Six tips for overcoming creative blocks while building a business

By Amanda Jesnoewski

In the age of innovation, creativity is essential for your business growth and survival.

With creativity ideas are born, problems are solved, industries are disrupted, competitors are overturned and customers are engaged. Without it, you become stuck, stale and predictable.

Your ability to think creatively and act fast is often the difference between being the disruptor or being the disrupted.

To ensure you stay ahead of your industry and keep your creative juices flowing here are six ways to overcome creative blocks.

1. Ask questions

Nothing kills creativity faster than accepting things the way they are. To find new ideas, create better products, develop faster processes and disrupt value chains you need to question everything.

When you continually ask questions, you train your brain to keep searching for answers. This sparks your creativity and ensures you continue to find new, better, and faster ways of doing things.

2. Create distance

Sometimes creativity needs space. Take a break, go for a walk, start another task or even take some time to productively procrastinate.

When creative blocks are strong, distance gives you greater perspective and clarity and it can also give you the time you need to replenish your creative juices and get out of your own way.

3. Utilise high emotions

While emotions can at times be a barrier to our creativity, high levels of emotion can often fuel it.

Think about how creative and resourceful we can be in the fight-or-flight zone. We tend to have greater clarity, sharper problem-solving skills and find it easier to think outside the box. When you are in a high emotional state, try to harness the passion and energy of the emotion and use it in into your creative process.

4. Shift perspectives 

Sometimes the key to giving your creativity a boost is to discover different perspectives.

Approach the problem, solution, idea or opportunity at hand through someone else’s point of view. This process of role playing can often uncover issues or ideas that haven’t yet been considered.

But don’t just limit yourself to the stakeholders involved in the issue at hand, also consider how your competitors or other entrepreneurs would think and act if they were in your shoes.

5. Don’t edit your creativity

Perfection has no place in the creative process. When you are brainstorming or questioning, let no idea or thought be off limits.

Lift the pressure of being right or wrong and qualify the ideas later. Great ideas have a habit of forming out of bad ones so let your creativity flow.

6. Rein it in 

Be specific – look at one problem, solution or idea at a time. Studies have consistently shown that we are more creative when we operate within boundaries.

While you don’t want to put limits on your creative ideas, you do want to work within clear boundaries to get the greatest return.

Amanda Jesnoewski is the owner of Velocity Media + Communications and a copywriter, marketing strategist and publicist.

This article was first published by StartupSmart. Follow StartupSmart on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and SoundCloud.