Use this trick to boost your creativity

When you’re working to a deadline, staring at a blank page where your creative genius should be, what do you do? Push yourself harder? Set a timer? Dangle a post-work reward in front of yourself?

What if giving in to pleasure could get you over the hill?

Here’s the idea: when we experience pleasure our bodies produce dopamine. Dopamine gives us our drive, focus, motivation, energy and assertiveness ­– all pretty key to the creative process.  Caroline H. Bowman, author of Dopamine and the Pleasure of Creativity, says when our bodies are flooded with dopamine, we seek activity and novelty, and are better at “novel and flexible thinking”. In other words, the curiosity, playfulness and confidence we need to have our best creative ideas.

So, to get that creativity-unlocking dopamine hit, we need pleasure. But what do we mean by pleasure?

Luckily for your flatmate/colleague/partner (delete as appropriate) it doesn’t have to be 12 orgasms a night and swinging from the rafters. For most of us, it’s also not practical or logical to go after big pleasures during a working day. Maybe, like me, you don’t live near your favourite place to eat. Or perhaps blasting out 7/11 by Beyoncé would be frowned upon in your coworking space. The key is to “savour” smaller pleasures. A beautiful plant, a favourite song, a scented candle, a perfectly runny boiled egg, a pair of snuggly socks, the sun on your face, a new picture on your desk.

Savouring

Fred Bryant, author of Savoring, describes the anticipation of future events, appreciation of the present and reminiscing positively about the past as forms of savouring which give us pleasure and produce positive emotions.

Having these sensory pleasures around us isn’t enough. We have to actually sit with them, acknowledge them and the pleasure we get from them to tap into that creativity-boosting dopamine.

If you’re someone who responds well to deadlines and strictness, brilliant. But if, like me, that stuff sends you running for the hills, could you seek motivation in pleasure? Could a few minutes of guilt-free savouring give you the boost you need?

And with all that extra confidence, that desire for novelty, could it be that what you produce is more creative, more positive and more relatable?

Creativity breeds creativity

For most of us, being creative brings us great pleasure. So, in theory, the more pleasure we enjoy, the more creative we are. And the pleasure we get from that creativity brings us even more creativity. You get the idea.

With that in mind, if your work inspiration is feeling stagnant, could you find creativity in another part of your life and use that dopamine hit to boost your work: cook a new dish, learn a dance routine, paint a picture.

For me, I spend all day inside my head. It’s like a little office space I climb into at the start of the day and walk out of at the end. Finding pleasure in a working day is about stepping out of that brain-cocoon and remembering that I have arms and legs as well as a head. Something as simple as taking my tea outside to feel the sun on my face, doing a couple of sun salutations on the yoga mat or giving the dog a cuddle. Often this is all I need to find the thread of creativity and give it a tug. And when that fails, there’s biscuits.

What are the little pleasures in your day that get you in the zone? Chat to me on LinkedIn.