Posts Tagged ‘creativity’

11 Ways to Think Outside the Box

Thinking outside the box is more than just a business cliché. It means approaching problems in new, innovative ways; conceptualizing problems differently; and understanding your position in relation to any particular situation in a way you’d never thought of before. Ironically, its a cliché that means to think of clichéd situations in ways that aren’t clichéd. We’re told to “think outside the box” all the time, but how exactly do we… Continue reading

November 6 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: creativity, innovation, problem-solving, solution | 9 comments»

Getting Things (Re-)Started: Dealing with Mental Blocks

In any significantly big project, there are bound to be times when you lose the track of what you’re doing, when for whatever reason you stop moving forward and, what’s worse, can’t seem to find the motivation to get going again. When we “fall off the wagon” like that, a kind of psychological wall starts building up, making getting back in the swing of things seem more and more daunting… Continue reading

October 20 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: creativity, mental-block, motivation, procrastination, work | 12 comments»

Where Do Ideas Come From?

Since publishing a series of posts on dating and living in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been asked several times how I came up with the idea to see dating as a kind of metaphor for life. The immediate source of the story was pretty mundane – someone asked me a question about another article and I used going on a date as an example to illustrate… Continue reading

September 29 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: creativity, idea, thinking, writing | 15 comments»

Ten Great Ways to Crush Creativity

Leaders have more power than they realize. They can patiently create a climate of creativity or they can crush it in a series of subtle comments and gestures. Their actions send powerful signals. Their responses to suggestions and ideas are deciphered by staff as encouragement or rejection. If you want to crush creativity in your organization and eliminate all the unnecessary bother of innovation then here… Continue reading

August 28 2009 | By Paul | Tagged: creativity, culture, idea, innovation, leader, leadership | 21 comments»

How to Be Lucky

Let me give you what might seem a strange piece of advice – be lucky. Sometimes you have good luck and sometimes you have bad luck. But do you have a choice? Can you make your own luck? Dr. Richard Wiseman has studied why some people are lucky and others are not. He advises that there are four main traits that lucky people have that help them to be ‘lucky’.

They

August 12 2009 | By Paul | Tagged: attitude, creativity, innovation, invention, luck | 20 comments»

Get Random!

We spend a lot of time at Lifehack talking about getting organized – making up lists, labeling files, simplifying your workspace, and so on. Everything in its place, and a place for everything, right? There’s nothing wrong with this view of organization, so long as you’re getting more work done than the time you’re spending on staying organized. But a lot of times, our brains don’t work quite so neatly. For… Continue reading

July 9 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: brainstorming, creativity, filing, flexibility, idea, randomness, search, unschedule | 12 comments»

What To Do When You Run Out Of Ideas

It’s happened to everyone at one time or another. You’re going along, producing and feeling creative, and then, suddenly, you run out of ideas. You’re stuck. You search high and low for inspiration. You look back on your earlier work, searching through your past ideas, trying to locate your muse, looking for something to trigger a creative explosion. But it’s all for naught. You’re blocked. Regardless of what business you’re in… Continue reading

April 29 2009 | By Susan | Tagged: creativity, entrepreneur, inspiration, small business | 11 comments»

Limits Revisited

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about limits and how limits engender creativity. Unfortunately, I opened with a lengthy discussion of my recent forays into SLR photography, and the point of that post seems to have gotten lost. Since it’s an important point, I thought I’d revisit it, this time without talking about cameras.

As humans, we are limited beings. We have no wings… Continue reading

March 30 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: art, attitude, creativity, limits, music | 5 comments»

Limits and Creativity

I want to tell you a story about two photographers. For a while now, I've been wanting to get more into photography, hoping eventually to buy a nice digital SLR camera. So I was quite thrilled when a photojournalist friend offered to give me some of her old film equipment to learn on. The camera, a Nikon FM2, is a fully manual model first introduced almost 30 years ago. It only… Continue reading

March 25 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: challenge, creative, creativity, limit | 26 comments»

The Idea Generator Brings Brainstorming to the iPhone and iPod Touch Platform

Considering the variety of applications you can download for the iPhone and iPod Touch from Apple’s comprehensive AppStore, it was only a matter of time until someone introduced a brainstorming tool for these popular devices: The Idea Generator. Developed by creative consultancy The Director’s Bureau, this intriguing tool uses randomly-displayed words to help you generate ideas for your next creative project. Continue reading

March 23 2009 | By Chuck | Tagged: brainstorming, creativity, idea, idea generator, iphone, ipod | 8 comments»

Go Out and Play!

We all know that play is important for kids. Play teaches them coordination, adult roles, social interaction, and basic problem-solving skills. But somehow, we’ve fallen prey to the idea that play is only important for kids. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Bzzz! Wrong!… Continue reading

March 18 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: adult, career, creativity, play, thinking, work, work-life balance | 18 comments»

4 Pocket-Sized Tools to Help You Generate Killer Ideas Any Time, Anywhere

The ability to generate creative, profitable, problem-solving ideas is growing in importance, especially with the global economy stuck in the doldrums. But how can you be creative on demand? Here are four pocket-sized card decks that you can take anywhere – to your next team meeting or to a quiet park where you can brainstorm free from distractions – to help you generate your next breakthrough idea. Continue reading

March 6 2009 | By Chuck | Tagged: brainstorming, creativity, idea, ideation, innovation, mind | 22 comments»

How to Think What Nobody Else Thinks

How can you think of things that no-one else thinks of? The answer is by deliberately taking a different approach to the issue from everyone else. There are dominant ideas in every field. The brilliant thinker purposefully challenges those dominant ideas in order to think innovatively.

Albert Szent-Gyorgy, who discovered Vitamin C, said, ‘Genius is seeing what everyone else sees and thinking what no-one else has thought.’ If… Continue reading

March 3 2009 | By Paul | Tagged: creativity, genius, idea, innovation, lateral thinking, originality, think | 25 comments»

Free Your Mind with XMind

Mind-mapping is a popular tool for brainstorming ideas, outlining projects, and organizing information. While some people feel most comfortable mind-mapping with pencils or pens and paper, others enjoy the ease and accessibility of software-based mind-mapping, and there are a variety of tools designed to help make, share, and store mind-maps on your computer. Some, like MindManager and iMindMap are powerful, enterprise-level programs, with price tags to match; free… Continue reading

February 24 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: brainstorming, creativity, idea, mind mapping, mind-map, xmind | 21 comments»

Sync Your Brain And Your System Using a Mind Dump

One of the keys to any productivity system is to actually put things into the system. Who knew? Obvious though it may seem, many of us have trouble taking the time to enter our thoughts into our task-manager, to-do list, or organizational system. This can happen for any number of reasons - no paper nearby, no easy way to record your ideas - but our productivity can be hurt by not inputting… Continue reading

February 24 2009 | By David | Tagged: brain, capture, creativity, idea, mind-dump, trigger, weekly review | 11 comments»