How to Incorporate Creative Thinking into Your Daily Routine
Today let’s talk about how we can incorporate creative thinking into your daily routine. While I imagine that’s something you want, my guess is that you think that it sounds like a contradiction. How do creative thinking and a daily routine go together?
Usually, we think of creativity as spontaneous and exciting, it seems a far cry from a routine that strikes us as boring and repetitive. The truth is that routines help simplify our life and create room for creative thinking. Additionally, if we make creativity a practice it might still be spontaneous but it will be less elusive.
The following tips will force you to make time and space for creativity but they will also encourage you to infuse creativity into what you’re already doing. Some of your creative thinking might be specific and focused on an artistic goal while the rest might be using other areas of your life as practice. And by the end, I hope your routine feels anything but routine.
Schedule Time for Creativity
The first tip is to schedule time specifically for creativity. If creativity is one of our values, then it should be one of your priorities, and it should have space on your calendar. If the idea of aligning your values with your priorities is a new one, check out my post on the struggle of the juggle and work-life balance.
The idea of scheduling time for creativity might sound boring or forced, much like needing to schedule date nights rather than being surrounded by spontaneous romance all the time. The reality is that sometimes life gets full, too full, and if we don’t save space for the things that are important to us they might not happen. So save space, schedule time, and make room for creativity in your daily routine.
Another reason to schedule creativity is that some of us are more creative at certain times under certain conditions. If you need to be at a coffee shop early in the morning, then you need to get yourself to the coffee shop early in the morning and arrange the rest of your day to make that happen. Maybe you can’t do it every day because of other responsibilities but what about a few times a week?
Make Space for Creativity
When I talk about making space for creativity you might think I want you to redecorate your office with inspiring things. While that might be true and finding the right environment is important, I’m talking about creating brain space. You need space in your brain for creative ideas to breathe and move and take shape.
Creative ideas come to us on a walk, in the shower, or right before we fall asleep. They don’t come to us when we’re stressed and our brains are full of to-do lists. So yes, you might need to deal with the clutter in your home and practice minimalism after a deep spring cleaning.
You might also need to add time in your daily routine to be bored, to do something mundane, to listen to and look at nothing. Creative ideas can’t strike in the shower if we’re too busy listening to a podcast. Our best creative thinking won’t happen on a walk in nature if we never make time or space for a walk in nature.
Infuse Creativity Where You Can
My last tip is to infuse creativity wherever you can in your routine. You might have limited time to dedicate solely to your creative pursuits. But that doesn’t mean you can’t add more creativity everywhere and make it a bigger part of your daily life.
Cooking creative meals may not be your ideal art form but if you allow creativity to seep into various areas of your life it’ll bolster it everywhere. Can you get creative with your kids or your chores? Creativity is a practice, the more you do the more you’ll have.
Think of three ways to solve a problem instead of just one. Find a new way to do something that you always do the same way. This leads me to my final tip, do more of the things that inspire you and that will increase your creative thinking too.
Find and Follow Inspiration
Creativity is all about new ideas and they often come from reorganizing everything we know into a new solution or possibility. Therefore, the more we know and learn and grow, the more we expand the database that we’re using for inspiration. Surrounding ourselves with things that inspire us, whether they’re books or photographs or something else, will allow our brains to be constantly making new connections that eventually lead to creating breakthroughs.
The trick here is to avoid comparison, jealousy, and imposter syndrome. Sometimes following these days only leads to feeling inadequate so think beyond just following someone on social media. Instead, go old school and read books or watch movies and consume actual art rather than someone’s highlight reel.
One of the best decisions I’ve made in the past few years is to significantly reduce my time on social media. It freed up so much time to read more books and make more art. So yes, find and follow things and people that inspire you but do it with the end goal to improve your creativity not stripping you of it.
Incorporating Creative Thinking into Your Daily Routine
If you’re looking for ways to incorporate creative thinking into your daily routine, here are a few ideas we talked about in this article. This plan requires you to make some intentional decisions to create time and space for creativity. However, it also allows you to infuse creativity into things you’re already doing.
- Schedule time for creativity and make your value a priority
- Make mental space for creativity to breathe, move, and take shape
- Infuse creativity wherever you can, the more you practice the more you’ll have
- Find and follow inspiration with the goal to learn, grow, and fuel new ideas
Routines don’t have to be boring and repetitive. A routine can simply be the structure and the outline for creative thinking in a variety of aspects of your life. All you are missing is the key ingredient of thoughtful intentional creativity. Next, tackle your creative mindset!
About the author: I am Brenda Bergreen, one half of a husband and wife photography team specializing in Colorado wedding photography and videography and outdoor adventure photography.
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