Creativity techniques II - How to allow creativity: 16 tips for creative problem solving

Allow creativity in your daily (working) life by following tips:

1. Try out different things.
2. Motivate others (such as your employees) to try new things. Routine kills creativity, because there is no need to be creative when doing routine tasks.
3. Be curious. Complacency, indifference and disinterest disable creativity.
4. Take failures and errors into account.
5. Isolate your creative sessions from your usual work.
6. Provide a relaxed environment, so that creative ideas can flourish. Avoid bad conditions, such as creative sessions in the office or a meeting just before lunch break.
7. Avoid bad structures in your company, such as when the right conditions are missing to incorporate creative innovations or when transparency and internal communication are poor or absent.
8. Sharpen your attention and look at things unbiased. Set thinking blinds you and will keep you from seeing variations.
9. The problem itself should have priority.
10. Track your goals persistently and stay tuned for ideas. Having an idea does not mean that it is also useful. Ideas must be developed first, which can take time.
11. Focus on one idea and work it out.
12. Put faith in yourself and also in your employees. Lack of confidence prevents creativity, because anyone who does not have confidence in himself does not take a risk and is convinced to fail.
13. Do not rest on your success. Instead, follow developments and trends.
14. Turn off competition. Competitive pressures make it difficult to collaborate and communicate and therefore creative work.
15. Do not offer rewards to your employees. Rewards only raise the interest in the premium instead of solving problems.
16. Do not work under time pressure. Instead, plan for enough time and take enough breaks. Time pressure can be deadly for creativity, since ideas need time to mature.