Being creative is something I’ve had a weird relationship with my whole life. Other folks have seen me as creative but I always saw others as way more creative than me. Turns out there are many ways of being creative! According to Teddy Roosevelt, comparison is the thief of joy and in my view, it can also be the thief of creativity. If we worry too much about how our being creative stacks up against social norms or other folks, we might never explore our creative side.
To give some examples of creativity that might be outside the box, I asked Gemini to come up with a blend of 50 examples of creativity. Here’s what it had to say: Creativity is a lot broader than holding a paintbrush or writing a novel. At its core, creativity is just problem-solving with a twist—finding a novel way to connect dots that other people see as separate. To prove it, here are 50 ways to be creative, broken down by how you might interact with the world.
Everyday Problem-Solving & Life Hacks
1. Recipe Improvisation: Cooking a meal using only random leftovers in the fridge without looking up a recipe.
2. Space Optimization: Reconfiguring a tiny room or closet layout to maximize storage and flow.
3. Wardrobe Remixing: Styling 10 completely different outfits using only 5 basic pieces of clothing.
4. MacGyvering: Repairing a broken household item using an unintended object (like fixing a zipper with a paperclip).
5. Time Management: Designing a hyper-efficient morning routine that shaves 15 minutes off your schedule.
6. Gift Wrapping: Using alternative materials like old maps, newspapers, or fabric scraps to wrap a present.
7. Packing Strategy: Fitting a week’s worth of gear into a single carry-on bag like a game of 3D Tetris.
Communication & Social Connection
8. Analogy Making: Explaining a highly complex technical topic to a child using a simple metaphor.
9. Custom Slang/Inside Jokes: Inventing a specific shorthand language or nicknames within a friend group.
10. Gift Giving: Curating a highly specific, thoughtful care package based on a friend’s obscure interest.
11. Storytelling: Embellishing a mundane daily event (like a trip to the DMV) into a hilarious, captivating dinner story.
12. Conflict Resolution: Designing a compromise between two fighting parties where both feel like they won.
13. Gathering Design: Hosting a dinner party where guests are intentionally seated next to strangers they’d vibe with.
14. Digital Communication: Curating the perfect, oddly specific meme reaction to a friend’s text instead of typing a reply.
Data, Tech & Logistics
15. Spreadsheet Architecture: Building a beautifully color-coded, automated budget tracker that tracks trends over time.
16. Prompt Engineering: Finding the exact sequence of words to get an AI to output a highly complex, niche result.
17. Coding Clean Shortcuts: Writing a script to automate a boring, repetitive task at work.
18. Digital File Organizing: Creating an intuitive, highly visual folder structure for your digital life.
19. Playlist Curation: Sequencing songs so perfectly that the transition between tracks feels like a movie soundtrack.
20. Travel Planning: Mapping out a multi-city itinerary that balances travel times, hidden gems, and local transit.
21. UI Personalization: Customizing your phone’s home screen with widgets and custom icons for peak aesthetic and utility.
Professional & Business Thinking
22. Meeting Formats: Replacing a standard 30-minute slide presentation with a 10-minute interactive workshop.
23. Branding/Naming: Coming up with a catchy, memorable name for a new project, product, or team.
24. Efficiency Auditing: Finding a “bottleneck” in a workflow and redesigning the process to skip three useless steps.
25. Negotiating: Proposing a non-monetary benefit (like extra PTO or flexible hours) that closes a contract gap.
26. Customer Experience: Changing the specific wording of an automated email so it feels warm and human instead of corporate.
27. Side Hustle Design: Finding a way to monetize a highly specific, unusual skill you have.
Play, Games & Curiosity
28. Rule Tweaking: Modifying the rules of a classic board game (like Monopoly) to make it faster or more cutthroat.
29. Mapless Exploring: Walking around a familiar city without a phone, intentionally turning down streets you’ve never seen.
30. Trivia Writing: Crafting witty, layered trivia questions for a game night with friends.
31. Pun Making: Dropping dad-jokes and puns into casual conversation entirely based on the context of the room.
32. Pet Training: Figuring out how to teach a stubborn pet a unique trick using positive reinforcement.
33. Fantasy Drafts: Analyzing stats and predicting human behavior to build a killer fantasy sports roster.
Physicality, Nature & Movement
34. Route Finding: Finding a secret, scenic pedestrian shortcut through your neighborhood.
35. Plant Propagation: Experimenting with lighting, soil, and clipping techniques to revive a dying houseplant.
36. Ergonomic Adjustments: Modifying your desk setup with random household objects to perfectly fix your posture.
37. Workout Remixing: Combining elements of yoga, weightlifting, and cardio into a unique, customized movement routine.
38. Foraging/Gleaning: Identifying edible weeds, berries, or unique flowers growing in urban environments.
Intellectual & Introspective
39. Thought Experiments: Playing out “What if?” historical scenarios in your head just to see where they lead.
40. Perspective Shifting: Intentionally arguing for a viewpoint you disagree with in a debate to understand the logic.
41. Dream Interpretation: Finding patterns or symbols in your strange dreams and connecting them to your real-life stress.
42. Curation: Gathering a massive list of quotes, articles, or ideas on a single hyper-specific theme.
Artistic-Adjacent
43. Soundscaping: Curating white noise, rain sounds, and lo-fi beats to create a specific “focus bubble” for work.
44. Interior Lighting: Layering lamps, candles, and LEDs to completely change the mood of a room without changing furniture.
45. Photo Framing: Taking a gorgeous photo of a mundane object just by finding a bizarre, extreme angle.
46. Journaling Formats: Designing a custom daily logging system that tracks mood via colors rather than words.
47. Flavor Pairing: Adding an unexpected ingredient (like a pinch of cayenne pepper to hot chocolate) to elevate a taste.
48. Book Curating: Organizing a bookshelf by theme, emotional vibe, or a secret narrative rather than by author.
49. Upcycling: Turning an old wine bottle into a candle holder or an old t-shirt into a cleaning rag.
50. Creative Daydreaming: Letting your mind wander during a walk without any music, podcasts, or distractions, just to see what random thought your brain cooks up.
That last one is something I try to engage with on a regular basis. I’ll drive for hours with no music, podcast or conversation happening and see what my brain comes up with. Sometimes it’s awesome. Sometimes I shake my head. It could go either way each time.
Why are we exploring creativity? Because during our last NimbleND Connect, it came up as a topic to be explored by our participants. We try to capture all the topics that folks share each month and then figure out which ones we have the brains to explore. As someone who has been in musicals and choir (not to mention breaking out in random song without being asked), played in a flute trio, dabbled in painting, been a photography for over 30 years, had a cake decorating business and loves problem solving, I loved the idea of exploring what creativity means to the group.
Joni us on June 29th from 6-8pm as we explore creativity and learn more about what everybody in the group does for their creative fix! We want to hear about interests, passions and particularities that mean creativity to you!