13 Ways to Boost Your Creative Thinking

When pursuing a creative career, you’re going to get a mental block every once in a while. Relax, it’s perfectly normal and even geniuses get it. Your creativity is not just your ability to think differently and depends on several factors such as mood, time of day, focus and even your health.

Here are 13 great ideas that can help you overcome this imaginary enemy, and boost your creative thinking to get you on the right track.

1. Put New Ideas on Paper

Good ideas often appear when you least expect them, like during your commute, right before sleeping, or in the shower. To keep a piece of paper or journal with you –not your phone because it could be distracting– is one of the best ways to land an idea that later can become a great product, essay, story, or work of art. 

2. Create Your Own Motivation Material

It’s important to keep your inspiration up and on sight! When running out of material to start working on, take a look at different mood boards that you can make yourself.

These can help you remember things you like and take you to a good mental place. Save your favorite quotes and write them down, use beautiful, inspiring photos and a slideshow maker to create videos that you can look at every now and then, or even share with others looking for inspiration through social media.

3. Learn to Play an Instrument

Trust me, it’s never too late to start learning to play a musical instrument. Chances are you’re not going to be the next clavichord world prodigy, but there are ways in which music lessons help you with cognition and memory.

In particular, it improves hand-eye coordination which is useful for those involved in visual and plastic arts.

4. Know When to Relax

Can you think of a moment when you feel the most stressed out? When you reach a peak of the creative block after a long thinking session? That is the exact time to take a break and relax.

Learn to identify these moments and force yourself to quit working for a while and do nothing. Try to reset your mind and rest or take a nap. You’ll work better and thank yourself later.

5. Create a Helpful Playlist

Some people like to listen to jazz while sketching or writing, others like lo-beat tunes, and some just enjoy the silence. Find what works best for you and create playlists for different stages of the creative process.

How does music help us be more creative? It has to do with the mood it creates. Happiness is a positive emotion that changes our mindset and makes us want to be playful and explore.

6. Sleep and Eat Well

If your body is not working well, the rest of the machine won’t follow. In order to keep your creative skills at their best and your mind sharp, your entire self must be taken care of.

Besides having a routine before going to bed and getting well-balanced meals, you can take a look at these tips to get a good night’s sleep.

7. Finish a Small Project Each Day

Start with those things you’ve put off for years due to lack of time, laziness, or pure and simple procrastination. Perhaps, you’ve always wanted to get your own logo for further projects such as creating your own YouTube channel, starting a blog or a website, or working on custom packaging.

You can use an online logo maker and start that project you left and create a logo design in a few minutes with zero excuses.

8. Practice Meditation

Jobs for creative people are indeed demanding, so it’s no coincidence more people seem to be meditating now. When overwhelmed by excess work, meditation is one of the few things that can help you change your mindset and get rid of all the internal noise.

9. Read Something You Enjoy

No matter where you end up in the creative industries map, you’ll eventually need to read something you enjoy. Not just because of your job, but for your creativity’s sake.

Go to a bookstore or library and find something that you like and let yourself get to reading, if you don’t like it, quit that book and find another one you’d enjoy. There are lots of life-long benefits of reading for pleasure.

10. Take Advice from Others

Asking other people what they do to boost their creativity can surely help you. Everybody has their own way to cope with creative block, so ask an expert or someone you look up to.

Try different techniques to keep the creative juices flowing, there are endless ways to sharpen your mind.

11. Write Down Something You Learned That Day

What is creative thinking but finding new means to get to the same places? It’s all been done before, just not in the same ways. Write about that.

Regardless of how small something may seem, it’s valuable for you. Start a small journal and write down whatever you learn each day and take a look at this after a while, you’ll see that small, daily things eventually add up to a great project.

12. Take Time to Play Board Games

Fact: Board games help brain cells and how they work because we isolate from reality, challenge ourselves and think about answers and strategies we otherwise wouldn’t.

For example, if you’re trying to write something important, there are benefits board games bring to your craft.

13. Take a Walk and Wander

Remember how you should know when to stop working? Well, you should also know when to get up and take a walk with no direction.

Free your mind for a while and go to the nearest park or around the block. Take the road you don’t usually take and don’t focus on anything but the moment.

Careers for creative people are just as challenging as other paths. The upside is that creativity, as well as imagination and memory, can be flexed like a muscle. Keep these tips in mind and what science has put out there.

 If you have any other method or strategy to improve your creative process, please share it!