Hey Reader,

Each week in this newsletter I answer a question from a reader. This week's comes from a comms lead at a university:

I really like this question because it's so bloody honest, thank you for sending it in and putting words to a problem that we've all had. I can absolutely relate to this.

I consider myself a creative person, but if someone is sitting in front of me demanding a creative idea RIGHT NOW then there is 100% chance my mind will go totally blank and I'll have absolutely no idea what to do or say. Similarly, if I'm sitting in front of an empty Word document and trying to force creativity, it doesn't work.

If that is you too, then I've got good news for you: the problem isn't you. You absolutely ARE creative. You just need to create the conditions for creative ideas to flow, and that's usually not in pressured meetings or sitting at a screen or while someone is staring at you demanding you come up with a viral idea.

If there's one thing I've learned in my career it's this: You cannot force a good idea. You must give it time to percolate and breathe and come together. Let's look at one simple thing you can do to revive your creativity and come up with more great ideas this year.

If you want to sharpen one of the most underrated skills in internal comms, I have a course for you: how to design and run focus groups.

I've facilitated hundreds of focus groups throughout my career and I genuinely think they're one of the most powerful listening tools we have, and one of the most underused.

The course walks you through everything: how to design your focus group, how to select participants, how to ask the right questions and how to facilitate the conversation so you actually get useful insights out of it, how to analyse the data and present it to leaders. You can work through it entirely in your own time.

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Is this the year you master focus groups as a listening tool?

Where do creative ideas come from?

You probably already know the answer to this, intuitively. Because if you think back to where all your best and most interesting ideas came from, you were probably doing something mundane when you came up with them; walking the dog, loading the dishwasher, hoovering the carpets, staring aimlessly out the window.

Do you see the pattern? The best ideas tend to come when we're not trying at all and probably when we're doing something quite boring.

There's good scientific reasoning behind this. When your brain is under-stimulated (when you're a bit bored), it activates something called the default mode network. This is the part of your brain that makes unexpected connections, solves problems and generates ideas. It gives your brain space to collide thoughts, connect the dots, come up with those 'eureka' moments.

I wrote about this in my book, Innovative Internal Communication, and the research is pretty clear on one thing: the harder you try to be creative, the less creative you're likely to be. We've all been sold the idea that creativity requires intense focus and effort, but really the opposite is true. Creativity requires boredom.

The trouble is, most of us never give this network a chance to kick in. We fill every spare minute with our phones, podcasts, emails and then we wonder why we feel creatively stuck.

Practical things you can do to help get the creativity flowing

Now there's no point in me telling you to simply be bored all day and wait for magic to strike. I don't think your boss would appreciate that, haha. But here are some practical things you can do to get your creative spark back.

Request time to think. If you're in a meeting and someone is demanding a creative solution RIGHT NOW, you simply say "thanks so much, let me ask a few more questions to understand it fully then I'm going to take this away and think it over for 24 hours. I'll come back to you with ideas tomorrow." This removes the immediate demand and gives you time to think and let those thoughts collide in your head.

Stop scheduling creativity. A brainstorm at 4pm on a Friday is unlikely to produce anything useful. Actually if you're anything like me, you fully dread brainstorming sessions full stop and prefer quiet time to think instead. So why not try to pay attention to when ideas do naturally come to you? Then try to recreate or to protect those conditions. For example, maybe walking gets your creative ideas going, so you can make sure you get out for a walk each lunchtime. Or maybe your best ideas come to your in the shower; so make time for a long shower each evening or before work in the morning. Find out what conditions trigger your brain to get creative and go from there.

Put your phone down. You'd be surprised how much you're looking at your phone, even if you don't realise it. Try using it less. Put it down, put it away, put it in another room while you work. Even better, allow yourself to get completely bored during your commute to work on the train - no phone allowed. Just stare out the window or observe the world around you. Sounds boring, doesn't it? Yeah that's kind of the point. Let your mind wander and see where it brings you.

In order to produce creative ideas, you need to create the right conditions to allow them to come. If you're someone who avoids boredom at all costs, then this is your cue to give it a go. Embrace the discomfort of doing absolute nothing. Turn off the podcast when you're doing the ironing, don't bring headphones when you go for a walk, turn off the radio when you're driving.

The trick to being creative isn't to do more or force it harder. It's actually to do less, to try less. Isn't that a beautiful thing?

Thanks for reading and stay curious,

Joanna

Find me on YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and check out my book​

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