7 Exercises To Flex Your Creativity Muscles
Let's take our creativity to the gym
Creativity is perhaps the most valuable human skill.
Big statement? Think of everything you interact with as you move through your day. From your mattress to your toothbrush. The bike, car, or train you use to get around. The roads themselves. Every building you pass, and the very home you live in. The screen you’re staring at right now. All of these things are the result of thousands of years of compounding human creativity. This unique ability is at the core of what separates humans from every other living animal on the planet.
But even if you don’t want to change the world…even if you’re not interested in creating a product, service, or business…by living a creative life, your life itself can be an ever evolving work of art.
For a long time, my life was anything but that. Like many people after a couple decades or more in the traditional factory-model education system + corporate America, I had all this pent up creativity that wasn’t being utilized. In retrospect, I can see how this led to feelings of inadequacy, fear of not reaching my potential, and a general lack of fulfillment.
But after rediscovering my inner artist in the mountains of Colorado, I slowly started to reengage my creativity muscles that had previously atrophied.
Over the years, I’ve learned that creativity is cultivated through exercise. The same way a marathon runner starts by running 1 mile, eventually building up to 26.2, by exercising your creativity muscles every day, you can gradually unleash your creative genius.
Here are 7 ways by which I take my creativity to the gym (and you can too).
1. Make creativity a habit I perform every morning
One of my favorite ways to do this is by simply writing down 10 ideas per day.
If you try this, remember the words of James Altucher – if you can’t come up with 10 ideas, come up with 20. In other words, take the pressure off each idea being good. Focus on the practice. Quantity over quality.
Would you spend an hour at the gym trying to do one perfect squat? I guess maybe for the ‘gram…but a more effective way of working out your legs is to do multiple reps and multiple sets. The same applies in your creativity gym.
Your ideas will naturally get better as your creativity muscles get stronger.
If you’re still stuck, think of a prompt for your ideas. For example, since I’m writing this in October, I might say “alternative ways to celebrate Halloween.” I’m not a big Halloween fan and don’t plan on celebrating this year, but it doesn’t matter. The process is the goal.
2. Idea sex
Select two unrelated concepts.
Put 5 minutes on the clock - because no matter who you are, you can spare 5 minutes to exercise your creativity.
Write down as many ideas you can think of that link the two concepts. It’s a race against the clock.
For example, let’s try Maple Syrup & Space Travel. Because I love Maple Syrup, and the idea of Space Travel. Here are some ideas:
A breakfast planetarium that operates from 4am – 9am. Every customer gets a balanced breakfast with their admission fee, a souvenir bottle of maple syrup, and space-induced inspiration to take on the rest of the day
A space shuttle-friendly waffle maker – bring back the space shuttle!
Maple-flavored astronaut food
Star and planet shaped pancake cutters (like cookie cutters but for pancakes)
A meetup group called “Eat breakfast for dessert while looking at the stars”
A partnership between NASA and IHOP – all proceeds from pancake sales go towards Space Camp scholarships and astronomy education for kids
As is often the case with actual sex, idea sex can be quite the workout.
3. Go to sleep with a request to your subconscious
I wrote about this in the most popular Medium article I’ve ever written, Create While You’re Sleeping. If you’re curious to learn more about this concept, hear a story of how I discovered this little trick myself, and learn how to try it at home, give it a read!
4. Notice and capture inspiration when it strikes
When it comes to ideas, the more you have, the more you have. In other words, the more you flex your creativity muscle, the more ideas will come up spontaneously as you move through life. The key is recording them in that moment of inspiration.
To paraphrase the great Rick Rubin, ideas are like clouds. If you look at it one moment, it’ll have a certain shape and texture. A few minutes later, it’ll look and make you feel a little different. An hour later, it may be gone completely.
So if I have an idea, or even the seed of an idea, I’ll open Otter AI, hit record, and start riffing. As I speak the idea into existence, it grows and expands. New ideas come up. I go on tangents. Sometimes I look back on those recordings and turn them into publishable content. Sometimes they never see the light of day. But again, just flexing the muscle here.
Otter is great for recording ideas while walking, which is often when inspiration strikes. But I have ways to record ideas everywhere. If I’m at my computer, I have a running Word doc filled with ideas. Sometimes I use the Notes app on my phone. Sometimes I hand write in a notebook (of which I have dozens). Even when I’m in the shower, I have this awesome waterproof notepad so no ideas go down the drain.
I have friends who use products like Evernote or Notion as a repository for ideas and inspiration, which works well for many. They treat it like a second brain - our brains are good at coming up with ideas, not great at storing them.
I personally like having my second brain distributed across different mediums. Similar to how my actual brain has different parts to it that communicate with each other, my second brain has parts to it as well. It’s like different subdivisions of the same organization. The ideas in my Otter are a little different from the ideas in my notebooks, which are different from the Notes app on my phone. And the notepad in my shower is like GoogleX – lots of moonshot ideas, very few of which go anywhere, but some that have literally changed my life.
5. Carve out time for convergent thinking
The 4 exercises above focus on divergent thinking, which is more free flowing and exploratory. Convergent thinking is where I’m focused on moving towards a finished product that I can share with others.
Personally, I like to have (at a minimum) two 1-hour blocks of time each week for this exercise, where I sit down and bring things together. You can think of this as the editing process, where my goal is using the possibilities I’ve generated through exercises 1-4 to arrive at real solutions.
While divergent thinking is more spontaneous and quantity-focused, convergent thinking is more planned and quality-focused.
6. Treat yourself to new experiences
Your unique creativity is a product of your unique lived experience. We create using what we’ve seen, felt, know, and remember. This is why giving yourself as many different kinds of experiences as you can is so helpful in cultivating creativity.
So if you ever feel like you’re in a creative rut, it can be a great time to get out of your day-to-day routine to immerse yourself in new possibilities. Expose yourself to different ways of thinking and living.
Traveling to another country is a great way to do this, as is an experience like Third Nature Summer Camp. But these days, you can connect to different ways of thinking and living from the comfort of your computer screen, and a digital world filled with virtual meetups that bring people together from around the world.
7. Don’t take yourself or your work too seriously, and have fun with it
Most people don’t utilize their creativity to its fullest because they’re afraid of what other people will think. But I have great news for you - no one cares! They’re busy obsessing over their own unmet potential. By putting your creative work out into the world, you can become a model for others to do the same.
So there you have it: 7 exercises that have helped me flex and grow my creativity muscles. While I’m confident that these practices can work for anyone, the way you exercise your creativity should be unique to you. Feel free to borrow or remix ideas from others, including but certainly not limited to me. Imitate, then innovate. And let me know how it goes :)