“To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play . . .” — Albert Einstein

The more comfortable you are at being creative, the more successful you’ll be at problem solving, and at seeing new opportunities.  And creativity experts have long known that play is one of the most effective creative thinking techniques that there is.  In the article “Creativity and Play: A Systematic Approach to Managing Innovation“, the author illustrates the creativity exhibited in “play” as follows:

“Duck into a huddle [during a kids' baseball game]. It’s a babble of ‘what if’, ‘let’s try’, and many other strategies enacted ad libitum. Watch the action at a singles bar. It’s a tutorial in the art of attracting and retaining attention, including grooming, fashion, and banter. Greet a tardy teenager after curfew for a yarn that puts Mark Twain to shame.”

One of the chief components of play is psychic safety.  As I explained in my post “Four Outstanding Thoughts on Innovation“, fear of being judged negatively for our ideas is construed by the brain as a threat to our survival, which in turn shuts down the part of our brain where creativity resides. When we’re playing we can make fools of ourselves and we can risk losing; after all, play occurs outside of “normal reality” and of the regular rules of society.

Play feeds competency by giving us the excitement of a “safe” risk. While playing “Dungeons and Dragons” you can role-play, you can devise risky strategies to try and double your money in “Monopoly”, and you can even let out your aggression while playing football and other contact sports. By introducing elements of play into “normal” life, you can dramatically increase your creativity. Some suggestions on how to do this are provided below.

Creative Thinking Technique: Play

At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown–one of the founders of Ideo–talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play.

Suspend Judgment and Explore Lots of Options

Tim explains that an adult encountering a new situation will categorize it as fast as they can.  Life’s complicated, grown-ups are busy, and they want to settle on an answer quickly.

In addition, adults fear the judgment of their peers and are embarrassed about showing their ideas to others. This fear causes people to be conservative in their thinking and to self-edit as they’re having ideas.  He adds that our desire to be original can also be a form of editing.  Kids, on the other hand, have no embarrassment at all and are more engaged with open possibilities. Tim advises that we just go for it and explore lots of options and alternatives.

For example, stop for a minute and think of the following: how many different uses can you find for a paper clip in one minute?

• One option is to use paper clips to keep junk food bags closed when you don’t have potato chip clips.
• Another option is to use them as bookmarks.
• Paper clips are also great for relieving stress: unfold them, bend them into all sorts of shapes, string them along in a chain . . .
• If you’re out of Christmas ornament hooks, use paper clips.
• You can use the colored paper clips for coding: red is for really important papers, blue for things that can wait, and so on.
• The possibilities are endless . . .

Set Up an Environment that Encourages Creativity

In addition, Tim explains that a playful environment which relaxes natural inhibitions is more conducive to creative and useful ideas than a very “serious” environment. Creative companies often have symbols in the workplace that remind people to be playful and that it’s a safe, permissive environment.

He gives a couple of examples of the creative environment that exists in companies known for their creativity and innovation: the “Microbus Meeting Room” at his company Ideo, the wooden huts and decorated caves at Pixar, and the slide and fireman’s pole at Google Zurich.

Break Out of Adult Habits

In an experiment in which a group of CEO’s were giving peyote, it was discovered that they were much more creative after taking the drug. However, Tim explains that what this experiment shows is that we’re much more creative when we’re shocked out of our normal way of thinking.  The drug helped the CEO’s forget the adult behaviors that were getting in the way of their ideas.

He adds that at Ideo they have brainstorming rules written on the walls, such as “defer judgment”, “go for quantity”, and so on.  It may seem paradoxical, but we need rules to help us break the old rules and norms that we may otherwise bring to situations in which we want to be creative.

Creative Thinking Technique: Put Together a Creativity Toolbox

Zip bins are storage bins filled with toys, paints, drawing tools, and so on which unzip and become a multi-activity surface on which children can play with whatever was stored inside. You can use this same concept to create a creativity toolbox for yourself. An actual box can be used, or you can clear out a drawer or shelf. Stock it with toys that bring out your creativity:

• Coloring books
• Crayons
• Beanies for juggling
• Play Doh
• Lego’s
• Silly Putty
• A Yo-yo
• Tempera paints
• Bubbles
• Jigsaw Puzzles
• Sudokus
• Colored Chalk
• Roger von Oech’s Ball of Whacks: A Creativity Tool for Innovators
• Board games
• A finger blaster (invented by Brendan Boyle at IDEO); here’s a fun YouTube video of a finger blaster fight
• Colored paper
• Glue sticks
• Wooden sticks

Go ahead and build prototypes of your ideas with wooden sticks and Lego’s.  Think with your hands.

Creative Thinking Technique: The Idea Pocket

I found an article titled “Your Creativity Toolbox: The Idea Pocket” in which the author–Jen Nipps–suggests “an idea pocket” as an addition to your creativity tool box. Here are the instructions:

1. Take a standard #10 business envelope and seal the flap shut.

2. Cut off the top third of the envelope. (You will be cutting the short side of the envelope.)

3. Either write or use a label to put a short nonsense poem on the front of the envelope.  She offers the following example:

My Idea Pocket

“I want to write.
I want to draw.

Try though I might,
I can’t think of anything at all!

I reach my hand in here
And find something very near.

I’ll put it back or put in something new
So I can use it another time too.”

What should you add to your idea pocket?  There are several creativity experts that have made card packs; you can add some of these to your idea pocket:

• Creative Whack Pack by Roger von Oech
• Innovative Whack Pack by Roger von Oech
• Roger Von Oech’s Ancient Whacks of Heraclitus: A Creativity Tool Based on the Epigrams of Heraclitus
• Thinkpak: A Brainstorming Card Deck by Michael Michalko

You can also use the 30 Creativity Cards made by me, or make your own. In addition, as I explained in my post “The Secret of Unbridled Creativity”, having a stack of images to look through can be very powerful in helping you to generate ideas.  You can cut out images from any advertising material or magazines that come across your desk, glue them onto index cards, and stick them into your idea pocket.

Conclusion

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What toys would encourage me to be more playful?
• How can I make my work environment more relaxed and playful?
• What symbol can I use to remind me to be more playful?
• Can I come up with 100 ways to increase revenue and 100 ways to cut costs (or 100 solutions to any problem that you’re having)?
• What would have to happen so that I could feel more relaxed and that it’s “safe” to come up with new ideas?

By introducing more play into your life you’ll soon find yourself feeling more energized and being more creative.

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