Good news! Creativity is nothing more than a TOOL, and with practice, you can hone your skills.

Here’s an exercise for you.

All you need is about 10 minutes and a timer (such as a smart phone).

Doodle #1For this exercise, you will look at a scribble of lines for about 2 minutes and try to make something out of it. Just like what people do when they are gazing at the clouds. You’ll try to see if it could be made into a face, a building, and animal, a still life, a landscape, whatever!

You can do it as a mental exercise without actually drawing out designs, or you can print the doodle exercise and actually draw your creations.

Doodle #2There are four doodles in all. Give each one a shot. Set your timer for
at least 2 minutes for each one. Why? Because when you look at a doodle, if an idea doesn’t come to you right away, you’ll feel like 10 seconds is an eternity. But your brain needs time.

 

Doodle #3During the 2 minutes, run possibilities through your mind, ask yourself what the general shapes and forms remind you of. Do you see a face, a figure, an animal? How about a plate of spaghetti?   Is the scribble of lines just a small part of something bigger, such as the top of a flower? The possibilities are endless!

 

That 2-minute timer is important. We all have a tendency to look at a problem (in this case, the doodle) and if a solution is not immediately apparent, we want to give up. But our creative centers in our brains don’t always work that quickly!

Doodle #4Sometimes the brain needs a few minutes. Think about it what is happening with your neurons. In response to a conundrum, the brain is instantly making thousands of connections, silently working out a variety of scenarios, searching the archives for related information, running through trial and error and assimilating a variety of possibilities.

This is happening at lightning speed as it is! If the results are not immediate, we need to GIVE IT TIME. Sometimes we are forced to allow time—such as when we get an interruption (phone rings). And sometimes we gladly create our own interruption (coffee break!).   That can allow for percolation of ideas.

So try this exercise! You can email me your images or post a verbal description of what you would turn the doodle into. I hope everyone will at least try one of them! And if you do, maybe this exercise will buy your brain some creative time for solving a real-life problem you are facing at the moment.

Let me know what you think. Let me know what your doodles become!!

 

Here are a few I’ve done in the past:

Remember, after you try it, let me know!

Update: Here is the first response of doodles done today.  Thank you Stephanie F., you are the best! Stephanie F doodles (Only click if you already did the exercise–otherwise you’ll only be able to see what she saw, and you’ll rob your brain of this opportunity.)