12 Ways to Get Off Your Ass and Out of Your Comfort Zone

by Brett Miller


Want to be more creative? Take a step back and look at your daily routine.

If you are like most people you get up about the same time everyday, eat similar things for breakfast each day, take a familiar route to work, have a list of tasks to get done before lunch, eat lunch, get some more work done, head home the way you always do, have some dinner and do your normal evening activities before turning in for the night. Then you get up and do it all again. We are all creatures of habit. There is comfort in this predictability. This is all well and good if you are content with your level of thinking and creativity moving along at the same predictable pace.

If you want to elevate your creative thinking, you need to get off your ass and break out of that comfort zone. To get a new perspective on things you can’t just sit in your “ivory tower” and expect it to come to you in a flash of genius. You need to deliberately get out there and experience new things and meet new people.
Here are 12 routine-breaking things that will give you a new perspective and open your mind to new thinking (kind of a 12-Step Program for unleashing creativity):

1. Take a new form of transportation to work next week.

2. Get out of your normal work environment at least 4 hours each week.

3. Strike up a conversation with a complete stranger.

4. Take a “Radical Sabbatical” with your team and experience something you all have never done together before and share perspectives with each other afterward. This could be an hour, a day or a week together.

5. Set up a monthly lunch with someone outside your department or company and get his or her perspective on a problem you are trying to solve.

6. Ask your family (especially your kids if you have them) to help you solve a problem.

7. Read a magazine, book or blog that you would not normally read.

8. Watch television programs that you would not normally watch.

9. Listen to radio stations or music you would not normally listen to.

10. Take a walk in a park, go to a museum, a zoo or a movie during office hours. (Gasp!)

11. Go shopping (to an actual store, not on the Internet) for something you don’t need or even want. Talk to the salesperson and ask a lot of questions.

12. Eat only things you have never tried before for a week.

So, what are you waiting for? Get up, get out there and become more creative! What else would you add to the list?