Thursday, January 1, 2009
Varying your routine
How not to get stuck in a thinking rut
New Year is a chance to start afresh, to be who we've always wanted to be. Yet few of us find we can stick to our resolutions, and for good reason.
We spend our lives taking on more and more responsibilities. To deal with this, we have to be efficient. So if something works we do it again and again because we don't have to think about it. This gives us two problems. Firstly we get stuck in a rut, as the same stimulus every day provokes the same thinking every day. Soon we become stale and uninspired. Secondly, we are often more asleep than awake. If, for example, our route to work is always the same, we can travel on autopilot. It's hardly the right state for a creative breakthrough.
But there is a way around this that will give our resolutions more chance of surviving and remove us from a thinking rut. This is by breaking habits so that we awaken and experience different stimuli, thus achieving different thinking.
Last year I challenged the British population to break habits for five days. This involved simple tasks such as swapping iPods with friends, taking different routes to work, sleeping on the other side of the bed, learning a new skill — the list goes on. The results were extreme: 30,000 people took part. Some have never gone back to their old lives. All of them have a new, fresh perspective on their lives. See changeyourstate.com for a shot of creativity!
Chris Baréz-Brown is Global Head of Innovation Capability at ?What If! The Innovation Company
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