It’s a feeling most people recognize. You sit there. A piece of paper in front of you. Or a blank presentation. Or a problem that needs to be solved. And nothing happens. Your brain feels empty. Everyone else seems to be able to come up with things. But you yourself sit there staring at that blank surface. That’s when the classic thought appears. “I guess I’m not creative.”
But the truth is almost always different. After working with creativity for over 20 years, I don’t have that problem because I know that the problem is rarely a lack of creativity. The problem is a lack of thought triggers.
The brain needs something to react to
Many people think that ideas arise out of thin air. They almost never do. Ideas arise when something is connected to something else. An observation. A question. A problem. A word. An image. The brain needs something to react to.
Trying to think creatively without a trigger is a bit like trying to start a car without an ignition. The engine is there but it lacks the spark. That’s why creative methods almost always start by creating that spark.
When your brain is stuck
When you feel like you can’t think of anything, there are often a few typical reasons.
- A common reason is that the problem is too big. If you think about the whole challenge at once, it becomes overwhelming.
- Another reason is that you try to come up with the perfect idea right away. Then your brain starts filtering out ideas before they even have time to form.
- A third reason is that you are stuck in the same thought pattern. The brain follows the associations it already knows.
All of these situations can be broken with the right triggers.
Start with the question instead of the answer
One of the most underestimated ways to come up with ideas is to start with questions. Instead of asking yourself what the solution is, you can ask yourself what questions can be asked about the problem. For example, if a company wants to improve its service, you can start with questions like.
What does the customer do before they use the service. What do they do after. What would happen if the service were free. What would happen if it were ten times more expensive?
By generating many questions, you open up new perspectives. Suddenly, your brain starts to see possibilities.
Use the opposite
Another powerful method is to think the other way around. If the task is to improve something, you can instead ask how to make it worse. If you want to make a restaurant better, you can ask how to make it really bad. The answer might be something like serving cold food, making guests wait a long time, and making it difficult to order.
Then, when you turn the perspective back, ideas arise. Serve faster. Make ordering easier. Create an experience while guests wait.
By thinking the other way around, you break the brain’s usual patterns.
Borrow ideas from other places
Another way to generate ideas is to move the problem to a completely different context. If you work in healthcare, you can ask how a hotel would solve the same situation. If you work in logistics, you can ask how an ant colony would organize transportation. If you work in education, you can ask how a computer game would design learning.
When you borrow logic from other areas, new ideas often arise.
This type of bisociation is one of the classic mechanisms behind creativity.
Break the mental highway
The brain works a bit like a road network. The more often we think a thought, the wider the road becomes. In the end, it is like a highway. The problem is that we always drive the same road. To come up with something new, we sometimes need to take a small path.
It can be as simple as changing the environment. Take a walk. Draw instead of write. Talk to someone who does not work in the field. Small changes can be enough to break the thought pattern.
Randomness as a tool
Randomness is one of the most effective creative triggers there is. You can look up a random word in a book and try to connect it to the problem. You can take three random pictures and try to create an idea that includes all three. It may sound strange, but the brain is very good at making connections when it receives unexpected stimuli.
Often, a single unexpected association is enough to start an idea.
Ideas come when you stop chasing them
There is also another aspect of creativity. Many ideas do not come when we sit and try to think. They come when we are doing something else. When we shower. Take a walk. Wash dishes. Or ride a bike. This is because the brain continues to work in the background.
This is called incubation.
When you let go of the problem for a while, new connections can arise. This is why breaks are often part of the creative process.
Creating many ideas instead of one good one
A common misconception is that creative people come up with good ideas right away. In reality, they often come up with many ideas. Among these, there are some that are really good.
This means that the goal is not to find a perfect idea. The goal is to create a large number of ideas. The more ideas that are produced, the greater the chance that any of them will be valuable.
Creativity is therefore often more about quantity than about quality.
The blank page is actually an opportunity
That blank page that feels scary is actually a space. A space where something new can arise. But to fill it, the brain needs material to work with. Questions. Perspectives. Opposites. Coincidence. Other contexts. When you start using such triggers, you notice something pretty quickly.
Ideas start to emerge.
Not always the perfect ones. But enough so that a really good one will eventually appear.
And suddenly that blank page doesn’t feel as scary anymore. It feels more like the beginning of something.
