Back in the school days, I remember how my mother used to involve my brother and me in various activities during the summer break. The idea was to set achievable goals, learn multiple skills, and make valuable use of spare time.
We did fun DIY recycling projects, learned knitting, crocheting, and fabric painting. We even tried our hands to landscape the front yard, paint the walls and several home organizing tasks. Apart from having a lot of fun family time, these activities used to boost our creative thinking, charging up our brains for the upcoming academic year.
Childhood days may have gone now, but the need to fortify our creative side for improved performance at work is still there. Most of us spend our days doing demanding jobs. Some even do more than one job, or side hustles to make both ends meet. The tiring routine leaves us with drained energy, an overworked mind, and declined productivity.
To pump up your creative juices in order to have a healthy body and mind, one must include some activities in the daily routine. Many hobbies effectively stimulate our creative imagination. Some of them are discussed below.
- Enroll in a fine arts course
Exposure to arts is a purposeful way to induce creativity. We know for a fact that fine arts in education help students perform better. When we give our brains a chance to get engaged in drawing and coloring activities, it works as a mental exercise that stimulates the imagination.
Involving in arts is also a brilliant way to improve hand-eye coordination while thinking out of the box allows the development of problem-solving skills. It vastly enhances focus and concentration as well.
There are a variety of arts and photography courses available online these days. Beginner to professional level courses by ace artists will help you unlock your artistic vision, providing you an escape from your monotonous routine.
- Listen to an inspirational podcast
Podcasts are an innovative replacement for radio shows. Back in the day, people listened to radio presenters for a daily dose of entertainment and news. Radio presenters used to share some motivational quotes and read out excerpts from famous inspirational books. Now, all of this and a lot more is available via podcasts.
You can hear a podcast on almost any topic in the world. But to broaden your horizons and develop a creative vision, I strongly suggest you listen to motivational podcasts. You can choose the TED Talks Daily, a podcast where leading thinkers worldwide speak their heart out on several topics to instill some much-needed motivation in the listeners.
Happier by Gretchen Rubin is a podcast that will open doors of imagination about good habits. Stuff You Should Know is another highly recommended podcast that covers a wide range of topics.
- Learn a new language
One of the most fun and useful activity to invigorate your mind is to learn a foreign language. Firstly, it will give you a sense of achievement by adding another feather to your hat. Secondly, it will provide you with a chance to view TV shows, movies and read amazing books written in that new language. Last but not least, it will give you an advantage when you visit the country where that language is spoken.
There are several ways to learn foreign languages. You can do it via audiobook courses, online YouTube videos, and classes. But if you want to do it in a fun way, try watching TV shows in that language with English subtitles.
- Mindful meditation
Meditation isn’t boring at all, as you might have heard. Once you start doing it and seeing how beneficial it is, there will be no looking back.
Mindful meditation is a method that involves deep breathing and focusing, which results in clarity of thought, sound mental health, and positivity. As the technique balances neurochemicals and paves the way for emotional intelligence, it improves creative thinking tremendously.
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM), released the finding of a study according to which daily 10 minutes of mindful meditation can make you more creative.
- Organize your home
Pick a portion of a wardrobe or a kitchen cupboard, and start organizing it by removing unnecessary things and arranging the required essentials in a sorted way. Organizing is a highly satisfying activity that helps keep stress at bay. It also sets you on the path of minimalism, which is proven to change people’s lives positively.
By organizing stuff, not only you get rid of extra things that take up space, but you also clear up your mind. It will help open doors of imagination by maintaining inner peace.
- Get crafty
Making DIY crafts and handmade decor is a pleasurable activity. Not only that you repurpose old things by showing your creative side, but you also get some useful, attractive items for your home. The best thing about crafts is that you don’t need expensive materials for this activity. Things like old unused fabric, newspaper, ribbons, and beads can turn into visually appealing stuff.
To get some inspiration on how to make enticing objects with recycling, you can watch videos on YouTube. I would recommend watching Brit+Co, a crafty YouTube channel with loads of interesting videos about home decor, makeovers, kitchen DIYs, and crafts of all kinds.
- Play creativity inducing games
Certain games are a great way to boost your imaginative skills. They help you learn new things, are an excellent pastime, and can be played online on your phone while lying on your couch.
Word Finder, by Unlimited Gamez Mo, is one such creativity boosting game where you need to find as many words as possible from the given trail of alphabets. Educational games like these undoubtedly get you hooked with their challenging and fun gameplay. They are a great way to stimulate your critical thinking ability, giving it some much needed mental exercise.
- Freewriting
Just as the name tells us, freewriting is all about writing freely, whatever you like. It is a tried and tested method to vent out feelings and clear your thoughts to let in creativity.
Freewriting is done without considering anything else than pouring your thoughts. You pick a prompt and write freely about it for a set amount of time without worrying about grammatical, spelling, or other mistakes. To sum up, it is a form of writing that is free from all distractions.
This activity will help you overcome the usual halts in your productivity by allowing you to write free-flowing ideas.
Takeaway
According to ace philosopher Edward De Bono, creativity is the most critical human resource. He says that without creativity, humans won’t be able to progress.
Activities that fuel our imagination benefit us by boosting our productivity, which is required in everyday life. They fulfill our natural instinct to learn and explore. Also, instead of mindless scrolling on social media or giving way to negative thoughts while lying aimlessly, they are an advantageous way to spend spare time.
Author Bio
Audrey Throne has an ongoing affair with the words that capture readers’ attention. Her passion for writing dates back to her pre-blogging days. She loves to share her thoughts related to business, technology, health and fashion.
Find her on Twitter: @audrey_throne
