Creating An “Oasis Of Creativity”

John Cleese gave a fabulous presentation last week at the Creativity World Forum 2008. After setting everyone’s mind on the importance of creativity, he introduced his technique of putting creative thinking into practice in daily business life.  I really liked it being so straightforward and practical.

Focus on only two key elements:

1. Creating boundaries in time (set a clear begin and end time)
2. Creating boundaries in space (define a clear setting and location)

By creating clear boundaries in time and space, even if very little every two weeks for example, you can create exactly that environment in which your creative, right brain can come out and play. John called it an “Oasis Of Creativity”. Just imagine: When you start your scheduled 30 minutes of creativity, what would be your first thought?  Probably it will be something like “I should have called John” or “I forgot to send that document”. Do not act on this anymore than jotting these points down so you can forget about them for the coming 30 minutes. Relax and let your creative mind come out and wander, don’t steer it. Let the ideas flow, do not judge, take some notes, and outside your oasis of creativity you can then use your logical brain to evaluate and expand the ideas. If you do not see the value of this, just think of the following: doing the same will almost never get you further. Keeping on tackling problems logically will most likely give you the same results over and over again. Create your small oasis of creativity with clear boundaries and just experience for yourself over a couple of weeks if it proves valuable for you.

Amongst thousands of creativity tips, I believe his idea is quite powerful to introduce some creative thinking in daily business life. I invite everyone to read this great transcript of John’s keynote. A final quote to reflect on… “Intelligence increases when you think less!”