3 Quick Tips To Improve Creativity
Fortunately, there are many different ways to help improve creativity. This is a good thing because there are many kinds of 'thinking problems,' and some strategies work better depending on the type of problem you are trying to solve.
So, let's take a look at three more strategies you can use to maximize your creativity.
Pick the Right Time of Day
Are you a morning person or a night person?
Does it matter for creativity?
The short answer is, it depends.
Wieth & Zacks (2012) asked study participants to take two types of creativity tests.
The first type of creativity test involved solving an insight problem. These are abstract problems that involve thinking outside the box.
The second type of creativity test measured performance on an analytical test. These are problems where you follow the steps to solve an answer, such as a math problem.
Results showed that morning people (i.e., people who are most focused in the morning) did better at solving analytical problems in the morning and insight problems in the evening.
And for evening people (i.e., people who are more focused in the evening) the same pattern emerged.
They were better at solving analytical problems when they were more concentrated in the evening and performed better on abstract insight problems when they were more sleepy in the morning.
So, depending on what type of problem you want to solve, picking the right time of day can help.
Drink Tea
This strategy was probably a little unexpected, but there is good science to back it up.
Huang et al. (2018) had study participants complete a divergent thinking task as a test of creativity after drinking a cup of tea.
Divergent thinking involves coming up with as many creative ideas as possible to solve a problem.
An example of this would be “How many different ways can you use an apple?”
A few that came to mind include eating it, playing catch with it, and throwing it at someone who is frustrating you... you get the idea.
Results showed that the study participants who drank black tea did notably better on the divergent thinking task.
And for those of you wondering why tea works, science doesn’t have a good answer for you yet.
Caffeine and theanine, which past studies have shown help to improve attention, appear to be unlikely factors, as tea's effect on creativity was immediate, and the doses of caffeine and theanine in the drink were small.
So, why tea is beneficial for creativity remains a mystery for now. But for those of you who enjoy tea, drink up!
However, this isn’t a free pass to drink one cup after another in the name of creativity. A single cup is all you need to help with creativity, and the effect is immediate.
Use Meditation
For those of you familiar with meditation, this strategy may seem obvious, but not so fast.
There are many different types of creativity, and depending on which type of creativity you want to tap into, you’ll need to adjust your meditation technique.
For this example, let’s assume you need to tap into creativity to solve an insight problem (Ren et al., 2011).
This is a predetermined problem (e.g., how to get to work on time but still be able to drop your kids off at school first) that needs a bit of creative insight to solve.
Results showed that learning a simple meditation technique made a significant difference in creativity.
But the key was that meditation needed to focus attention on breathing.
Dr. Ren noted that to solve a pre-existing problem, it is best to use a focused meditative style (i.e., attention to breathing) to get the best results.
What strategies do you use to help with creativity?
Are there any strategies in this list you are interested in trying?
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