Everyday Creativity

Everyday creativity is finding ways to be creative in your everyday life. Being creative isn’t restricted to the glittering ideas of geniuses within big companies or musicians, artists, and poets.

Anyone can be creative simply by adding some imagination and flair into their daily routine. It’s about adding some originality and meaningfulness to your routine.

Some examples of everyday creativity…

• Change your usual route to work or school. If you drive to work or school change things up by taking a different route. Stop for a coffee on the way to a coffee shop that you have never visited before.

• Go out for lunch to somewhere you’ve not tried before then select something different to what you would normally choose to eat
• Sit back and think about your everyday work tasks. Can you improve some of your tasks by reducing, removing or adding processes? Can some of the less exciting tasks be made more interesting? Perhaps you could make a game out of it? Time how long it takes you to do a task and see if you can do it faster and beat your own record the next time.
• When cooking and following along to a favorite recipe – put your own stamp on it by adding some different herbs, spices or other ingredients that come to mind.

• Watch something new on television or read on a subject that you have no knowledge of.
• Go to bed earlier or later than you normally do.
• Plan and take a trip to a place or city that you have never visited before.
• Allocate one hour to working on something that you are passionate about. When you are passionate about something time flies by and ideas start flowing.
• Spend more time than you usually would in the shower – this is apparently where Jeff Taylor the man behind monster.com got his idea for his job posting site.
• Or alternatively, spend some more time simply staring out of the window and daydreaming. Think about how things might be in the future. Many people get great ideas simply by letting time pass them by and letting their minds wander off. Be sure to keep a pen and notebook by your side however as you want to make sure you note your great idea down when it comes to you.
• Learn how to be more creative by using some of the many published creativity techniques.

Like most things, the more you experiment at everyday creativity the better you will become.

Seeing things in a fresh new way is essential to the creative process.

Is there anything that frustrates you or that is problematic in your life? If so try and look at it from a different mindset. Perhaps that electrical game that the kids play with which is always running out of batteries – could you add a solar panel to it?

Acknowledge your inventive power, originality and creative abilities.

Experiment often and don’t be afraid to make mistakes – creativity is about persistence. Mistakes are just a means for more learning. Read about Thomas Edison for inspiration regarding learning from mistakes. When questioned on why he continued to try and discover a long-lasting filament for the light bulb after he had failed many times over he exclaimed that in his mind he hadn’t failed once. He had simply discovered thousands of things that didn’t work.

Over time your creative confidence will increase and you will intuitively come up with creative solutions to problem ideas plus you will be more likely to come up with that next big groundbreaking idea.

The main thing is believing that you can be more creative and then acting upon the ideas that begin to flow.