Easter break is perfect time to hatch a clutch of fresh ideas

Travel, spend time with the kids — and write down your brilliant schemes

THE Easter holidays bring joy to many who can take a break from the ups and downs of normal workdays. South African businesses are known to experience a near shutdown during the Easter and December holidays as employees rest and spend time with family and friends.

What many of us fail to realise is that the holidays are when our creative abilities are at their peak. Our levels of creativity spike because our minds finally get a break from the tension of day-to-day tasks, deadlines, traffic and other factors.

We can use these spikes in creativity to generate the entrepreneurial ideas and innovative thinking needed to establish new enterprises or revive stagnant ones.

One of the recommended ways to make the most of our creative spikes is to carry an idea journal in which we can write down all the creative ideas that come to mind during this period. The goal is not to be critical or evaluative, but to jot them all down without any filter or judgment. The ideas are best filtered at a later stage, once the holiday period is over and creativity has been reduced. The best-case scenario is to have a repository of creative, unfiltered ideas by the end the holiday.

A number of noteworthy individuals attribute their success to their ability to use idea journals effectively. Examples include Nobel laureate physicist Marie Curie, author Mark Twain and artists such as Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci.

Beyond the idea journal, there are other ways to encourage the mind to optimise its creativity during the holidays. Travelling to an environment unfamiliar to your own is one. Another is making an effort to experience the world from a completely different perspective.

When surgeons discovered how to remove cataracts, they started performing surgery on people of all ages who had been blinded by cataracts since birth. In his book Space and Sight, Marius von Senden explains how, immediately after the surgery, all that the patients could identify were different kinds of brightness, shadows and dazzling patches of colour — not the everyday objects a fully-sighted human would register.

A fully-sighted person similarly has an opportunity to try to see the world through a lens of brightness, shadows and colour patches. Doing so can also ignite our levels of creativity, which tend to wane as we grow older.

Children see the world in a similar way. They stand out in their facility to tap into their creative ability without much effort.

They are the best role models for us in this regard because, unlike us, their minds are still open to being in a creative state, without much inhibition. Similar to the cataract patients after surgery, they are more likely to be aware of the vast array of colours and what we normally ignore in the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life.

Fortunately, many of us tend to spend more time participating in creative activities with children over

DEAR DIARY: Keeping an idea journal while on holiday is a good way to optimise your creativity the holidays, offering ample opportunity to reignite our own creativity, while taking note of the ideas that emerge.

Children find it easier to tap into their right-brain thinking, which uses imagination, intuition and visualisation. Adults grow up to live lives in which they rely more on their left brain, which uses logic, analysis and facts. This limits creative thinking.

People wonder why colouring-in books are becoming popular with adults. Worldwide, crayon makers are struggling to meet growing demand because there is now a client base that previously did not exist. One of the simplest explanations for this is that an activity such as colouring has, sadly, become one of the few ways that the adult brain gets an opportunity to exercise creativity in the modern world.

Many are surprised that their most innovative ideas tend to hatch during the most mindless activities — such as showering and driving, and before or after a good night’s sleep. This is because these are the moments when our minds are free to engage with our creative side, with little interruption.

As our right brains go into overdrive over the holidays while our left brains get some much-needed rest, let’s remember to make a note of the creative ideas that arise. They might be just what we need to generate the kinds of ideas that will boost the level of entrepreneurial innovation within the organisations we build.

Adults rely more on their left brain, which uses logic, analysis and facts. This limits creative thinking

Sikhakhane is an international speaker, writer and retailer, with an honours degree in business science from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from Stanford University. She also advises and funds small businesses