  Use your flashcards and sort them in groups of five.