Enhance Creativity: Branch Out and Break Through
Have you ever noticed that enhanced creativity and life-changing epiphanies often come when your life has been upended in some significant way. This may be because it’s often times like these when we’re more likely to break out of routines and have new experiences. But the good news is that you don’t need to be faced with a catastrophe in order to have a light bulb moment.
It’s so important to regularly give yourself the gift of time — time to reflect and let your curiosity run free. Otherwise, you can find yourself caught up in an endless to-do loop of your day to day routines, ping-ponging from one task to the next, and missing out on important opportunities for growth.
Whether you’re trying to overcome a life challenge or just push your performance to the next level, you can find “branching out” an invaluable tool in your productivity repertoire.
It can be as simple as sitting and thinking about a particular topic or challenge you’re facing. But it can also be an activity. You can experiment with new meditation technique, listen to an e-book or try to learn a few chords on the guitar. Whether it’s thinking or doing, researching or reflecting — branching out should be geared toward exploration and experimentation versus task completion.
Branching out is more about encouraging fresh perspectives and fostering creativity — although both practices benefit from being protected from distraction. To get the most out of this practice, limit interruptions by disabling notifications on your phone, turning off the TV and picking a time and location where you won’t be disturbed. You might uncover the answers to questions you didn’t even know you had in the pages of a book or even in your own head — but you have to create the mental, emotional and physical space to find them.
Ironically, spending time not working your to-do list can greatly enhance productivity. Branching out allows you to push the limits of your creativity, and can produce results you wouldn’t come by any other way.
While branch outs are unstructured, they’re not a free-for-all — mindless web surfing with the TV blaring. They’re a deliberative exploration and purposeful discovery process. Whether it’s once a week or once a month, branch out and see where it takes you.
Learn more productivity tips by downloading this free ebook.
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