1. Go for a walk and come back with at least one “treasure” you find along the way.
2. Everyone knows how to do something, whether it’s making a great spaghetti sauce, growing herbs, or creating an awesome PowerPoint presentation. Create a how-to of your skill and post it on your blog. If you don’t have a blog, hang it up on your supermarket’s bulletin board.
3. Draw simple pictures on napkins and put them in your children’s lunch bags. Here’s a Flickr stream of napkins drawn by a father for his daughters’ lunch bags over a five year period: “The Napkin Drawings”.
4. Purchase something–it doesn’t have to be expensive–as a symbol for your need to create: it can be a sketchbook, a coffee cup, a journal with a great cover, a poster of a Picasso painting, and so on.
5. Write an episode for your favorite TV sitcom and mail it to the producers.
6. Memorize your favorite poem. Mine is “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines” by Pablo Neruda (and yes, I have it memorized).
7. Write a Haiku (three lines, the first with five syllables, the second line with seven syllables and the third line with five syllables).
8. Follow Benjamin Franklin’s advice: take out a book by your favorite author and copy an entire chapter by hand so that you get a feel for the flow and composition of great writing.
9. Come up with a short story on what really happened to Jimmy Hoffa.
10. Homer began”The Odyssey” with an incantation to the muse:
”Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy”
Create your own incantation to the muse.
11. Search your local newspaper for the next gallery opening near your home and attend.
12. Write a poem in Shel Silverstein’s style:
Oh if you’re a bird, be an early bird
And catch the worm for your breakfast plate.
If you’re a bird, be an early early bird
But if you’re a worm, sleep late.
13. Read someone’s palm (make it up as you go along).
14. Go to a playground and hang upside down from the monkey bars for 5 minutes.
15. Make a sock puppet. Pretend it’s your alter ego.
16. Make a recording of your loved ones’ laughter.
17. Make up a knock-knock joke. Tell it to your friends and see if anyone laughs.
18. Make up an interesting story of how you found five different objects in your home. The next time someone new comes over tell them the story. “Do you like that vase? It’s a funny story how I found it . . .”
19. Write a letter to the President of your country explaining in detail how you would solve one of the country’s biggest problems.
20. Set a beautiful table and photograph it.
21. Write your Creativity Manifesto. Tape it to the wall where you can see it.
22. Make a list of the ten things you most enjoyed doing as a child. Do at least two activities from the list.
23. Learn the lyrics to a song you love. Sing it in the shower.
24. Leave a dollar somewhere in public for someone else to find.
25. Buy a goldfish and name it after your favorite composer.
26. Create a flow chart of your morning routine.
27. Come up with a comic strip loosely based on your family members.
28. Invent a sandwich with your favorite ingredients. Name it after yourself.
29. Learn a magic trick.
30. Do a Google search for something you’ve always wondered about but never bothered to find more information on.
31. Come up with a great title for the novel you’ll write someday. Tom Robbins has great names for his novels:
- “Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas”
- “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”
- “Skinny Legs and All”
- “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates”
32. Learn to make Pierogi.
33. Learn something new about a culture that is not your own. You may want to start with the Sioux Nation.
34. Come up with 100 uses for paper rolls.
35. Learn to do the HulaHoop.
36. Create a scavenger hunt for a kids’ party.
37. Take a photograph of the same scene at different hours of the day (Monet-style).
38. Learn to hold a steady beat on a drum.
39. Learn to make guacamole.
40. Ride a carousel or a Ferris Wheel.
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Related Posts:
- 50 Ways to Celebrate Life Every Day
- 15 More Ways to Celebrate Life
- 29 Ways to Suck Out the Marrow of Life
- 55 Things to Be Grateful For
- 25 More Ways to Celebrate Life
I Recommend:
My ebook “How to Be More Creative – A Handbook for Alchemists” explains that creativity is not the sole domain of the arts but is important in any field. Whatever you do, creativity helps you do it better. Discover practical advice on how to be more creative in every life endeavor by reading my ebook.
The Sedona Method is a simple, powerful, easy-to-learn technique that shows you how to let go of any negative, unwanted or painful feelings you may be experiencing at any particular moment. It consists of a series of questions you ask yourself that lead your awareness to focus on what you’re feeling in the moment and gently guide you toward letting it go. Read my review of the Sedona Method here.
