You’re aiming to open up new channels in your mind, routes your thoughts have never previously gone down. One way to do that is to give yourself a start point and an end point that you’ve never travelled between before, so you’ll have to take a new road. If you’ve never been to Timbuktu, you can’t get there – even from your own front door – without taking some roads you’ve never used.
Same thing with your brain. Make it travel a new route. Not only will this help with your current creative challenge, it will also exercise your creative juices more generally, so you win on two counts. Now, as with going from home to Timbuktu, it makes no difference if one of the two ends of the journey is familiar. So make one of the points the project you’re thinking about – redecorating your living room, or writing a piece of music, or planning an event, or designing an ad campaign. Now, what are you going to pick for the other point?
Fish. Happiness. Balaclava. Global warming. The philosophy of Karl Marx. Postage stamps. Just open a dictionary at random and pick a word. Yes, really – try to find a connection between your project and anything. Just pick something random and let your mind go a-wandering. What do the words ‘postage stamp’ make you think of? It’s very small, it adheres to something, it’s often in shades of one colour only, it has scalloped edges, it comes in a perforated sheet … Now try to apply some of these to your project. I’m not saying you should redecorate your room in postage stamps – that would take ages. But you could introduce scalloped edges to the curtains or cushions, or stick to shades of one colour, or use decals that adhere to the walls.
Were you going to come up with these ideas going down your habitual routes? See? You might end up developing one of these ideas so much further that only you can still see the connection with a postage stamp. Doesn’t matter. The point is you’ve opened up possibilities your brain wouldn’t have arrived at without forcing itself to forge a route between two previously unconnected points.
Of course you won’t end up using every idea that is sparked by any aspect of postage stamps – the room would look a mess if you did. In fact, you won’t come up with the same tumble of ideas that I would if I tried the same exercise. Or even if you’d tried it yourself yesterday when you were in a different mood. So what? The purpose of the exercise is to force yourself to think creatively and originally and differently. Not only will you end up with a much more original and inspiring living room (or ad campaign/event/piece of music) but you will also have encouraged your mind to think in a more creative and free-flowing way.
FISH. HAPPINESS. BALACLAVA. GLOBAL WARMING. THE PHILOSOPHY OF KARL MARX. POSTAGE STAMPS