4 Real Ways to Be More Creative at Work

Are you looking for ways to get more creative at work?

There are a few reasons why you might do this. You might want to become more productive. Or maybe you just want to shake things up at work when you’re bored.

As you’ll see in this post, there are many ways you can charge up your creativity while working. Here’s a look at my best ideas on how to infuse creativity into your everyday work life.

Ways to bring real creativity to work

Here are practical ways you can be more creative and help others think outside the box too.

Say ‘yes… and’

When having discussions with your team members, introduce the ‘Yes… and’ technique from the art of improvisation.

In improv and business meetings, communication comes to a standstill when:

You say ‘no’

Disagree with others

Shut down an idea

Say ‘but’

When doing brainstorming sessions with your team, take the idea of something being ‘wrong’ off the table.

Ask people in your team to share their ideas. And for the next person to say ‘Yes’ to what the previous person said and follow it up with ‘And…’

For example, one person says ‘I think we should reach out to our old client who left us 10 years ago.’

Now, here, one person might go ‘No, that’s not a good idea because we parted in bad terms’.

In this scenario, the conversation and idea come to a halt.

But let’s see how this goes when we use the ‘Yes… and’ technique.

Person 1 says ‘I think we should call back the old client that left us 10 years ago.’

And you go ‘Yes, we could try to rebuild our partnership… and we can reach out to another 5 customers who dropped out too.’

Now the conversation’s rolling and you’re more likely to get good ideas and take action.

Reuse and recycle previous insights

Being creative isn’t always about coming up with something brand new.

You can also put familiar things together to get a new perspective. And you can realize new insights from ideas you’ve already created.

Take a look at old blog posts, videos, and meeting agendas from a few years ago. As you go through them, you may decide to re-launch old strategies or you might get fresh insights.

In any case, you are being creative and productive when you use existing material

Ask questions

One great way to spark your creativity is by asking questions to yourself.

The idea is that when you ask questions, you engage your brain in problem-solving.

However, don’t try to exercise your mind to find the answer you need.

Do this instead: jot down questions you think will help you at work. For example, ‘How can I increase my sales this year?’ or ‘How can I engage more people on social media?’

Write down these questions on index cards and put them in the drawers, by your computer, at your nightstand, or wherever else you could glance at them.

By seeing the questions often, your brain will be reminded of them and you’ll start working on solutions without realizing it.

Doodle

If you haven’t already, I recommend reading The Doodle Revolution by Sunni Brown. In it, she argues that doodling isn’t just a form of distraction.

It’s a powerful way for us to engage our minds and brings out even more creativity.

The next time you find yourself doodling in your notepad when a long meeting is going on, don’t stop.

You can use doodles to draw concepts and connect them. And the use of hand-drawn images is a powerful way to improve your memory.

So, the next time you’re struggling with a difficult problem, take a pen and paper and draw it out. Don’t aim for realism. As long as you can make recognizable marks on paper, you’re good.

Plotting out processes and concepts into images makes them easier to understand. You’ll engage more of your brain and find it easier to come up with interesting new ideas.

And did you know? You can doodle as a group. The next time you have a meeting to discuss something that needs creativity, find a whiteboard and some colorful marker pens. Ask your team to doodle together as a group to explore business problems.

This type of exercise is great for getting ideas and team-building too.

Conclusion

Even when you have a boring or normal job, you can make it exciting by changing things up. I’ve shared some ideas for ways to add creativity to the work you do.

As you’ve seen, these ideas aren’t just great for you, they impact your colleagues in a positive way too.

Try getting into the right mindset and making small changes with the tips given here, and you’ll see your creative side take over.