Stimulating Creativity

Some management studies surprise me no end. Take this study on How To Stimulate Creativity? for instance. "Go live abroad", it says. Immersing yourself in local experiences for a prolonged period helps stimulate creativity. People who are bi-lingual or tri-lingual are found to be more creative in the study.

I have no doubt it does. Different inputs fire different neurons in your brain. variety of experiences help trigger creative juices. You do not have to live abroad for that. Just do things differently.

Do you drive to your office everyday? Do you take the same route? Try a different one. Or go to office in a bus for a month. Or better still pedal to office.

Do you love thrillers? Go to your local bookshop or the library and pick up a genre that you would never think of reading.

You can't stand classical music? Listen to Carnatic / Hindustani / Wsetern classical for a month. Oh! You are already into classical music? Listen to Jazz then.

Learn a new language on your own.

You do not have to go live abroad to become creative. You can create your own different environment at home. And I promise you, each of my suggestions given above will increase your creativity. It is the new experience and the ability to weave the new experiences into your daily life that makes one creative.

And if creativity was linked to number of languages, then all Indians would be overflowing with creativity. Any educated Indian would know at least 3 languages, if not more.

Wait a minute! Perhaps, we Indians are really very creative.