Creative Ideas Can Come from Anywhere at Any Time | Akp51v
As a kid, you might have agreed with everyone and anyone. And your daily routine involved obedience. Also, you had to reproduce the textbook information in a mechanical style. Later, your brain becomes boring. So, this article will explore the reasons behind it. And it tries to help you brainstorm new ideas.
Part 1. Why Does Your Creativity Decrease With Your Age?
In this section, you will learn about the theories investigating this topic. As a miniature version of this section, remember that many biological, cultural, or psychological factors affect your ideas. So, you should avoid thinking that only one reason is responsible for the decrease in ideation.
Here, you will find how external factors affect your ability to innovate. Thus, you can address the controllable aspects to increase your chances of developing new ideas.
1.1 | Why do you lose your imagination?
First, you become busy to succeed in the academic exams and interviews. Because to pursue the borrowed dreams, you must hide your own desires. Of course, this is not true if you are sure about your career. And if you love your academic experiences.
Still, many rules, ranks, and requirements manage your entire life.
Yes, other human beings came up with these concepts. And they might dictate how you should live your life. But many restrictions might hurt your ability to imagine freely. Reducing them could help you. Because humans are free from their birth. And your curiosity deserves better anyway.
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| Photo by Rohan Makhecha on Unsplash |
1.2 | Do schools harm your creativity?
The answer to this question depends on the person who is responding. Because only some have a perfect school life. And most of us have a bittersweet relationship with our academic memories. If you were to meet inspiring people, your personal development would be significant.
Conversely, your mind might shut its functions to cope with your stressful academic life.
Now, you should understand the history of your education system. Here, you can call it formal schooling. Warfare and colonial supremacies built the foundation of modern academia. As such, the consequences of formal schooling are not surprising.
It is evident, is it not? It was a system designed to promote obedience as the greatest virtue.
And its pervasive incentives, or side-effects in everyday English, made us a bit close-minded. In short, you might become an unsuspecting recipient of the encoded habits. Your thoughts might prevent various ideas from appearing in your mind.
1.3 | Practical reasons for rigid education systems (and new hopeful changes)
Of course, conditioning human behavior is a long-standing theme in this world. So, it has been introduced previously. Crowd management and habit training are prevalent across all civilizations that you know. As such, managing public order becomes easier. Also, maintaining the regional economy's resilience is more streamlined for a well-educated population.
Besides, this was necessary during the twentieth century.
Why was it so? You can guess it. Because the world was in complete chaos. Following the instructions helped the spread of ideologies. So, schools had to emphasize the structured learning approach. Now, more is needed to live in the twenty-first century.
After all, any aversion to innovations is no longer an affordable state for humanity.
Indeed, you live in a hyperfast world. And you should do a quick review of the most successful entities. Then, you can witness the value and the impact of new ideas. Also, the economic gains of new ideas can outgrow the initial research funding.
It is especially true for the twenty-first century and beyond.
1.4 | New education policies in the world - flexibility and employability goals
Thankfully, every generation has studied this problem. Currently, many countries are rationalizing or modernizing their education policies. Even the parents, who used to believe that homework and stress are suitable for your academic performance, have understood this.
Your kids or siblings can easily switch their primary degrees depending on your location. Now, many corporates are embracing multidisciplinary teams.
Because of the student loan crisis and the unemployable graduates issue, academia was forced to change. Even the formal documentation requires a simple English version. With the developments in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, our world might bury the ghosts of useless academic practices.
Part 2. Generating New Ideas - Methods and Precautions
A lack of imagination won't go away by imitating others blindly. But you can study how others maintain their brainstorming momentum. Also, it is all about your preferences. Look, in most cases, a person might succeed in multiple ways.
Observing these fellow humans can build your insights about the ideation process.
In this section, you will learn the different thinking methods in new directions. From analyzing others to revisiting your old ideas... Each approach has its pros and cons. From here onwards, you get the complete picture of brainstorming techniques.
2.1 | Learn the creative thinking methods used by the top performers with reasonable modifications
Now, such individuals are famous. They might be successful in terms of their material wealth or net worth. And they could have overcome some significant challenges in life. They may keep surprising the world with new ideas. Also, notice that these people have some every day brainstorming habits.
These habits are supposed to be helpful for everyone. Yet, every style of thinking has its disadvantages.
Scheduling every aspect of your life is good for your productivity. Still, try to avoid replicating what others at the top are known to be doing. Because this can become a source of a need for more creativity.
Or, you might create identical cliched content.
2.2 | Use the logic of a 'perfect' idea-boosting situation but avoid excess ritualization
Artists and musicians appear in many interviews. And you know that they experiment with words or play with shapes. They have intriguing answers if you ask them how they develop new ideas.
Why should you study their questions and answers (Q&A) sessions?
See, you can learn a lot from such interviews and delicious discussions. Also, at this age, you can access them from at least a thousand sources. Ask any Search Engine or use the apps already installed on your devices. Then, observe the summits of the poets and screenwriters.
Digital artists, business owners, and other problem solvers explain their idea synthesis. And literature or scientific proceeding reports can give you hints about new methods. So, analyze them and try them. There is an endless abundance of such a knowledge base.
All you have to do is to ask questions. Then, you will discover some patterns in the answers from the different creators.
While the shower bathing time, and the essential morning duties, inspire many great minds, so they can come up with unique ideas, there is no denying the importance of uninterrupted Me-Time. They told us that solitude is necessary for serious work, did they not?
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| Digital Illustration, 'Idea,' by akp51v, for SummaryMaster51v |
The education or schooling system; gives you a sense of satisfaction from the most repetitive activities. When the machines were not intelligent, it was understandable that the human behind the wheel and the screen would be expected to stay organized.
However, as more and more mechanization is becoming the common trend in the industries such as the automobile, as well as construction or agriculture, the value of the thoughtless repeated human activity is bound to go down a negative slope... slowly but definitely.
And the sum of the above three paragraphs is this observation; we love quick tricks and checklists too much.
The reason why creative industry professionals are asked about their unique methods or the creative process is not just limited to pure, innocent curiosity or some quiz trivia. It is our dormant desire to be like them, to come up with original ideas, and to be more creative.
That's why content related to the perfect sitting position or the best instrumental music becomes popular.
Everyone may love or hate social media platforms, but few can live without them. It takes a toll on your attention span, and then you go online searching for quick ways to boost your memory, focus, and creative thinking.
This belief in a perfect ritual of boosting one's brain functions or creativity might make you more successful in the short run. But there is a risk associated with every fast growth... you might lose something more precious than your time.
Value of Your Individuality
If you can access a list of daily activities without spending a dime easily and quickly, everyone else on this globe can do that too. In other words, you are definitely one of many people creating some content, product, or service-based business model.
That online course you did, was done by many other people.
Everyone will use Wikipedia, Google Scholar, and Harvard Business Review as reference sources. Almost eight billion people are on Earth. And 2 to 4.5 billion people are estimated to have an internet connection.
Even if just two hundred people were to write about the same topic as yours, it would be tough competition.
Now, imagine that these two hundred people provide the exact content because they follow the same tips about doing their task (art or work), even if their teachers were different people.
A particular art form or industry can have a trillion different teachers, but only the language or the presentation style might change. The core concepts would stay the same.
Whether you are a high-schooler or a retired veteran of physics, military engineering, and pure mathematics, the external appearances and the final applications may change. Still, the Pythagoras Theorem will remain the Pythagoras Theorem.
Thus, the core concepts, and the process of creating or doing something, will not vary considerably.
Precisely due to this factor, the unique feel of the content is less about some step-wise checklist and more about what you, as a person, can offer to the world in your unique way or style.
Learning from others cannot be about blind obedience to the rules or a cheap imitation of the best works. Instead, do a little bit of backstory research about the authors, the poets, the CEOs, and the leaders, which you admire.
Most of the time, you would discover an overlapping theme among them...
Ideas come to them without any advance notice or an appointment. It can happen at midnight, in the washroom, on the eve, or at noon.
Sometimes, they get ideas from a crowded event; even some undesirable noise can give them a theme, for some music, or for some problem's solution. They keep reading, traveling, talking, discussing, questioning, and experiencing daily moments with a learner's mindset.
They lack any inflated ego and are aware of how much they still don't know.
Money, fame, assets, and legacy are not their top priorities, just the essentials for staying alive and healthy; they just wish to translate those random spontaneous thoughts into an experience that can be shared with other human beings through an appropriate medium, channel, tool, or device.
They are blessed with brilliant ideas since they do what they do to improve their self-awareness and defeat the natural beasts within.
They may be influenced by other artists and experts in their domain; however, that doesn't mean they will abandon their individual style to be like someone else.
Your Personal Touch
Why should anyone read your work?
There are infinite sources of any and every information. Out of all that Over-Information Saturated Noise, why would anyone care to remember your name or the URL of your website?
Where is this going? In the work you have made public, in the brand name you want the world to remember, on the website you made go live... what represents you as an individual organic person?
It is totally awesome to give examples from your own life.
Sticking to a facts-based style is fine, too. The question is the same: what is, in any of the outputs (irrespective of the nature of the content), that only and only you are doing? Something that nobody else can do, nobody else other than YOU.
For instance, a gazillion websites will tell you about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) if you ever try to be a content writer or a digital content creator; I cannot differentiate my articles if only the same topics are shared here, on SummaryMaster51v Dark.
Let me give you some unique information I can only share.
This is my personal experience, and this is also one of the ideas in this blog post: What I learned from a publisher's articles.
After understanding the LinkedIn platform, where the employed, the unemployed, the employers, and the company owners are constantly active, I started reading the comments more seriously.
One day, I witnessed a debate between two people. I won't mention any specific nouns for professional ethics, so bear with me. One was a copywriter and a marketing professional; another was a former author turned publisher.
The marketing copywriter argued for short posts using bullet points, graphs, charts, interactive website animations, and graphics. It made more sense from the user-friendly design point of view, such as in online publishing.
On the other hand, the publishing author was a fan of long articles, no lists (neither bulleted nor numbered), no statistics, no data, no graphs, and no animations, and deemed the graphics less critical. This person liked the rare old photographs, though.
This logic was suitable from a dedicated readership perspective, such as an Articles Anthology.
Though the discussion was essentially a debate, without a single shred of doubt, they both seemed to agree that it was less about what was being written and more about how it was written.
The "how" could mean the 'structure' of the content, but as noted earlier, you can see that they were the two opposite ends of equilibrium in terms of the presentation style. Thus, the word how was definitely unrelated to how we separate the different topics in the content.
I checked their earlier posts to find out what was being implied? How was their "how" almost the same when engaged in a different game?
After reading multiple articles, I learned that a good publisher prefers writers with personal taste in their work. While the other party noted a good copywriter should be able to use fewer words to create a permanent and unique brand impression.
In short, the content, media, and services (branding, to be precise) industries actually seek those who can create something with a unique personality reflected in it.
Your personality will not make your art's final output overly personal or unnecessarily emotional. Still, the world is tired of the facts, the numbers, and the over-detailed slideshows; only your personally expressed ideas can heal the world.
So, don't be afraid to unleash your tears, smiles, bruises, and triumphant moments. Those who want to judge will judge, but good artists always remember that their personal life is full of great ideas.
If the Ideas Come, Do Not Let Them Wither Away
"They will laugh..."
"Nobody will read/watch/share/believe/understand this..."
"There are already a lot of people talking about this..."
"Just forget it; I am no Shakespeare."
"Nice idea, but of no use to me."
All the brainstorming sessions and 'milk boosts memory' aside, even if you get ideas, chances are, you are going to take no action, underestimate their value, fear public scrutiny, or say the most common thing as per our tradition of being a commoner - "But I don't have time for that."
An attractive trait of artists we love or respect is the tendency to take the necessary quick actions whenever and wherever an idea hits them.
Some use the notepad, and some carry that tiny palm-sized spiral diary. Some write on their hand, on a cloth, or even on the sand and bathroom glass. This statement is made only after reading about the lives of various artists, businesspeople, and respectable figures.
Yes, reading biographies or autobiographies expand your understanding of human beings.
The urgency to execute the ideas, even in a simple, rough format, is even more respectable once you recall that our creativity is affected as we grow older, learn more about the non-innocent ways in which the world works; and simply become more mature (more scarred) in life.
I won't say that we will lose our creativity, but what would be the potential implications of the aging process and other responsibilities for our imagination and the thinking regime?
Another way of doing injustice with the ideas is spending too much time on a few.
Investing too many emotions and attaching your self-esteem to the creative act of synthesizing something new or analyzing something pre-existing (like a problem); might hurt the genuine spirit of creativity.
In chasing after the promise of perfectionism, you might miss many other ideas because you have attached your ego to only one old idea.
Please, don't let the ideas disappear; let them bloom, even if they seem pointless, shallow, useless, or uninteresting to your current self... maybe they will be worth the effort of creating, and their value will be realized later in life.
So, don't let them wither away, you wise creative human being; help those ideas bloom using any tools, media, or form of your honest judgment with your flavor.
What's the harm in doing so, anyway?
Endnote - No Idea Is 100 Percent "Original"
Finally, a tiny but crucial disclosure has to be made about why this article drops the phrase original idea and uses 'unique idea' midway through your power-reading session.
See, the online platforms, ranging from Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Medium, Flipboard, and so on... to Project Gutenberg, Play Books, Goodreads, Quora, and Brainy-quotes, have some of the most creative and inspiring heads, putting their case studies, the interview sessions, personal life lessons and professional journeys out there, in the public domain.
You need the desire and the patience to read. That's all.
And along this journey, as a power-reader (based on the power-user concept from ICT communities), you will encounter some clearly obvious but often so easily neglected life truths.
One of them, as you can infer from the heading of this last section, is the irrelevance and utter impracticality of the adjective 'Original.' It is just like any other word; that is something we humans tend to believe. That's why the double apostrophe, or quote marks, "Original."
Most popular fictional narratives are deeply rooted in the culture of the land of their origin. The nine-tailed fox is a deity in many reports besides the Naruto franchise.
The Buddha, and the principles of Buddhism, still appear in the films, the literature, and the 'Mindfulness Master-Classes,' not to neglect the decorations, the ornaments, and the inspired wallpapers.
This font on this blog is installed on 95 percent or so many machines. The rainbow-based design trends have a backstory.
So, get an idea about no pre-existing content. Just use your own words, skill, and knowledge. If you use any references, mention them in an easy-to-see way.
This blog contains my designs and uses my own ideas, in my own words, and credits the originator wherever the credit is due, another benefit of sharing our personal opinions, creations, observations, and discoveries.
Best wishes with your life. Over and out.
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