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To get your brain on track to come up with an idea, you need to surround it with a lot of relevant information. What this means will depend upon what type of idea you are trying to come up with.  If you are trying to come up with a theory, do a lot of relevant research. You should do studies that problematize your existing ideas. If you have gotten yourself to the point where you have so much information that you think that you know less about the subject than you did before, your brain will struggle to reconcile the facts with your theories even when you feel that you have turned it off.  If you are working on fiction, read a lot of other authors who are trying to do similar things. Read books that familiarize you with the setting of the place you are writing about. Read literary theory to give you some perspective on how to write. Read philosophy to get ideas you might want to tackle in your fiction.  If you are an artist, spend some time reviewing the works of other artists in similar fields. Interacting with people outside of your normal social group will expose you to new ideas and perspectives. This is pivotal to developing “psychological distance,” which is one of the most important prerequisites to creativity. Psychological distance is when you begin to look at things from a perspective other than that which you are accustomed to. Once you begin putting yourself in the shoes of a different person, it is easier to approach your problems in a way you haven’t thought of before. Traveling is also a good way to create “psychological distance.” Exposing yourself to new sights and sounds will cause you to think of things from a new perspective. Sometimes you can save yourself a plane ticket and use your imagination to turn the familiar into the unfamiliar.  Even imagining yourself in a new place can make you approach things from a new, more creative perspective. Similarly, people have been shown to be more creative when they imagine the problem they are dealing with to be happening in the distant future. Alternatively, practice mindfulness to begin looking at your own world in a new way. Focus on something specific in your environment and try to experience it in its entirety. Notice things that would pass you by in your ever day life.  One useful example of mindfulness is to pay close attention to crowded social environment. Go on a walk in an urban area or wait around in a crowded park. Look at how people interact with one another. Pay attention to their idiosyncrasies and imagine what is happening in their head. This will put you in another person’s shoes. Allow your ideas to flow freely. You can focus on the topic that you are working on, but allow yourself to venture elsewhere if that is necessary to keep things flowing. Doing journal entries every day can be a good way to get you started writing. Even if the focus is on personal matters, you might wander into your creative work from a new perspective. When no ideas are forthcoming, it can be easy to get discouraged and procrastinate. However, you typically won’t experience an epiphany until you’ve really struggled to work through your problems. Make self-imposed deadlines and force yourself to live up to them. If what you produce by the deadline isn’t spectacular, at least you know what hasn’t worked and how to improve in the future. The demands of a rigorous, structured brainstorming session can force you to create more than you would otherwise. Set a time limit and goals that you aren't sure that you can meet. If you fail, you will still produce more than you would have if you hadn't challenged yourself.  For example, give yourself 30 minutes to come up with 30 ideas. Just write as quickly as possible. Give yourself 30 minutes to write two pages of material. Alternatively, give yourself an hour to sketch out a drawing. It's unlikely that you'll come out with a great final product, but this sort of challenge can force you to come up with new ideas. The better part of the creative process will always be excluding the things that don’t matter. Knowing what doesn’t matter at the beginning can be difficult, but you should start writing down some ideas, even if they don’t seem well founded at first. Begin structuring the important information in your head and weed out what doesn’t seem to fit.
Immerse yourself in the subject. Get to know new and different people. Go someplace new. Get a pen and write. Keep a schedule. Perform structured brainstorming sessions. Learn what to forget.