Practice Creativity to Build Your Creative Muscle – A Lesson from our Core Value
“Imagine, you just heard that an elephant has entered Gratia Café and is casually sitting down to drink hot chocolate. Now, write a news article on this incident.” This was my very first assignment in my undergrad journalism class. It might sound silly, it might even sound like a writing assignment for high schoolers, and believe it or not, that’s precisely why my professor thought of this; to bring unsuppressed, imaginative, and carefree ideas out of us. He wanted us to get out of our heads, push us out of our comfort zone and find words to describe an utterly out-there idea.
My professor, like author Seth Godin, believed “We are all born creative, it takes a little while to become afraid.”
That was my first brush with practicing creativity and treating it like an art form.
Over the years, I noticed my creative muscles becoming weaker, and I found myself finding comfort in the buzzwords, and vague, abstract terms only used because “that’s how it has always been done.” It wasn’t until I revisited my old diary with my article on the elephant sighting at the café that I re-started practicing creativity.
When I came to work at Amplify, I was told there are no cookie-cutter solutions. And believe me, it is true. For us, every assignment, every article, and every client is an opportunity to find a unique angle, a unique story.
We aren’t creative to do something off the wall, yet we aren’t confined to any boxes either.
But so often, the word ‘creativity’ is just a buzzword. We use creativity as an adjective to describe anything we feel is fresh and inspiring. But what does it mean?
Creativity is a state of mind that requires a particular way of thinking. It is so much more than just mind-blowing ideas. To be truly creative, we must unshackle ourselves from catchphrases and overused tropes. To truly stand out, we have to think of what the audience wants and sometimes even give them what they didn’t know they needed until they saw your product, your article, or your idea.
As with everything else though, if you want to get better at being creative, you have to practice being creative. The more you practice, the better you get at it, especially if you take the attitude of learning every time and seeking feedback. The more things you create, the better you will be at creating those things – solve more problems, communicate more ideas, add new perspectives, collaborate more, and tell more stories.
Creativity does not need to be an elusive concept or reserved for those special occasions. And at Amplify, we are never selectively creative. We are not worried about using up our best ideas, because we are constantly exercising our creative muscles (the only type of exercise I can truly get behind, to be honest). We bring the very best of us to every project we work on, be it a tagline, an article, a press launch, or a stakeholder engagement project; we are acutely aware that our collective creative reserve won’t deplete just because we used up all our best, most innovative ideas on a certain project.
And, you can do it too. Start practicing and exercising your creative muscles, and give your creative best to your customers and clients for every single project.
- Priyanka Ketkar, Communications and Engagement Specialist | Amplify Consulting Inc.
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