Creativity isn’t a lightning bolt that strikes occasionally and can’t be predicted: it’s more like a muscle. Creativity needs to be trained, challenged, and worked on constantly to develop your skills.

Perhaps you have a job that requires a high degree of creative thinking - or perhaps you’d simply like to hone your creative skills for future job opportunities and business ventures.

Regardless, even if you feel like you don’t have a creative bone in your body right now, you absolutely can train yourself to boost your creativity. Below are a few fantastic tips for working that creativity muscle consistently!

What are the Benefits of Creative Thinking?

Creativity is an extremely useful skill, regardless of your aspirations in life. Creative thinking can come in handy when you’re playing word games with friends at home, taking up a new hobby such as playing an instrument, and especially if you are interested in a career in which creative thinking is a necessary skill.

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8 Ways You Could Boost Your Creativity:

1. Keep learning

A creative mind is a curious mind, so make an effort to keep learning new skills and indulging your natural curiosity to find out more about the world and everything in it.

Once you’ve developed some creative skills, it’s important to keep on challenging yourself and acquiring new knowledge to inspire you and help you grow. Whether you simply make an effort to read more in your spare time, or look into taking more actual courses, constant learning is vital to boost your creativity.

2. Do what you love

When you actually love your job, you are naturally going to be more inspired and enthusiastic about creative problem solving and coming up with new ideas. A task that you keep putting off is going to be very difficult to approach with a positive, creative attitude.

Find a hobby that lets you be creative that you love to do, such as playing an instrument, painting, or even a sport that completely places you in the present.

3. Take a break

Although creativity is absolutely a skill you can train yourself to be better at (rather than the notion of simply waiting for creativity to ‘strike’), it’s important to also not put too much pressure on yourself. If you’ve been sitting at your desk for hours desperately seeking new ideas and solutions and coming up with nothing, take a break.

Get a change of scenery, clear your head, and take your mind off the task at hand: when you come back to it with a fresh set of eyes, you might suddenly find the idea you’ve been waiting for sitting in front of you the entire time!

4. Get some exercise

Exercise can be a great way to clear your mind if you’ve been feeling under pressure or stressed out.

Numerous studies have shown that physical exercise (even just 30 minutes of aerobic activity) genuinely does help us become more creative as well as improve brain function! So next time you’re in a bit of a creative rut, put on your running shoes and get your heart rate pumping and see if you can encourage your creative juices to flow more freely!

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5. Find the conditions that make you most creative

Some people are early birds and find they’re at their most creative and productive in the early hours of the morning before most people even begin to stir! Others (the majority, in fact) thrive on the quiet of night - while some might find the typical 9 - 5 is perfectly suited to creative thinking.

The key is to find what working conditions work best for you - not only the hours that you work, but other things such as location, lighting, music (or silence!), the tools/equipment you use. Start thinking of yourself as an artist - you need everything to be perfect to perform your best!

6. Make time for creativity

Many people make the mistake of simply waiting for inspiration to strike, and therefore don’t see creativity as a skill that can be honed and developed when you need it. Try to re-frame the way you see your creative skills and actually make time for creative thinking.

If you have a job that requires large amounts of creativity, schedule out time for this in your diary - while it may feel strange to factor in ‘creative time’ at first, it takes the pressure off having a sudden burst of inspiration when you least expect it - which definitely isn’t a sustainable way to work!

7. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback

Asking colleagues and peers that you trust and respect for their honest feedback on your work is a fantastic way of honing your skills and making sure that you really are on track with your work.

Find some peers in a similar niche to you who will be able to offer genuine, helpful criticism and feedback on your work - you may find that a few simple but helpful suggestions really boosts your creativity on your next project.

8. Collaborate with others

As well as asking for feedback, collaborating with your colleagues and within your network can be a great source of inspiration. If you’ve been struggling to find creative solutions and ideas for a certain project, bringing in a trusted peer can be a fantastic way of boosting your creativity.

Sometimes, having someone else to bounce off and spark ideas can be extremely helpful - especially if you’ve been struggling with something in particular on your own for a while!

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As you can see from the list above, there are many different ways to boost your creativity. Most importantly, you need to remember that different methods are going to work for different people - your creative side may come out at different times, in different moods, even in different locations, to others - and being in tune with that is what’s essential.

If you’ve been struggling to boost your creativity recently, try one or two of the ideas listed above - see what happens. Remember, creativity is like a muscle that needs to be trained with consistency and intensity, you just need to find what really helps you get those creative juices flowing!

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