How To Be SUPER Creative

This question really bugs me, because I’ve figured out the secret.

But too many people ask:

How do I come up with good ideas? Or ANY ideas?

I’m one of those odd folks that has TOO many ideas…and many of them are quite good, I must add. 😉

After all, I’ve given Shawna Kaminski a $250K per year idea with www.ChallengeWorkouts.com, and you saw how I helped Maureen with her idea the other day…so I’m a guy with no shortage of crazy ideas in my head.

But what do you do if you don’t have any BIG ideas right yet?

Sometimes as we work we lose our focus and get stuck, especially when searching for a creative solution.

What to do…what to do?

The answer is get out of your work space.

In one of my favorite books, Daily Rituals, Mason Currey describes Charles Dickens as a man who stuck to a strict routine. After writing each day from 9am to 2pm, Dickens would stop working and go walking – for hours. He was wise to do so.

According to engineering professor Barbara Oakley, author of the new book A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra), Dickens’ routine was “indicative of a person who has figured out how to make his brain function at a very high level. And for this, Dickens’ walks were just as important as his writing sessions.”

Taking time away from your work space, as I’ve written about in ETR, helps when you’re trying to learn or be creative. It lets your subconscious do the work. That’s why naps, walks, and showers stoke creativity.

To be creative, it helps greatly if you can get outside your regular work area, your comfort zone, and your routines.

Creativity blossoms when your frontal lobe is exposed to new environments. Creativity benefits from exercise, from new surroundings, and from being freed of little tasks (that’s why you get slippery-fish ideas in the shower…they are called slippery-fish ideas because if you don’t write them down immediately, they slip out of your grasp quickly).

So go for a walk.

Keeping our creativity talk going, I want to tell you about a little exercise I do first thing each morning. I sit down and write in my Big Idea journal and make a list of 10 BIG ideas about random things in life. Sometimes it’s the 10 Big Things I Want to Do in Europe. Other times it’s the 10 Ways Mark Ford Would Improve ETR.
 
One day it was the Top 10 Copy Angles for My Business to Try After our www.6MinutesToSkinny.com Offer Runs Dry. Here’s that list.

1.   How to Fix Your Metabolism Gland (Women’s World referred to the thyroid as “the metabolism gland” … I thought that was a great hook)
2.     Flat Belly Fast
3.     Toned Trouble spots
4.     7-Day Flat Belly
5.     7-Day Tone Up
6.     10-Minute Tone Up
7.     2-Minute Tone Up
8.     5-Minute Flat Belly
9.     6 Minutes in the Morning (probably TM’d by Jorge Cruise, LOL)
10.   7-Day Metabolism Gland Cure

I challenge you to do a BIG 10 Idea List every morning. It only takes a few minutes. Get fired up and let your brain have crazy ideas. No editing. No holding back.

You might get only one good, useable idea each week, but that idea could be worth millions!

Keep on pushing on,

Craig Ballantyne

Focus on improving yourself and you’ll improve your lot in life. Focus on planning ahead to overcome obstacles, rather than reacting. Be a driver, not a reactionary. Be the cause, not the effect.