Step Away From Your Desktop When It’s Time to Brainstorm Creative Ideas
Do you know that all the time you sit at the table, stare at the monitor and beg your brain to come up with a breakthrough idea? Yes, it doesn’t work. If you want inspiration, step away from the table.
Your table is designed for you to filter out the outside world and get results. The mindsets and habits you form at your desk are perfect for being productive, but they are the exact opposite of what you need when it’s time to get creative. Creativity requires a lot of external stimuli and time for reflection . Your table offers none of this. If you want ideas to develop, you have to leave.
Harvard psychologist Dr. Shelley Carson suggests establishing a clear boundary between your brainstorming space (which she calls the “absorption state”) and your work space (or “synthesis state”). When you have a dedicated space for accepting inputs and coming up with ideas, it’s easier for your brain to enter this mode when it needs to:
Each has a built-in censorship system that filters thoughts and stimuli from the outside world before they reach conscious awareness.
Learning to loosen up this mental filtering to allow more new ideas to flow is one of the biggest challenges for people who don’t consider themselves creative.
Creativity is not something that you can manage on demand, but it is something that you can do, like a garden. By giving your brain room to be creative, you can foster ideas in ways that you simply cannot achieve by sitting at your desk and staring at the screen.