For further inspiration, we’ve culled these great points from two very useful books:

 From The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp (Simon & Schuster, 2003)
  • Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.
  • In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative.
  • Select the environment that works for you.
  • Develop a ritual that gets you started.
  • Face down your fears.
  • Put your distractions in their proper place.
Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box. In the box you put your photos, drawings, music, goals, research, the inspirations for your idea. The box is like soil...It’s what I can always go back to when I need to regroup and keep my bearings....The box is not a substitute for creating. The box is the raw index of your preparation. It is the repository of your creative potential, but it is not that potential realized.

Scratching is what you do when you are trying to find a good idea, when you can’t wait for the thunderbolt. When you’re in scratching mode, the tiniest micro cell of an idea will get you going....Scratching is where creativity begins. It is the moment where your ideas first take flight and begin to defy gravity. If you try to rein it in, you’ll never know how high you can go.

In creative endeavors luck is a skill.

“Ruts and Grooves”—More often than not, a rut is the consequence of sticking to tried and tested methods that don’t take into account how you or the world has changed. When you’re in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.

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From Breakthrough Thinking for Nonprofit Organizations: Creative Strategies for Extraordinary Results by Bernard Ross and Clare Segal (Jossey-Bass Nonprofit and Public Management Series)

Have a vision. Make it an unreasonable and demanding one. Accept neither compromise nor dilution...Avoid the tyranny of incrementalism...

Set an urgent and demanding time frame. Depending on the challenge, it can mean achieving the vision in a week or focusing on it for the next ten years...And create overwhelming urgency and momentum about achieving the result you need. Use this urgency and momentum to unlock creativity.

Share your vision. Invent words, phrases, and themes to share your idea widely. Look for weird, bizarre ways to do it...Be aware of the new and possibly uncomfortable roles you might have to play to achieve the result...

Avoid limiting beliefs. Watch out for mind-sets—your own or others’—that reduce your vision or undermine your belief in the possible.

Look for inspiration everywhere. The greatest inspiration comes from the oddest places. Be open to it...seek to work with both sides of your brain.








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