Ten Simple Strategies to Becoming Creative
Innovation and creativity is a MINDSET GAME. Take the time to watch the video above. It’s stuff that took me more than a decade to learn. Below is a summary from a paper we wrote in the Journal of American College of Radiology.
The path to innovation and creativity more often than not leads through being productive. Being more organized and productive frees up more time to indulge in creative thinking, experimenting and allowing for time to fail. It’s not that some people are naturally creative and others are not. Following this simple steps outline helped me foster my creativity. Please spend some time experimenting with these ideas as they have the power to make a transformative difference.
1. Get organized
Getting organized and setting yourself up for productivity is the first step towards creativity. Once you have experimented and established a personalized simple and effective system for productivity it creates the feeling of abundance and making you realize the opportunities at your disposal. The energy, positivity, enthusiasm and self-belief propagated allows for increased acceptance of unique and innovative ideas while at the same time improving work-life balance.
2. Meet expectations early
For an academic clinical radiologist, like I am, there are numerous expectations for clinical work, research and teaching. Before one proceeds to fulfilling each of these expectations, it helps to understand the specifics of these expectations and timelines so as to pace oneself. Meeting these expectations early helps open up more time for creative thinking, learning, and experimenting.
3. Use your spare time to improve yourself
It is often striking how little time and money we invest in improving ourselves after our years spent in medical training. Media consumption is a huge time sink if many hours are spent on a daily basis consistently. Investing in learning outside of radiology whether in finance, personality development, leadership or public speaking has huge benefits to further one’s career and improve creativity. Some of the techniques that I have employed in my personal life have included listening to audiobooks on my daily work commute and committing myself (and my wife for the added motivation) to a vigorous fitness regimen. Adequate sleep is also paramount as sleep deprivation is counterproductive to creativity.
4. Share what you have with others
All of us are talented enough to have something to share with others. Having an “abundance mindset” which is based on the premise that there is enough for everyone around you allows people to connect with you and ultimately your innovative ideas. Your willingness to share will make your colleagues invested in your ideas and they will be motivated to see your projects through to completion. Avoid the “scarcity mindset”; having this mindset makes it very difficult to build an effective team and leads to feelings of jealousy, competition, conflict, and sadness which translates into unseen lost opportunities, decreased productivity, and essentially kills creativity.
5. Create "win-win” situations
Encourage your team members to use their unique talents and abilities to foster their own creativity. Encourage them to listen to each other and allow the flexibility to contribute to your projects based on their skill set and preferences. Allow your team to take decisions and create a safe environment to critique your work at every stage. Schedule creative brainstorming sessions, encourage innovative new ideas and establish a reward system to promote creativity. Make efforts to move from a hierarchy-based system to a collective wisdom style method of working, formulate long-term connections with your team and try to leave a legacy.
6. Have an open mind to problem solving
In a famous 1991 lecture, John Cleese Outlined “the 5 factors that you can arrange to make your lives more creative”:
Space (“You can’t become creative if you are under usual pressures”)
Time (“It’s not enough to create space; you have to create space for a specific period of time”)
Time (“Give yourself as long as possible to come up with something original. Learn to tolerate the discomfort of pondering time and indecision”)
Confidence (“The fear of making a mistake prevents us from being more creative”)
Humor (“Humor gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else”)
Having an open mind, where we take a broad, abstract view of the problem allows the mind to consider innovative solutions and fosters creativity. Try to resist the temptation to revert to the closed mode, where we zoom in on implementing a specific solution with narrow perspective.
7. Get curious, take risk but act now
Risk taking makes us move from a "competent zone" to an "incompetent zone". It is often difficult to move away from the safety of our tried and tested approaches to the uncertainty of pursuing riskier ideas. Often the system encourages status quo and it takes courage to be creative. Trust your instincts. My personal favorite question that I often ask luminaries in any field that I meet is - what made you famous? It is illuminating to note that many people usually talk of one thing that they did, commonly a unique innovation that they pursued that changed the course of their career. The key is to act immediately and avoid procrastinating.
8. Look for positives in every loss
There are positives in every loss. For example, if you are ignored for a promotion you feel you deserved look for positives - introspect, ask for feedback, and work on your weaknesses. Negative thoughts and emotions often become self-fulfilling prophecies if you keep telling yourself that you are not good enough. Put your mind in control, focus on what you can do instead of bemoaning what you cannot. Focus on the big picture and work towards achieving your life ambitions with renewed energy.
9. Stop comparing and set the example
Foster positivity around you. Stop comparing yourself to other people since each of us are unique in our own ways. Set an example with your personal achievements, work ethic, and professionalism. Set high expectations for your team, convey your vision clearly and facilitate your team by encouraging them and providing them with the necessary skills and opportunities to achieve the common goal.
10. Have appreciative conversations and express gratitude
Make a habit to focus on the things you have, talk about personal experiences, achievements and ignore the things that you don’t have. Appreciative conversations generate enthusiasm and energy. For a team to perform at its best, appreciative conversations help find the confidence and commitment to achieve those goals. With our busy lives many of us increasing indulge in shorter phone calls and emails. An exception to this would be while expressing gratitude. A heartfelt and fully expressed gratitude is an effective way to positively influence behavior, fosters happiness, strengthens relationships and benefits both the giver and the receiver.
Take the time to explore and experiment with some of these ideas. They have the potential to transform you into a creative powerhouse. Give it a shot!
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