Minute creativity: don’t MAKE time for creativity
Don’t make time for creativity? What? Are you insane? Do you not tell us ad nauseum that to grow your business you need to make time to be creative?
Yes, I do. But panic not, I haven’t quite taken leave of my creative senses. I will always have time for making time for ideas.
But there is another – perhaps complimentary – way to ensure that your business is fostering as many ideas as possible: minute creativity.
Before we dive in, let’s pause at the homograph (ooh, get me with my grammar smarts, thanks to my son who had to tediously become acquainted with such nonsense in primary school) MINUTE. One spelling, two different meanings. Minute, as in 60 seconds, and minute, as in tiny. Both apply here. So let’s get on with it, time’s a tickin’.
Minute creativity is a quick burst of dipping into a challenge, creating ideas, and exiting all within a few minutes.
Why does it work?
1. I have heard people say they don’t have time for creativity (they usually mutter it under their breath hoping I won’t hear them). Everyone has time for minute creativity.
2. Less time means less overthinking, and less overthinking means more creative thinking freedom. You have to stop worrying about the quality of the idea and just bloody write it down.
Minute creativity doesn’t replace longer, deeper creative thinking sessions, but blimey, does it help keep you pumping fresh thinking into your business.
💡 First off, find your creative minutes. Where can you spot less than 5 minutes in your day where you are not engaged in something actively? Where you might already be waiting for something, or tied to a spot with no chance of ‘productivity’. Such as…
☕️ Waiting for the kettle to boil and your tea to brew
🍪 Having your mid-morning toast or mid-afternoon Custard Cream break
🦶 Walking to pick the kids up from school
🚇 On public transport
☎️ Hanging on the phone to the GP / your utility provider / HMRC (or the wait of doom, as I call it).
🚽 Having a… moment of relief?
💡 Now prepare a challenge you have in your business to work on. How to come up with some super-exciting content themes… how to redesign your onboarding process to create real customer excitement… how to give prospects a real flavour of your brilliance in less than 10 minutes… whatever you need ideas for. Write your challenge succinctly.
💡 Maybe have a notebook to capture your minute creativity, or use a mind map app.
Each day, every time you find yourself in your creative minutes, task yourself with coming up with 10 new ideas to solve your challenge.
💡 Use a creative thinking tool each time you do minute creativity to help you jump into new thinking territory quickly (otherwise 10 ideas a day is going to feel TOUGH). Here’s a few to get you started:
🍿 Think of your favourite food brand. How would they solve your challenge?
👠 Put yourself in a famous person’s shoes (Bartlett, Monroe, Charlie XCX, a Simpson). How would they solve your challenge?
🐤 How would a rubber duck inspire ideas for your challenge?
⬅️ Think of an obvious idea, a crap idea, and an idea you’ve seen a competitor do. Now do the opposite or each.
🚍 How would a bus driver, a drug dealer and a children’s TV presenter solve your challenge?
Get the minute creative habit by using the same creative minutes each day or switching it up across the week. Do minute creativity for five days straight creating 10 ideas at a time (that’s only one idea every 30 seconds, so don’t judge them, just note them down and move on). By the end of the week that’s 50 new ideas to start to evaluate.
Not so minute now, eh?
Find more creative tools to help you get better business ideas in our free online membership area, the Tool Shed.