Ask HN: How do you improve your creativity?
It feels like for the last year or two I've been on 'autopilot' in my professional life, which is not to say I am coasting at work but rather I feel the creative spark in me has died down. Recently I've been making a conscious effort to change this through shifting from a consumption to production mindset (i.e. stop mindlessly browsing for hours) in my downtime but this has been difficult without some kind of short term goal or project to work on, frustrated by the problem that I feel my creativeness is at an all time low.
I'm looking for advice on steps I can take to improve my situation. I've just read Paul Graham's essay on "How to get startup ideas" [0] which had some pretty interesting takeaway points. I would be interested in hearing of other essays, books, tips, opinions or techniques from the community.
[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
1 comment
[ 134 ms ] story [ 308 ms ] threadTime Clare has a good podcast designed for getting into creative writing that helps with this http://www.timclarepoet.co.uk/couchto80kwritingbootcamp/
It would probably be a helpful excursion for anyone looking to boost their creativity because the real way to improve creativity is to just do things that are creative, even if it's something as small as writing down all the names you can think of.
Other than that, just make sure to write down any and all ideas that come to you - DO NOT SELF CENSURE, this is the bane of creativity. You're initial ideas will be crap and that's fine. Have them, be proud of them. Eventually you will have better ones that you can build on.