How many times have you tried to get something done that needed some touch of originality and creativity and yet got that annoying mind block which is manifested by blank stares, scratching and biting on anything in reach? “all the damn time” I hear?

As preconditions to be creative, one should know something well while having the utmost focus on it. Someone who knows little about aerodynamics can’t come up with the idea for next concord. And focus has two aspects: knowing a specified area well (focus area) and being able to bring most of those neurons to work on it. How do you achieve the latter? I found isolation to be very effective (as have numerous famous people).

Cut the wires

Disconnect from the world, go offline, turn all your gadgets off, get away from people and find a place that’s comfortable, not too warm, bright, quiet and to keep it quiet, no earphones and music either. Don’t eat too much beforehand, because that will make you sleepy. You want to be alert and focus with your mind, not your guts.

All you need with you is a pen and paper. Don’t expect magic - don’t think that creativity comes knocking at your door. It’s a shy kid sitting at a corner of a room. Now that you’ve managed to throw out all the other noisy kids, you still need to approach her, get her to talk to you. So sit for a while, until you feel the urge to do something, then instead of doing what you usually do (facebooking, what not), get cracking at ideas. Do what works best for you, brain storm, doodle, talk to yourself, etc. Once you got some ideas coming, more and more will follow and before you know how you got there, you have warmed up to creativity.

Stay with it for a while. Don’t quit as soon as you hit what you believe is “it”. Keep the good ones aside and keep thinking. This is the exploration stage. Locking onto one idea in order to figure out the details will blind you from some other perhaps better ideas. Keep exploring. Take breaks too, but not by checking your emails or all that business. Just lay back, rest your eyes and try to control your thoughts. Pull back your view and see wider and then when you start again, you will take a different path. To me, that’s creativity - going down all the possible paths, however irrelevant and off topic they may seem. After all, original work has always been unorthodox and against the common expectations.

Meanwhile, be aware that the slightest distraction could throw you off your track and to get back on it, you’ll have to try twice as hard. So I repeat, no phone, no Internet, no people, no nothing but you, your notes and your thoughts.

And don’t forget to tell your family and friends what you’re up to. They might think something has happened to you if you suddenly go off the grid.

Source: http://blog.oxplot.com/2011/11/creativity-requires-isolation.html