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6 science-backed tips for boosting your creativity by positive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman


Stashed in: Creativity, @bakadesuyo, Creativity, Shower Thoughts, Shower Thoughts, @emilialahti

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Here's what we can learn from Kaufman about how to be creative:

  • Be open to new experiences: It's the most important thing to do. Just try new stuff. (What are you ordering for lunch today? Really? Don't get that. You always get that.)
  • Go for a walk: It can make you more creative and it's exercise. Two birds, one stone, baby.
  • Take a shower: If you're not doing this one, I don't want to hang out with you. Period.
  • Take some "me" time: No, not me, you. So "you" time.
  • Take "The Outsider's Mindset": Think like a kid. Stop taking your everyday work for granted. What about it would be odd to an outsider? There's gold in thinking about that.
  • Keep trying: Most of what the great geniuses produced was utter crap. Same is true for you. But nobody needs to know about your misses. Keep trying and just count the hits.

So what happens when you spend more time being creative? When you spend more time daydreaming, taking photographs, talking passionately about personal goals, or keeping a journal? You live a better life.

From Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind:

They also report a greater sense of well-being and personal growth compared to those who are less engaged in these everyday creative behaviors.

Some will say they can't live creatively. Their job is boring. Or they're too busy with other things. But we can approach anything with an inventive spirit. And very creative people agree.

Andrew Kevin Walker, acclaimed screenwriter of the movie Seven, told me:

In the same way that there's an art to crafting surfboards or an art to designing cars, there's an art to pumping gas or being a garbage man. No matter how much you're being paid or what you're doing as a career, you need to embrace the art of it and not be afraid of the artist in you… Find the art in everything you do.

Ah, a showerist. 

Do you not believe in shower thoughts?

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