“Creativity is fundamental to everything we do,” said Wade Kingsley, The Creative Coach, “We need to practise by problem solving to come up with creative solutions.” 

Warm up with an exercise to get your curiosity going. Prime your brain for creative thinking by asking  questions, he suggested.

Here are some exercises that can help unblock our thought process and lead to original ideas:

Exercise 5 – Brain stretch

‘Can’t start a fire without a spark,’ sang Bruce Springsteen. When you’re trying to generate an idea for a campaign, begin by creating sparks with 10 words. Once you’ve listed the words they become ten starting points. This is an exercise in divergent thinking and becomes easier the more you practise.

Exercise 4 – Idea lift

“Everything was original once, and now we can use someone else’s original thinking and apply it to the idea we wish to create,” said Kingsley.

Invoke the spirit of someone else, by using someone else’s thinking. Try and lift the mind of someone else to yours.

With your chosen topic from previous exercise, ask yourself this question: What would (insert person) do to solve this challenge? The idea is to channel the thinking of someone else to help generate the campaign idea.

Exercise 3 – Quick draw

“We often write out our ideas or solutions when drawing them first is a great way to start,” said Kingsley.

With your chosen topic from the previous exercise, spend a few minutes, drawing.  Note that doodling is ok, just not writing words.

Exercise 2 – Eye lid pulldown.

Close your eyes and visualise your problem for 2 minutes.

Once you’ve done 2 minutes  of the eye lid pulldown then draw what you saw. Include colours, images words in your list.

Exercise 1 – Cross fit

This exercise is Inspired by David Bowie’s song writing technique which involved taking random words from newspapers and fitting them together to make original connections.

Generate a list of 10 random words. Now go back to the list you made in exercise 1. Now create 10 different word combinations.

“From here you can think about what these word combinations mean as they relate to your chosen topic or idea,” said Kingsley.

Now you are unblocked and ready to continue to work on your original idea.