How To Be More Creative: 6 Research-Backed Methods
Key Takeaways
Creativity is a Skill, Not Just a Gift: 75% of people feel they aren't living up to their creative potential, but science proves that divergent thinking can be trained.
The Muscle Myth: Your brain relies on schemata (mental shortcuts) to save energy. To innovate, you must deliberately force your brain to connect unrelated concepts.
Actionable Tools: From exhausting inhibition to the alternate uses task, simple daily exercises can measurably increase your problem-solving fluency.
The Goal: True innovation requires toggling between Divergent Thinking (generating options) and Convergent Thinking (selecting the best solution).
The Creativity Gap
Creativity in the workplace is often valued, even when it isn’t fostered effectively. 75% of people believe they are not living up to their creative potential.
Most professionals assume creativity is a lightning bolt that strikes at random. They wait for inspiration instead of training for it. But at ITG, we know that creativity is a discipline and a practice. It is the ability to produce a novel and appropriate response to an open-ended challenge.
To close the gap, you need to understand the two engines of innovation:
Divergent Thinking: the capacity to generate creative ideas by combining separate types of information in novel ways. It’s the brain’s way of exploring new ideas and territories for use.
Convergent Thinking: the ability to generate the best single solution to a specific problem. This is the brain’s way of exploiting a known method that already works.
The magic happens when you use them in tandem.
The Science: Why Your Brain Resists Creativity
Your brain organizes information into schemata, internal maps based on relationships of higher-level concepts in the mind. Think of it as a massive file cabinet of mental shortcuts.
If I say “Dog,” your brain automatically opens the drawer for collar, bone, bark, fur.
These direct associations are efficient, but they aren't creative.
True creativity is the ability to reach across distant schemata in useful ways.
It’s the mental energy required to leap from “Dog” to a seemingly unrelated concept, like “Leaves” or “Space Travel,” to find a connection nobody else sees.
The Elements of Creativity that ITG defines as relevant to ideations and brainstorms are:
Quantity (Fluency): How many ideas can you generate?
Diversity (Flexibility): How many different categories do those ideas cover?
Uniqueness (Originality): How unique is the idea compared to the norm?
Building: Can you take one idea as inspiration to generate a related idea?
Most of us get stuck in the Dog —> Collar loop because it’s comfortable. The following 6 methods are designed to force your brain out of those comfortable ruts and into the unknown.
1. The Alternate Uses Task (Daily Warm-Up)
The Science: This classic test measures divergent thinking by asking you to list as many uses as possible for a common object. A 2013 study found that practicing this task improves insight problem-solving performance.
The Action: Take 5 minutes before your next meeting. Pick an object on your desk (e.g., a stapler). List 20 uses for it that have nothing to do with stapling papers.
Example: A paperweight, a doorstop, a musical instrument, a nutcracker.
Why it works: It forces your brain to break its standard associations (stapler = paper) and forge new neural pathways.
2. Exhaust Your Inhibition
The Science: Your brain is an efficiency machine. It uses inhibition to filter out “useless” information so you can focus. But innovation wants that “useless” information to make new connections. Research shows that when the brain’s executive control is tired, it filters less, leading to more creative ideas.
The Action: Try the Stroop Effect exercise (video below). Look at a list of color names written in different ink colors (e.g., the word "BLUE" written in red ink). Try to say the ink color aloud, not the word.
Why it works: This tedious task exhausts your brain's inhibitory control, temporarily lowering your mental filter and allowing wilder, more creative ideas to bubble up.
3. Guided Fantasy (Mental Time Travel)
The Science: A study by Garfield et al. (2001) showed that guided fantasy—essentially a focused daydream—increases fluency (number of ideas) and flexibility (variety of ideas).
The Action: Don't just stare out the window. Actively transport yourself. Imagine you are solving your business problem on a space station, or in the year 1850, or any place that is tangentially related to your project purpose.
Why it works: Changing the mental context removes the constraints of your current reality (“We don't have the budget,” “Legal won't like this”), allowing you to see the core problem from a fresh angle.
Want more tips on creativity? Learn 10 ways to make your environment more creative.
4. Thinking Like a Child
The Science: In a study by Zabelina & Robinson, one group of adults was told to “think like a 7-year-old” before a task. That group generated significantly more original ideas than the control group.
The Action: Ask yourself: “How would a first-grader solve this supply chain issue?”
Why it works: Children are less aware of “rules.” They don't know that a pen is only for writing. By adopting their persona, you temporarily suspend the Curse of Knowledge that limits adults and experts.
To illustrate the fact that children view the world different from adults, look at the image below. Which direction is the bus traveling?
Image via National Geographic | Brain Games
Over 80% of children will give you the right answer (the bus is moving to the left), but for adults, we have a 50/50 chance. How do the kids know the bus is traveling left? The door is always on the right side of the bus.
5. Walk It Off
The Science: Stanford researchers found that walking increases creative output by an average of 60%. The effect lasts even after you sit back down.
The Action: When you hit a wall, stop grinding. Get up and walk for 10 minutes—preferably without your phone.
Why it works: Walking occupies the parts of the brain responsible for filtering input, allowing your subconscious to work on the problem in the background.
6. Self-Affirmation
The Science: It sounds cheesy, but it works. Studies show that recalling a positive memory or affirming your core values reduces defensiveness and opens the mind to counter-intuitive ideas—a key component of our Forness® Thinking methodology.
The Action: Before a brainstorm, remind yourself of a past success, or simply compliment.
Why it works: Fear of failure is the enemy of creativity. boosting your confidence lowers your cortisol levels, putting your brain in a reward state rather than a threat state.