Tips to release your creativity

You may believe that your job has no requirement for creativity, or perhaps you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that you are just not the creative type.

But brothers David and Tom Kelley, of award-winning design firm IDEO, believe that embracing creativity is essential for fulfilling your potential, at work and in life. Their book, Creative Confidence, aims to inspire others to bring out their imaginative side.

Here are some of their tips for releasing your visionary streak.

• Choose creativity: The only way to be creative is to open your mind to the idea that you want to be creative. Don't wait for creativity to strike – expose yourself to new ideas and experiences. Look at your everyday surroundings as if you are seeing them for the first time.
• Allow daydreaming: Contrary to popular belief, daydreaming isn’t a waste of time. New findings in neuro-psychology show that flashes of insight often come when our minds are relaxed.
• Know what you want: We come up with more innovative ideas when we’re clear about our end goal, so focus on that rather than the small hurdles along the way.
• Reframe challenges: Looking at things differently can help us to apply creativity to problem solving. Viewing a problem in a way we haven’t seen it before can allow us to develop a new solution that we might not have otherwise found.
• Build a creative support network: Creativity can flow more easily and be more fun when we have others to interact with and bounce ideas off.

Excerpted from Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential within us all by Tom and David Kelly, published by William Collins, £14.99.