How to be more creative

The Five Steps to Creativity

Although the names of the steps change depending on where you look them up, the principles are the same. According to the Pearce Center for Professional Communication, Graham Wallace asocial psychologist was who outlined the creative process for the first time in his book The Art of Thought, published in 1926.

Step 1: Preparation

Do some research, find inspiration. This will have a different meaning depending on why you’re looking to be more creative. For example, if you’re looking for painting ideas, you might want to take a walk around town, or to the nearest park. The main objective in this step is to go out and learn about your topic of interest as much as possible browsing the internet, reading a book, reading poetry, listening to music, taking a walk, or any other way you can think of to learn more about your topic of interest.

Step 2: Incubation

During incubation, the information you have gathered will “incubate” in your mind, and your brain will begin to process it. Taking a step back and focusing on something else will give your subconscious time to process everything you’ve read, observers, or listened to. According to James Taylor (a renown leader in creativity and innovation), this step can take hours, days, months, or even years.

Step 3: Insight

Boom! Like magic, a solution appears when you’re doing something else and least expecting it. Something will trigger your subconscious and you will find the solution (or inspiration) to what you’ve been looking for.

Step 4: Evaluation

Like an act of magic, you found you’re idea. Now it’s time to evaluate it and see if it’s actually the appropriate one. A good way to evaluate it is by sharing it with peers and get their feedback. Try sharing it with people who have different backgrounds or way of thinking to make sure it’s fool proof (or at least to get their thoughts from a different perspective).
Spoiler: If you’re idea is not as good as you thought it was, you might need to go back to step 2.

Step 5: Elaboration

It’s time for action. You now have the winning idea, and you’re ready to start painting, writing, or the new marketing campaign for your brand.

Wait!!

This seems easy, but I can’t just wait for information to “incubate” in my brain for as long as it’s needed. I have a deadline, and I need to come up with the design for my clients. What do I do?

There’s a couple of strategies you can use to speed up the creative process.

The Creative Process
The Scrum
Analogies

References

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