Creativity is one of the most important skills you can have. It unlocks the door to game-changing ideas. Although some people have it naturally, some exercises help in improving creativity.

10 Exercises That Will Improve Your Creativity

1. Take a walk outside: Breaking free of your work, moving around, and observing your surroundings can give you mental clarity and boost creativity. 
2. Write a list of things that annoy you: You can identify new patterns by identifying these things. This exercise can lead to new ideas previously unseen. 
3. Play with the lyrics to your favorite song: Playing with the lyrics of your favorite song opens your mind to new possibilities and breaks you out of your comfort zone. 
4. Create a video montage of your day: This can be a fun way to document your life and see how your creativity manifests itself. Trying different techniques and making edits will improve your creativity skills.
5. Write about what scares you and why it scares you: Some creatives sharpen creativity muscles by writing about what scares them and why (or writing about what doesn't scare them). Exploring scary things can open new avenues that would otherwise be closed.   
6. Play games that require creativity: Many creatives play games such as chess or scrabble. These games sharpen the mind and improve problem-solving. 
7. Do something that makes you laugh:If you're struggling with a creativity block, you can watch funny videos or do other things that release endorphins.
8. Draw something you see every day but don't pay attention to: When we see the same things repeatedly, they become mundane. If we examined the objects and scenes that make up our everyday lives, we'd be surprised at how much creativity hides in plain sight.
9. Exercise your brain with a puzzle:Puzzles exercise the creative side of your brain by forcing you to come up with new ideas and solutions. Doing this can help you break out of a rut.
10. Make crafts out of old things lying around the house: Crafts helps you tap into your creativity and improves your ideation.

Benchmarking compares your organization to others to measure your performance and identify areas for improvement. When done correctly, benchmarking can help you learn from your peers and identify areas for improvement. However, benchmarking can also have negative consequences if done incorrectly. How do you escape the innovation benchmark trap?

Good Vs. Bad Benchmarking

Proper benchmarking helps you understand how you compare to others in your industry and makes it easier to identify best practices. It can also help with planning strategic initiatives and resource allocation. An example of bad benchmarking comes from the story of MCI WorldCom in the late 90s and early 2000s. MCI WorldCom was involved in fraud which inflated their assets. Ultimately, many companies benchmarking themselves with MCI WorldCom went bankrupt.

Innovation Benchmark Uncertainty

Innovation benchmarking, which compares how an organization innovates to others, is becoming more popular. This is growing because leaders are feeling more uncertain about innovation. This uncertainty comes from a lack of confidence in their ability to generate new ideas.

Some consequences of innovation benchmarking include:

Leaders -

1. Run unnecessary risks trying to replicate benchmark results exactly.
2. Benchmark themselves out of uncertainty and into comfort without realizing it.
3. Benchmark their competitors rather than taking a fresh look at their innovation approach.

Escaping The Innovation Benchmark Trap

The best way to avoid the trap is to benchmark with purpose. Learn from peers, but don't assume that what worked for them will work for you. If you follow blindly, your organization can fall apart. It's critical to understand their thought process and discern if their approach is worth experimenting with.

It takes practice and patience to develop your creativity, and there are bad habits people learn which crush their creativity. But like all bad habits, we can break these if we are willing to work at it!

What Are Habits?

Habits are things you do automatically, without thinking. Bad habits can form in a few days, but it can take months or years to form good ones. Breaking bad habits and creating good ones can be challenging, but it's worth it in the long run. You need to be aware of your bad habits and then find a new routine that rewards you by creating a good habit to replace them.

Eight Daily Bad Habits That Are Killing Your Creativity

Here are eight of the very worst bad habits that could hold you back creatively every day:

1. Not allowing yourself time to relax and daydream:Daily downtime is crucial to keeping those creative juices flowing.
2. Procrastination: Putting off creative tasks is terrible for your mental health and career. To avoid it, establish deadlines and accountability measures. 
3. Perfectionism: Many great ideas never see the light of day because people become perfectionists. It's crucial to permit yourself to make mistakes and see the beauty in flawed things. 
4. Over researching before starting a project: Some projects require extensive research, others do not. Too much background reading can hinder creativity. 
5. Listening only to critics: Criticism can be a valuable learning tool, but it should never hold you back from pursuing your dreams. Surround yourself with creative peoplethat inspire you. 
6. Trying to do everything yourself: This can halter your productivity and block success. Collaboration can unlock new ideasand successes.
7. Judging your work too harshly: It's natural to be critical of your work, but it's essential to avoid self-doubt. When overly critical of our work, we become more guarded with our thoughts, killing creativity.
8. Giving up too quickly: You'll never accomplish anything significant by giving up too easily on the hard problems and tasks. Nothing worthwhile comes easy, but the hard work will pay off. 

With the start of a new year, let’s look back at the most downloaded episode of 2021.

The Most Downloaded Episode of 2021

As an innovation leader, I encounter loads of information every day. I like to use tools that capture/organize this information and bring it together in a way that’s easy to access. I need these tools to be accessible on an iPhone, Android, laptop, and iPad. Here are the five tools I use which fit my criteria:

• reMarkable 2 tablet
• Kindle Oasis
• ai
• Readwise
• Roam Research

The Value of My Favorite Innovation Tools

I like to separate my tools into categories like information collection, organization/combination, and the serendipity effect. I used to use Moleskine notebooks for collection, but now I use the reMarkable 2 tablet. It’s similar to writing on paper. All my information is sent to my phone and desktop for storage. I also like using the Kindle Oasis to highlight and save information that I find important or interesting. I use Otter.ai when I am running ideation sessions. This tool acts as an AI-powered assistant, recording and transcribing meetings and other meaningful conversations.

I listen to many audiobooks and podcasts, hardcover books, and online articles. I need a tool that can gather all that information and synthesize it. That is where Readwise comes into play. This tool does all that and pinpoints things I may have missed initially, triggering serendipity. I like to pair Readwise with a tool called Roam Research, which organizes and makes connections between the information Readwise collects.