How to be more creative is a skill that can be enhanced if we know how to boost it. Many of us think that it is an activity reserved for artists, creatives or designers. But the truth is that being creative is suitable for everyone. It also has great benefits for our brains that can help us work better.
The are plenty of hacks that help us to be more creative. Those vary depending on the activity we are doing. We might require some apps and tips to help us when we are developing a brainstorm. But some different ones when we are getting stuck to reboot our brain. Let’s see at what stage we are and discover the best apps to boost creativity.
How to be more creative with a brainstorming
To be more creative and start organizing ideas, to draw new connections and conclusions, the best thing to do is brainstorming. It is a fun way to free the imagination by throwing ideas, joining them to others and seeing the concepts that are formed.
One of the best apps to try is Simple Mind. It is an intuitive dashboard in which users can spread their ideas. They can make connections on the tree diagrams, add notes, charts and reorganize them as many times as they want. It has a free version for iOS and Android. Those are good enough for organizing a business day or a plan. It also has a professional paid version for companies that comes with more features.
Especially for academic areas, one of the most recommended apps to be more creative is Popplet. Popplet enables professors to organize several diagrams for different classes, add tags and print presentations from them. It is available for free on iOS.
Be more creative in all work tasks
Challenging ourselves everyday while optimizing our work is simple. For example, if part of our work is building tables in excel, we should learn how to do dynamic tables. Get basic notions of SQL and optimize our work. Or if we have to send a bunch of emails we could improve our performance by creating some templates and making lists on a CRM software. By doing this we forge new work methods to be more creative.
To optimize work users should first organize all their work tasks in a diagram to see which processes they can actually improve. Udemy is an open course directory that offers online courses. They come about several areas with explanations on how to improve certain tasks. For example, there are courses about how to be more creative. How to code. How to define a framework, how to organize time at work or how to meditate, among others. It is available for free for iOS and for Android.
Another app of small courses is Course Guru, which boasts MIT and Harvard and other courses from reputed universities, all for free. In appearance courses are longer than in Udemy. So they are reserved to those users who have more time and desire to focus on a new knowledge. There is a wide variety of topics from music, to meditation, although we mainly find programming and finance. It is free and available for iOS and Android.
Search for inspiration and be more creative
Searching for inspiration is an important part of the thinking process and seeing other ideas definitely helps us to be more creative. Depending on our job area, we can use generic apps such as Pinterest. It is a worldwide social network where people post their ideas for decoration, design, meditation, time management and much more. Be careful, it is so addictive. It is free for iOS and Android.
For designers, one of the greatest directories is Dribbble. It is an app with a desktop version that showcases the work of millions of web and graphic designers around the world. Opening an account requires an invitation from other member, though. It is free and available for iOS and Android.
Another interesting directory for designers is Behance. It works like Dribble but it is open to anyone. It is free and available for iOS and Android.
What to do when you get stuck
When we get stuck at work or in our daily life we need to make a pause and refresh our mind. Some studies show that the best way to work is to do intervals of 90 minutes followed by breaks of 20 minutes. This enhances our energy and helps us to be more creative.
In these breaks we should do a different activity such as having a coffee with our workmates. there are also specific apps that introduce a bit of peace to our life. One of the best is Stop, Breathe & Think, an award winning app that has more than 3 millions of users. It displays a meditation routine, enables users to register how they feel at any moment. It is free and available for iOS and Android.
In addition to meditating, other researchers agree that listening to music is beneficial to reset our mind. Among the music applications we find fascinating large directories with artists from around the world such as Spotify, SoundCloud or YouTube. All of them free and available for iOS and Android.
However, we also love to create music by ourselves.There are several fun apps valid for experts and amateurs in music to be more creative, such as Figure. This app enables users to compose a song by choosing chords and musical instruments. It is available and free for iOS.
Another nice app is Magic Piano, that provides a virtual piano and the possibility to create melodies while it teaches us how to to play it. This one is a simple and relaxing app. It is available for free for ios and android.
Pablo Clemente Pérez 