A study at the University of Georgia found, not too surprisingly, that when you tell people "Be creative!" often they freeze up. It's like telling a comedian you encounter on the street, "OK, make me laugh!"
The researcher, Mark Runco, found that it was much more effective to tell people, "Do something only you would come up with--that none of your family or friends would think of." He says this doubles the number of creative responses.
This seems like a strategy that could be transferred to specific creative activities. For instance, if you're creating an idea for a TV series, your instruction to yourself could be, "Do something that existing TV series don't do." In the case of "Dexter," this was making the protagonist of the series a serial killer. For "24"and other recent series, it was killing off major characters in the middle of a series.
The next time you sit down to be creative in your realm, try giving yourself that instruction and see what effect it has on the flow of ideas.
(For more ideas on how to be more creative, get my newest book, "Creativity Now!"--it gives you 25 ways to get into a creative state, 25 ways to generate new ideas, 25 ways to help you turn those ideas into reality, and 25 inspirational mini-case studies of creative projects. You can get the book from Amazon or your other favorite online or offline book seller.)
