Logical Creativity: 9 Left-Brain Activities to Help Enhance Creative Thinking
If you are a writer, designer, crafter, knitter, potter or any kind of “creator,” much of your day-to-day revolves around that mysterious, mystical word: CREATIVITY. In fact, some days may be spent putting too much focus on creativity — too much of what many people call right-brain thinking, and not enough utilization of left-brain thinking.
The left brain/right brain debate is a long and extensive dialogue. The general thought has been that left brain thinking is more logical and analytical and right brain thinking is more creative and abstract. The important thing we should take from these discussions is not a distinction and separation between the two, but the importance of the two sides working together to produce your unique creativity.
I’m guilty. Probably more than most. I tend to spend all my time focused on the abstract, divergent thought processes that are associated with right brain thinking. However, I think it’s incredibly important to take time on regular basis and focus on the analytical side too. Your creative nature will only be enhanced when both right and left brain are working so smoothly together.
So if you are right-brain focused as well, here’s a few ways to give some loving to the logical left side of your brain.
- Balance Your Checkbook —- I know, I know. I hate it too. But, it’s got to be done. So, why not think of it as a break from all that creativity you churn out each day. If you want to get extra “left brainy,” try doing it without a calculator.
- Logic Problems —- One of my favorite left brain activities. They require a linear style of thinking that’s good for you and even better for your development.
- Memory Exercises —- You’ll find hundreds of tips, tricks and advice on how to improve your memory. Test out a few of them. Test out some of the more interesting ones.
- Call Your Mom and Catch Up —- Social activity is a great way to stimulate your logical side. Not only does it help develop your cognitive thinking skills, but it keeps you sharp and perceptive. Dealing with people (especially inquiring minds like your mother) can challenge your left brain.
- Test Your Grammar Skills —- I bet you thought it couldn’t get any worse than balancing your checkbook, huh? But, seriously, everyone can use a little brushing up on English 101 essentials. Things like email, instant messenger and Twitter have made us lazy when it comes to this subject. Pass it around to your friends who don’t seem to know their keyboard has comma and period keys.
- Pick-Up-Sticks —- A classic! I remember some seriously competitive games of pick-up-sticks that took place at my house growing up. Employing logical, linear thinking is the only way you can come out on top in this game.
- Make a To-Do List —- Better yet, make lots of to-do lists. Make categories of to-do lists. The left side of your brain is a list-making fool.
- Plan Your Next Vacation —- This falls right along side the list-making. All the details and specifics that go into trip planning tap into the logical side of your brain. And, being immersed in pleasant vacation details for a few hours is often a nice little mini-vacation for your mind.
- Put a Puzzle Together —- The great thing about this is you’ve got so many choices! You can even choose HOW you do the puzzle: either on the computer or the old-fashioned way.
Opening Your Creative Flood Gates: ‘Pick-Me-Ups’ to Get the Ideas Flowing
Do you ever have those days that end with you staring into your trash can filled with 25 of your crumpled, self-rejected ideas and wonder how the entire day slipped away from you?
Frustrating, huh?
Well, at some point months back, I decided I’d had my fill of these wasteful, un-creative days and was determined to make them a much less frequent occurrence. I took an inventory of the more successful methods for sparking creativity that I’d employed in the past. I compiled what I call my five “Creativity Pick-Me-Ups.”
The next time you find yourself stuck in a rut, unable the locate the creative potential you rely on every day of your life, give these creativity boosters a chance to spark something. Try them in order. Try them in reverse. Try them in no order at all. Just make sure you try them. What have you got to lose?
Kristen’s Creativity Pick-Me-Ups
1. Research. Read. Receive.
It sounds so logical, but you’d be amazed how many people simply overlook the power of research. Open yourself up to as much material on the topic at hand.
Currently, I am working on a publication about the development going on in my hometown called BOOM Jackson. One of the things I’ve done is gather as much material from every source I can: brochures in offices, articles I stumble across online, flyers all over town and of course, wisdom from the people most important to the city’s future.
2. Rediscover Your Childlike Wonder Being a grown up sucks sometimes, huh? Things were so much easier when you were a kid - and that includes being creative.
Take a step back. When you look at the world, see things only as they truly are. We’re so used to seeing things how we think we see them, letting all the knowledge and information inside our heads influence our vision.
3. Ignore the Subject at Hand
With this advice, I’m not suggesting you ignore your topic completely. So, please don’t do that. However, giving your brain a break from obsessing over a certain topic for too long an make all the difference in the world. You’ll often hear it referred to as the incubation period.
Have you ever been telling a story and forget a certain detail? The name of a restaurant, street or even a person? It’s right on the tip of your tongue, but you cannot locate the missing info anywhere. Inevitably, hours later while you’re driving home from work or loading up the dishwasher, that pesky detail you couldn’t remember comes right back to you. Creative ideas have a funny way of working like that too.
4. Utilize Another Creative Process You Enjoy
Creativity breeds even more creativity. If you can’t find a source for yours with one creative outlet, explore another.
I get stuck in a rut with my writing most often (it’s because I’m too much of a perfectionist with my written word and yes, I am working on that). When I reach that wall that truly blocks my progress, often I will turn to another creative passion to get my creative juices rockin’. I’ll paint, or do some scrapbooking, or just doodle. I’m almost always inspired by something that takes me right back to my laptop with a new way to approach the problem.
5. Find an Organization/Productivity Plan that Works Best for You
This is a tough one, and also one I’ve just instituted. You have to get yourself organized!! And, I’m not talking about your stapler and your tape dispenser being out of place on your desk, or your dirty jeans from last weekend that are still in the middle of your bedroom floor. I’m talking about getting your head organized.
We often have so much trouble concentrating and producing new, creative ideas because we’ve got something else on our mind - or 100 something elses our mind. If you ever want to make progress as a whole to living the most creative life possible, you’ve got to find a way to get the 15 errands you have to do after work and the six phone calls you need to return off your mind and somewhere you can access them later.
I suggest David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity. It’s working wonders for me already.
Arriving at Pure Joy and Getting Things Done
So, I finally gave in and am now reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity. I’ve tried picking up the practices by reading blogs and articles on GTD, but I realized I was just wasting more time. I needed to go straight to the source.
I just picked it up yesterday, and last night as I was reading, there it was. Staring me in the face only 10 pages in was this passage Mr. Allen included from Craig Lambert’s Mind Over Water:
Rowers have a word for this frictionless state: swing…Recall the pure joy of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself. The swing carries us; we do not force it. We pump our legs to drive our arc higher, but gravity does most of the work. We are not so much swinging as being swung. The boat swings you. The shell wants to move fast: Speed sings in its lines and nature. Our job is simply to work with the shell, to stop holding it back with our thrashing struggles to go faster. Trying too hard sabotages boat speed. Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself. Social climbers strive to be aristocrats but their efforts prove them no such thing. Aristocrats do not strive, they have already arrived. Swing is a state of arrival
Now, even David Allen was talking to me!
Ever since taking this leap into the freelance world, I have continued to receive messages and signs affirming my decision to just go for it: the newsletter our real estate agent sends out, about 4 different passages from my daily devotional, an email from my church, the most incredible writing opportunity I could have ever asked to begin my freelance life (and it PAYS full-time for the next three weeks). I could go on.
I love this special message from David Allen’s book though. If you’ll take a look at the picture that is the background of my blog title banner above and then click on Pumpin’ in the sidebar along the right side, you’ll see why I am eating it up so much. 
Alright, back to organizing my life.
