What if I told you all it takes to improve your creativity and innovation is a 10 minute daily routine? Does that sound too good to be true? Through a practice called Idea Generation, you not only exercise your mind and “keep it fresh,” but you also stretch your ability to develop innovative and creative ideas. Let me show you the daily routine to improve your creativity and innovation.
What is Idea Generation?
Idea Generation is basically what it sounds like. It is the practice of generating ideas. To be specific, the idea generation I am promoting right now is the idea generation that involves generating 10 ideas each day on a specific topic. Well-known individuals like Tim Ferris have stressed the importance of routines as such, and is a unique thing to incorporate in your day to day life. Sound simple enough? Let me show you an example:
“Think of 10 things you dislike, and write down how you can turn them into things you can be grateful.”
Sounds kind of fun right? Each day you generate 10 ideas on a topic like that one above. 10 ideas. Not five, not four, not nine, but ten. A few ideas are easy to generate, but ten ideas really forces you to think creatively in a way we are not used to. For the topic above, you will find it easy to generate the first few ideas or so. But when you hit six, seven, eight, all the way to ten, you may laugh at how ridiculous your ideas sound. Bu that is part of the process. Through practice everyday, you will find it easier to generate creative and innovative ideas on the topics. But what topics? How do you find daily topics? Well, you have two ways to do so:
1. Come up with your own topics. If you are motivated enough to think of unique topics each day to think of, go right ahead! You’d be surprised at what you can come up with.
2. Follow along Becoming an Idea Machine. This is the original idea generation book. The book covers 90 topics (or 90 days) in which you can use in your life to transform your creative aptitude.
Start your daily routine to improve your creativity today
The first step is always the hardest. You may not see a need to generate ideas daily. You may think it’s silly. You may not see how it benefits you. It is natural to have all these thoughts when you are deciding whether to start something knew. My challenge to you is to start it for just a week. See how it goes for one week. That’s it. From there, you either love it or hate it. But I can guarantee you that idea generation will allow you to notice room for growth, improvement, and innovation where others don’t. If you want to follow along with Claudia Altucher’s book, Becoming an Idea Machine, get it here!
You will:
- Be forced out of your comfort zone.
- Learn to face rejection and “bad” ideas.
- Potential for some of your ideas to take root.
- Gain confidence in your ability to innovate.
- Understand the importance of taking action.