072: Uncover Your Inner Genius and Unlock Your Creativity (On Demand)

Maybe you're bored in your internet business right now because there's no real risk, challenge, or excitement in your business? This especially happens if you fall into the trap of "lying" because nothing is real. Let's get you creative so you can think your way out of your current predicament (even if that problem is boredom)...

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Creativity doesn't only mean "get a bunch of ideas." Notice how the word "create" is in it? Creativity = to create. Make something new and valuable. Idea or invention.

• Why slow down? If you're on a roll, keep going, so during slow times when you're tired, your past self (on a timer) is like an extra employee you don't have to pay.
• Four minute mile: 100 article days, book in an afternoon, class in an afternoon, airport product. $2k product twice a week. Hack a 100k income, how many products to sell to achieve that goal. $1000 per hour income (webinars). 1 hour per week full time income (Amazon). 1 hour per day income (Fiverr). Think your way out of a situation.
• Albert Einstein made creative breakthroughs by asking interesting questions, such as: what would it be like to ride a wave of light?

Distill the noise down: do you take 20 pages of notes at a seminar/webinar or 5 bullet points / key takeaways?

Separate the forest from the trees! Getting so bogged down by the details you don't see the big picture, end goal, reason why, do's and dont's. Presentation on 187 types of content? A mile wide and an inch deep. Solve some problems instead. Good for pitching/presenting, bad for a product.

Our Marketer of the week is Ken Evoy from "Make Your Price Sell." He was the first marketer I've seen with a dynamic price. For example, you sell a product where the price increases by 1 penny every minute.

Let's break the stages of you unlocking your creativity and solving any problem into four steps: WHY (reframe), WHAT (mindmap), HOW (insight), and WHAT-IF (creative flow):

Step A: WHY Reframe (change the interpretation)

Hit the problem from multiple angles with probing questions. Questions must be answered! Here's what you need to ask from yourself:

A1: What's the big problem? What happens without this solution? (common enemy)
A2: What am I solving? (specific goal)
A3: What's the current way to solve it?
A4: Why is my solution better?

• Who am I solving it for?
• Why does this even matter?
• What can I learn from this?
• What's funny about this?
• How do I start this?
• What do I do after this?

During this stage, our goal is childlike curiosity (kids ask lots of questions but adults are set in their ways). We want to limit perfectionism and take up exercise such as free-writing. Apply random words to your situation. Think of as many "C" words as possible, for instance. Criticizing in this stage is only good if you ask: how could I have done better? You need to think up good possibilities and ideas to shoot down later.

Step B: WHAT Mindmap (branch out)

Get the structure, outline, manipulation, trimming, and the sequence.

B1: Brain dump sub-problems.
B2: Get it dialed in: Diverge (go big, seek out) vs. Converge (decide, connect, guidelines, reduce). Combine, split, add, remove, edit
B3: Professor Elliot Eisner: boundary pushing (rules are constraining, let's bend them), inventing (useful combinations), boundary breaking (least common: opposite thinking, gap filling, the rules themselves are the problem), aesthetic organizing (order from chaos: most common)

1. Boundary pushing: can we shave one second off this plugin? Remove one step from the process
2. Boundary breaking: we host this software for them.
3. Aesthetic organizing: for example, in every 10-episode chunk of my podcast, I'll plan on having one episode about WordPress, a case study episode, a product pitch, mindset episode, marketing, writing, and so on.
4. Inventing: A or B eye doctor test: does it work better as "A" or work better as "B"?

Step C: HOW Insight (Professor Arne Dietrich Creativity Matrix)

This is the step where you think of the solution, but you don't implement yet. The reason why you might feel you've "hit a wall" is because you're only using one type of creativity. There are four:

Source: http://kauaidesign.com/2012/10/four-kinds-of-creative

C1: deliberate vs. spontaneous, cognitive vs. emotional.

• Deliberate cognitive: Thomas Edison (I haven't failed, I've just found 10,000 ways it won't work). Build knowledge, pay attention, make connections
• Deliberate emotional: ah-ha moment. Flash of insight, emotions/feelings. Bad chain of events leads to a revelation.
• Spontaneous cognitive: Isaac Newton and the Apple. Eureka, dopamine, out of the box unconscious thinking.
• Spontaneous emotional: Einstein. Epiphanies from artists and musicians. Least controlled.

C2: How to get to these quadrants: Knowledge + time = DC, Quiet time = DE, Escape (incubation) = SC, Random = SE

C3: You need all four.

1. Einstein's combinatory play: stop working on the problem. Ideas come to you when you're in the shower.
2. Don't let "that" person's negativity get inside your head.
3. Magic wand thinking: if there were no limitations, what would I come up with?
4. Paint yourself into a corner to get out of your comfort zone. Take a risk.
5. State change: exercise, take a break, Aaron Sorkin shower, Winston Churchill nap

Step D: NOW Creative Flow (it all falls into place)

Implement the solution!

D1: Anthony Robbins would say you're looking for a Type 1 experience that: feels good, is good for you, helps others and helps the greater good
D2: Repetition is the mother of skill: Unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, unconscious competence.

1. Figure out your routine: write every day, certain hours of the day. What motivates and demotivates you.
2. Rush to get things done during alone time.
3. Blue backgrounds = creativity, red backgrounds = attention to detail
4. Brain tricks. Set a time limit. Get back to a state when you were excited, crazy, unstoppable

What's great about this system we've laid out is that there's a huge "well" of techniques and ideas you can draw from anytime you're stuck thinking of a save to "save" a dead launch, increase your income, revive a dead email list, or even flesh out the chapters of your next book.

Speaking of your next book and eliminating your writer's block, we highly recommend the Make a Product course to get your next book finished and published on Amazon within the next few days.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:32 — 49.0MB) | Embed

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Filed in: Archive 1: 2012-2016 • Mindset • Podcast