Habits That Will Boost Your Creativity

Seeing new ideas often starts with a few changes to your daily habits

Getting imaginative is not something that you're born with. It's just an ability that can be built by the adoption of those behaviours. And as an entrepreneur, it is an ability that I have come to deeply embrace to create productive enterprises. In that, I am not alone. Research by IMB and LinkedIn found that innovation is one of the most desirable and sought-after skills an employee could possess.

If you want to better your career, start growing your talent by making your company stand out from the rest, and your art take on new heights. Below are three of my everyday efforts to create innovation in my work and in my life.

1. Create a schedule that supports creation.

You would think, creative people need flexibility, not schedules, but structure does help. If you stick to a plan, you eventually remove the need to take decisions about minor tasks during the day. You don't have to waste time worrying about what to have for lunch or when to make a call with your team, with a set schedule, because it's already been completed. This opens up more time and resources to concentrate on new ideas being generated or solutions being developed.

Several top leaders have spoken about the importance that tiny day to day choices can be made when it comes to concentrating on what really counts. Take the time to set up your own weekly and regular schedule days before, and then implement it to conserve your strength and creative juices for the items that most need it.

2. Consume other people's creations.

Set up time in your life to consume material that inspires interest in you. Get into the artistic flow by filling your mind with the art and individuals who make their own content.

Consuming what other people make provides interest by exposing holes or gaps which might have been overlooked by the makers. It helps you to understand their art from experience of your own. Since there is really no new idea, it's just about different interpretations of events and putting your own twist on existence. You have to know what is out there to do this.

Lock out some time to enjoy enjoying works of others, studying media material of rivals, or devouring an art completely separate from your own. The imagination of others will ignite something special inside you, that you can only see.

3. Prioritize reflection. 

There can be no development, without reflection. You'll need to focus on what you consume to make. Often curiosity is the root of creativity, so keep learning about everything around you. Question why things work and why they don't, and strive not only to comprehend inventions but people. Then think what succeeded at the end of the day, and what didn't.

I have a journaling habit and I focus every day on what I have done, witnessed and learned in the course of the day. The level of constant thinking causes your mind to function at a heightened state and keeps your eyes open on what's going on around you. Once you start to get curious about it all, you will start to find suggestions and possibilities hidden everywhere.

Don't let yourself stop dreaming you might be imaginative. Don't let all the art the world already has deter you from making your own. Get serious about developing your life into the habit of imagination to excel.