Keeping Creative

Being creative is really important: both in business and in play. I've been trying to learn new ways to be more creative, to record my ideas and try and implement them in some way through inventing. This is what I've learned so far about fostering creativity:

1 - The best time to start was yesterday; the second best time to start is now.
If you come up with a new idea or a new way of doing things, don't feel as if it's too little, too late. You just need to smash your fist on your desk, jump out of your chair and say "Let's do it." If you think of a tiny way to make your life better, then do it right away! At the very least, write it down right away. That way, if you actually are extremely busy right now, you can come back to it tomorrow without forgetting your idea.

1.5 - Know your best times
Personally, I always have my best ideas and motivation when I'm trying to go to sleep. When I wake up in the morning, I always forget whatever it was that I was thinking about. But one day I punched my desk and decided that if I have night time inspiration, I'm going to jump out of bed and write it on a notepad, this blog, or even leave some sort of symbol made out of clothes on the floor so that in the morning I can remember what I was thinking about.

2 - The third best time to start will be tomorrow.
This follows from point 1.5. Everybody is creative at different times, but if your time is really inconvenient, you need to have a way to transfer your ideas so that you can use them tomorrow. If you're actually very busy and can't start an idea today, then tomorrow is the next best thing. Don't give up on it or use the crutch: "not enough time." Everybody has some amount of discretionary time and you can use it however you like. Free time does not come to you, you have to make it.

3 - Find some time to think and tinker
Boredom is creativity fertilizer. Everyone has some time in their day when they are bored and this time should be used to think about the ideas that you had when you were too busy or were trying to go to sleep or whatever, whenever.

If you ride the bus to work, for example, you can read a book that is related to your idea or perhaps one that will inspire other ideas. You could think about problems you see every day. If you can stop and think about some problems that you see each day, then you will have something from which solutions can flow. They don't have to be important problems. Your ideas don't have to be 'good'. They are just ideas. Ideas are only good or bad according to somebody else with a different idea.

An effective way to protect your ideas from yourself is to remember this mantra: "To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." It doesn't matter what idea you have. Somebody will think that it's gold and somebody will think that it's trash. The point is that neither of them are right. The idea is what you make of it.

4 - To get a good idea, have lots of ideas
Even if you don't manage to make something of even a majority of your ideas, it doesn't matter. Keep having ideas and keep trying them on for size. There is a perception that brilliant people just think of brilliant ideas and suddenly know what to do with them. This just isn't so. "To get a good idea, have lots of ideas."

If you judge your ideas harshly when they are young and weak, then they will never grow into anything worthwhile. You need to protect them until they can protect themselves.

5 - Get rid of the unimportant stuff 
Having lots of ideas takes lots of time. You need to make time for yourself to have lots of ideas. During your reflection time that you created for yourself, you need to look at your life like a time budget and chop out the stuff that just doesn't matter. Everybody wastes time doing things that they don't really want to do or that aren't really important to them. Don't divert yourself from your ideas! You don't need to change your entire life, but start with something small.

If you don't feel like you have enough time, make a list of all of the things that you do and just destroy the least important one. Don't make excuses, just stop doing it and make it your creative time. If you spend lots of time commuting to work and then spend more time exercising later on, then exercise while you go to work. If you watch TV and then play video games, do both at the same time. Eat while you work.

You wouldn't waste money, so don't waste time.

6 - Write down your ideas
Now that you have chosen to make time to be creative, write your ideas down. Write them down. Write them down! It doesn't really make sense, but if you write them down then they become more official or realistic somehow. Everything seems more official if its on paper (but you needn't use paper). This part is vital because your aren't always going to be able to use your ideas immediately. If you write them down then they are stashed away for a future time when they may be more valuable to you. This blog is my idea stash.


7 - Share
The greatest beauty of the internet is that if you have an idea, then somebody out there probably had another idea that can complement yours in some way. The internet pulses with creativity. Use it to help you. If you have an idea and there's some part of it that you don't understand or is outside of your realm of expertise, then Google it. You should consider the internet to be an extension of your brain.

The best part about the internet for improving creativity is that it isn't a TV. You don't just sit like a zombie and suck up programming. You can input. You can contribute! That's the most important part.

Find videos or pictures or writings that inspire you in this great information bucket. Once they've inspired you, make your own! One of the greatest experiences of being alive is having someone use something you've created in some way. That's the satisfaction of sharing. Remember: it doesn't matter what you create, just create something to get yourself started. And start right now because it's the second best time to start. Be an artist in your own way.

A great example from a TED video that I saw was that of lolcats. Lolcats are probably the stupidest thing ever placed on the internet but the people who made them took the crucial step of making anything at all.

Summary
To summarize in three (four) steps:

1. Smash your fist on your desk
2. Jump out of your chair
3. Yell, "Let's do it!"
4. Do it

You'd be surprised, but the first three steps are the hardest.