Get Creative

(Image courtesy of Linus Bohman)

Our apartments are the spaces where we let our thoughts out. After a long day, we can come home and unwind and work on whatever project suits our fancy; but is your apartment well-suited to allow you the creative freedom you need to get the job done?

Using these quick tips from renters.apartments.com will get the creative juices flowing in your home before you know it. Keep reading to see a few of our favorites:

1. Add some surround sound. Research has shown that a moderate amount of ambient noise—just enough to stir up the air, but not so much that you’re distracted—can help your think more creatively.

Try queuing up a productivity playlist with coffee shop sounds on Coffitivity, the sounds of Stonehenge and exotic locales around the world on SoundTransit, or hear what I assume it sounds like inside a lava lamp with Brian Eno’s Music for Airports.

2. Change your colors. When tasked with answering questions requiring creative thinking, people reading the questions against a blue background performed markedly better than people who saw the same questions against a red background. Red, often associated with danger, caused people to be more alert, but blue triggered them to be more creative. Accent wall, anyone?

3. Make “tidy” the status quo. The “need” to clean up a messy apartment is the number one way to talk yourself out of doing creative work at home. Or at least it was, before everything we owned connected to the internet. Rid yourself of the excuse by cleaning for 10 minutes every day so your place stays tidy and you can’t procrasti-clean.

4. Get a French press. Or something fancier, like an espresso machine. Or something less fancy, like a thrift store coffeemaker. It doesn’t matter. What matters is drinking coffee can help you be more creative and productive. Ain’t science the greatest?

5. Track your progress. Jerry Seinfeld is famous for his productivity chain (also Seinfeld). According to Lifehacker, it goes a little something like this: First, get a big wall calendar that shows the full year on it. Next, get a red marker. Then, set yourself a goal—say, to write every day—and every day you do it, you get to X that day off the calendar with your marker. Get a couple weeks of X’s under your belt and your task is no longer “write every day,” but more simply, “don’t break the chain.”

Half the battle is following through every day and the other half is keeping that calendar where you can see it.

6. Use or make your walls. Hippy-dippy though it sounds, there’s a lot to be said for carving out what’s called a “sacred space” in your home. Do it well, and in time your brain will learn “I’m in my closet/office where I do fun creative stuff. It’s time to start thinking like that!” and get warmed up faster.

A sacred space can be anywhere, but it helps if it has a door—or a room divider, or curtain, or anything that helps you find the space you need to let your brain go on a daily fun run.

Any other creativity-boosting ideas to add? Share them in the comments below!