How to wake up your brain

I had always thought of caffeine as something to keep me awake. (Especially when I was in college, studying late at night.)

I had never related caffeine and creativity. Till I saw this book Caffeine For The Creative Mind. 250 exercises to wake up your brain.

Here are a few exercises from Caffeine For The Creative Mind.

"What if there is no email, no phone, no IM? How would you communicate with your colleagues?

"What if we had an unlimited budget and complete access to a team of engineers and craftsmen that could build our ultimate desk?" What all would you like and why? Draw it out on a paper, as if you had to communicate to the design/engineering team

"Write out on a piece of paper, how to tie a shoe lace." Use only words, no sketches or drawings.

Use your phone and take pictures of 15 things that that act as barriers to your creative thinking. They could be physical or mental barriers. Then examine each barrier closely. Which of these inhibit us from thinking differently.

Take any book off of a nearby bookshelf. Choose 5 words that pop off the page and grab your attention. Look around the room and pick five different objects.

Take five random objects from the room. Connect the 5 words to the 5 objects and write something. Don't worry if it makes sense or not.

Here are few exercises from Caffeine For The Creative Team

Team exercise 1: You have 1000 refrigerators in your yard. Some may still be in working condition.

Task for the team.

Collaborate to come up with twenty ways to use a thousand refrigerators.

Each team member shoots 20 pictures on the mobile to represent "A day in the life of".. not your day but that of a colleague. Use the pictures to create a storyboard to tell a story of that person's life. (Variation: All team members 20 pictures of the same colleague.)What is common and what is different could be an interesting points for discussion. Both what & why are important.

Both the books have interviews with leading designers and their approaches to thinking different.

I have found both the books useful while designing brainstorming sessions. They have helped in putting together triggers for generating ideas. And also interesting group exercises that fosters creative thinking.

They are excellent resources whether you brainstorm alone or in a team. We can adapt many of the ideas to online brainstorming too.