DAY 5: 5 Ways To Reignite Your Creative Genius At Work (And In Life!)

Practice, Practice, Practice

Congratulations!!! It's time to celebrate because you've made it to Day 5 of the 5 x 5 x 5 ~ 5-Minutes, 5-Days, 5-Ways ~ Innovation Genius Bootcamp where you took on a daily innovation-boosting challenge to combat the dreaded "We've always done it that way" syndrome. If you're just finding us now, you can take advantage of the full challenge here: Day 0, Day 1. Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.

Your creative genius works like a muscle. Like all muscles, your ability to innovate needs to get worked and pushed beyond its current limits in order to grow.

Day 5’s Innovation Genius challenge is to use one more tool while you continue to grow your creativity and by extension your ability to innovate. The real challenge in this journey is to make creativity and innovation a part of your daily life.

Practice keeps them from becoming a set of theories and insights gathering dust on a shelf or desk. 

Here’s what we've covered so far about creativity and innovation:

• We all have it, even you. (Day 0, Day 1)
• We can turn the mundane into an adventure (Day 0)
• We share common creativity-stoppers: Fear of what others will think; Fear of failure/getting it wrong. (Day 3)
• Kids are brilliant at it. (Day 3)
• We operate from hidden assumptions and are helped, but more often harmed by mostly-false automatic thoughts. (Day 2, Day 4)
• We have unlimited opportunities to see the same old situations through a new lens (Day 1)

You may have a few new tools in your arsenal as a result of the 5x5x5 Innovation Genius Bootcamp, and as your toolkit grows you’ll find that there are some winning tools you’ll continue to come back to over the years.

There’s one creativity tool that I return to time and time again because it works incredibly well for both transformative enterprise initiatives and key life goals.

Introducing: The “Future Vision Press Release”

Here’s your Day 5 creative-genius challenge:

 Here’s how it works:

• You start by visualizing a goal or objective that you want to take on and make happen. Ideally it’s something pretty bold and audacious like starting a company or writing a book, but it works for little things too, like planning the perfect online networking event!
• Now, fast-forward to having already accomplished the goal. In extreme detail, write a press release announcing the accomplishment and detailing everything it entailed: all the people involved, the primary features and benefits, the launch date, the pricing, the awards it won, the number of subscribers/readers, the revenue goal, and a couple of testimonials from your customers, staff, or leaders about the successful endeavor.  The more detail you put into it, the more fun it is and the more inspiring the pursuit of the goal becomes.
• Don’t let the future-vision press release sit on your phone or laptop. Print it out and post it some place you can read it often.
• Take note that what you created is not only a vision board in document form, but if you got into enough detail, you’ll notice that you’ve created a pretty fine requirements document for this project that's easy to share with stakeholders and team members! Bonus: This is a great way to engage your team's creativity and encourage them to start with the end in mind.

The options for continuing to build your creative genius muscles are limited only by your creativity! 

To continue building your muscle, dive into creativitiy-enhancing activities and practice, practice, practice!

Here’s a starter list of additional creativity-boosting workouts you can take on:

• Choose a song you like and write new lyrics to match your favorite childhood story
• Create a mind map

• Dust off the LEGOs
• Draw or color anything you’d like
• Do a craft activity
• Figure out how to build the highest sand castle
• Create a vision board
• Write a short story or poem
• Learn a new instrument or language (programming languages count!)

Your creative-genius training is not over.

In fact, now that you’ve primed the pump, the best is yet to come! 

Creativity is the gift that keeps on giving. In addition to sharpening our ability to innovate, creativity is tied to stress-reduction, increased happiness, reduced anxiety, mental clarity and sharpness, enhanced problem-solving, advanced coping mechanisms, self-awareness and self-expression, sense of accomplishment, and finally, it just makes you more fun to be around!  

As if all of that wasn't enough, with all you've learned, you'll never again need to utter the dreaded phrase "We've always done it that way". ;-)

Thank you for taking part in the challenge and have an unexpectedly creative weekend! -Asia

#innovation #creativegenius #leadershiplessons #careerempowerment #outsidethebox #innovationchallenge

Asia Bribiesca-Hedin is CEO of Bridgewell LLC and founder of The Bad Boss Breakthrough Initiative, a leadership development program for accomplished professionals tired of soul-crushing, toxic work-environments and ready to become the CEOs of their careers. She declares that "work is not supposed to hurt" and is on a mission to reignite crushed souls. Sign up for her free Career CEO workshop for immediate career-empowerment strategies that don't involve your bad boss.

Connect with her about career-empowerment, new developments in cancer care, and of course, all-things Cuban cuisine!