How to Develop Creative Thinking Skills (Even If You Think You’re Not Creative)

Are you a creative person? Well, if you clicked on this article there’s a good chance your answer might be “no”. However, years of experience working with creative people have taught me that, while genetics has some part in how creative people can be, it is also a learnable skill.

So, not only can a person with average or even below average imagination develop and improve this faculty within their capabilities, but they can probably exceed a natural imagination that never puts in the effort.

The real problem is that most of us had our creative thinking trained out of us. School systems reward single correct answers and later, workplaces demand results over experimentation. So, by the time we reach adulthood, we’ve learned to color inside the lines so well that we’ve forgotten how to draw our own.

But your brain is still capable of the same imaginative leaps you made as a kid. You just need to give it permission and practice. Let me show you how.

Understanding What Creative Thinking Actually Means

When we think of creativity, our first thought is of a paintbrush wet with ink, or the dishevelled novelist typing into the night with a glass of whisky for company. And while those things (except for the drinking part), are definitely examples of creative work, creativity itself can be defined as the ability to look at something from a new angle, make unexpected connections, and generate ideas that didn’t exist before

When you find a solution for a problem in a way that nobody tried before, or figure out how to repurpose some old piece of decor in your home, that’s creativity at play, just as much as any artistic endeavor. 

You can think of it as mental flexibility, which like its physical counterpart, improves with regular stretching.

Why Your Brain Needs Creative Exercise

The human brain is lazy. Everything it does is defined by an energetic calculation based on spending as little of it as possible for maximum return. So, whenever it creates a pattern, it sticks to it so that it doesn’t have to exhaust itself creating new ones. 

This means that when you take the same route to work, order the same coffee, and follow the same routines, your brain happily runs on autopilot. This is useful for everyday functioning, but it makes your thinking rigid.

In other words, not only can creative thinking make you a better problem-solver, more adaptable to change and resilient in the face of obstacles, it physically changes your brain, creating new neural pathways that weren’t there before.

Daily Creative Exercises

Now that we have a better idea of what we’re doing and what we stand to gain, here some creative exercises you can try right now:

Start a “bad ideas” list:  I know this sounds backwards, but one of the biggest blocks to creative thinking is the pressure to have only good ideas, so learning to get comfortable with what can be immediately perceived as “bad” ones is a good way to get exploratory. The way to do it is this: when you’re facing any kind of decision or problem, spend five minutes writing down the worst possible solutions. Make them ridiculous. Get them completely wrong on purpose. What this does is lower the stakes and get your brain moving. Often, buried in your terrible ideas, you’ll find the seed of something actually useful.

Change one small thing every day: Take a different route home. Eat lunch at a weird time. Rearrange your furniture. Use your non-dominant hand to brush your teeth. These tiny disruptions force your brain out of autopilot and remind it that there are always multiple ways to do anything.

Practice the “what if” game: Pick any ordinary object near you right now. Ask yourself: what if this had to serve a completely different purpose? What if it was ten times bigger or ten times smaller? What if it didn’t exist? This kind of hypothetical thinking is exactly what your brain does when it’s thinking creatively. You’re training it to see possibilities instead of fixed reality.

Keep an idea capture system: Your brain has ideas all the time, but most of them disappear before you can do anything with them. Get in the habit of writing down thoughts, observations, and random connections as they occur. Don’t judge them. Don’t organize them yet. Just capture them. A journal works perfectly for this. Later, when you flip back through, you’ll start seeing patterns and connections you missed in the moment.

Making Space for Creative Thinking

While all these exercises will get your gears turning, they’ll also need a place to turn in. Not necessarily a physical space, though that can help, depending on what you’re doing, but a mental space. If every moment of your day is filled with tasks, notifications, and consuming other people’s content, your brain never gets the chance to wander and make its own connections.

In other words, you need boredom. And a good, healthy, amount of silence.  You need time when you’re not being productive or entertained. This is when your brain does its best creative work.

Try building in short periods of unstructured time. A 15-minute walk without your phone, sitting with your coffee before you check your email, staring out the window while your dinner cooks. These empty moments feel wasteful at first, but they’re actually when your creative thinking muscles get their best workout.

When It Feels Like Nothing’s Happening

Now, does this mean you’ll have one award winning novel pitch every single day? I wish. The truth is that there will be days where your imagination will feel sterile, you’ll reach for a thread and pull back nothing, and that’s normal. Just like you don’t get out of the gym ripped, you won’t feel more creative out of nowhere. This is something that you build on.

But keep showing up. Keep interrupting your patterns. Keep asking “what if.” Keep capturing your random thoughts. Over time, you’ll notice yourself approaching problems differently. You’ll come up with ideas more easily. You’ll feel less stuck when facing the unknown.

Ready to support your creative development with tools designed for exactly this purpose? Explore journals, affirmation cards, and resources atThe Creative Mindsetto keep your creative practice going strong.