Whether you are predominantly left-brained or right-brained, there is some basic creativity innate in every human being. You need to enhance your creativity for various reasons – to improve your performance and withstand competition among peers; to break free from the monotony of daily work; to come up with interesting solutions to existing problems; to improve standards using your experience and insight; and manage work-life balance effectively. Here are some basic ways in which you can work hard to add to the flow of creative juices in your mind that are necessary for everyone.
Step out of your comfort zone. The first thing that you need to do is to take risk and do things differently. Only when you are ready to take risks and mistakes, you can learn from your experiences. If you stick to your regular mode of operation, you might end up with monotony. Begin making small changes to your daily routine and including things that you are not so comfortable doing. You might sometimes be alarmed at your own capabilities by indulging in activities that you always ignored. Then, calculate your risks and tread cautiously to experiment and gain from your experiments. Thus, you sharpen your judgment skills thereby adding to your existing set of decision making abilities.
Practice the art of thinking from different viewpoints. How often have you been asked to get into the shoes of the customer? Yes, you need to get into the shoes of not just the customer, but all the stakeholders who are involved. Interact with the different stakeholders to understand their own perceptions about the existing process and note down any improvements that they can suggest to make things better or to come up with something anew. Combine the assumptions and suggestions that you draw from the various quarters and there will be a new source of knowledge that you can apply while carrying your work.
Learn more from the varied sources that you can get in touch. It is not just enough if you learn from all your stakeholders about their perceptions and expectations. You must have a keen sense of the industry trends. Keep a tab on all the technological advancements that are related to your field. Adopt the new technological advances in your regular chores. Likewise, stay updated on any papers and reports that experts publish in your field of operation. The Internet acts as a great source of information and you can certainly gain more by reading all the literature available.
Break the traditions and pine for change. Question the traditional practices if you want to really begin change from your direction. You can achieve this by identifying the least important activities that contribute very less to reaching your personal goals. Once you get into the habit of breaking traditional habits in your personal life, apply the same techniques at work to learn more and benefit more. To do so, first break your tasks into sub-tasks and assign priorities to them on the basis of their usefulness to your overall goals. Thus you arrive at activities that are more important and assign more priority to them. It is quite obvious that you have been very good at prioritizing things at work. The problem lies in the fact that you have never tried to prioritize your activities that are not related to work. You get to learn more and apply these rules to your work related activities also.
Try to analyze, infer, and assume. To conclude is to make a mistake. Analyze and benefit from learning the logic behind how things happen. Infer and understand the significance of orderliness of processes. Assume and learn the key role played by different people. Be wary before coming to any conclusion. You are likely to slip into a habit of illogical conclusions that serve no purpose. If you realize that you have just made and assumption, there are many great chances that you can change it as soon as you get new information that might be contradictory. However, you tend to hurt your judgmental abilities if you try to question your own conclusions. Hence, identify the thin line of difference between inferring, analyzing, assuming, and concluding regarding situations, people, and things. You can always conclude when there are enough facts to support your information. Yet, you should be ready to face any exceptions as you go along.
Challenge your beliefs before you set to change other’s beliefs. Highly creative people have the great task of altering others’ beliefs and changing the way they understand things. Even before you set to change others, you must change your belief system to accept newness. Flexibility plays a key role in such a situation. Look at things with a very open mind and refrain from having preconceived notions about any person or issue. Get into the habit of looking every problem on a fresh canvas to come up with your masterpiece solution.
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