If one of your life desires is to become more productive, you may want to go back to the drawing board. Try a completely different approach to a common problem.
This is not to say that your current approach isn’t working. You might be killing it. But trying new ways of looking at familiar things is an exercise in creativity. Studies have shown that practicing creative thinking leads to higher productivity.
It’s a Simple, but Profound Idea
So here’s what happens when you practice creativity. You’re using your brain in a new manner. This promotes thought and motivation. An article in Entrepreneur suggests that creativity leads to five specific results:
- It promotes working without boundaries.
- Creativity helps to tackle bigger problems.
- It shows you that you can change your environment.
- You become more emotionally invested in your project.
- It removes fear of failure.
That’s a powerful list of benefits of practicing creativity. And in the long run, it will lead to increased productivity, and/or a higher quality product.
Some Strange Turns Lead to New Developments
In my last post, I mentioned that I’m currently learning to accept unexpected directions. I’ve temporarily put a hold on efforts to increase the readership of my blogs. Instead, I’m getting creative in other areas of my life.
- I’ve returned to keeping a personal handwritten journal after several years of focusing on blogging alone.
- I’m reading 3-5 books a month on a variety of topics that are not popular success-based publications. Instead, I’m reading about cognitive style, Iceland, martial arts, and crows of all things.
- I’m working more hours in the dojo improving my karate skills, with some focus on a jo staff.
- Finally, I’m slowly working on developing a setlist of original songs to perform in the future. This also includes writing a few new compositions.
So you might wonder how these activities will improve my blogging about developing simple habits for success? It’s simple. I’m practicing what I write about. But more importantly, these seemingly disconnected activities are creative. That creativity will increase the quality, and perhaps the quantity of my writing in the future. I’ll also learn new problem-solving skills that will lead to a more successful experience as a writer.
Discover a Profound Way of Becoming More Productive
Okay, now it’s your turn. I’d like to encourage you to do something creative and seemingly unrelated to your core goals. It could be anything from writing poetry to drawing. In the process, you’ll discover a few positive outcomes:
- You’ll develop a new habit: It’s not important that you do this new creative thing forever, but do it long enough to develop a habit. In time, you might decide to use the time you spent writing poetry to focus on a business plan.
- You’ll become more productive: Productivity doesn’t always mean you have more final product. It simply means that you put more time into creating and producing. In some cases, your time might be better used in focusing on quality. That’s still being productive.
- You’ll find unique connections: In education, we get excited when we see students making unexpected connections between differing disciplines. This is when true learning takes place. Practicing something unrelated to your professional goals will help you make these kinds of important learning connections.
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