69 Times People Solved Annoying Problems With Surprisingly Genius Ideas (New Pics)

Creativity offers huge benefits to your quality of life. The British Psychological Society (BPS) explains that when you engage in creative activities, it can lead to greater innovation, increase mental clarity, and improve depression and dementia symptoms.

If your goal is to be more creative in life, then the very first step you should take is to consciously push yourself to be, well, more creative.

BPS points out that, for example, being instructed to be more creative can actually boost your creativity. So, a conscious effort on your part is helpful in this regard.

Additionally, you can learn to be more creative by working with and around creative people. This is true even in workplace settings, where creative managers inspire their employees to produce more creative outcomes. The stronger the relationship between the team members, the better the results.

In the meantime, BPS notes that your ability to reappraise emotional events, re-evaluating and reinterpreting what has happened to you in a more positive way, can help you feel more confident and calm and increase your creativity. Essentially, by reframing what you’ve experienced, you’re being creative.

In general, you should avoid suppressing your emotions and strive to be more open-minded and open to the potential benefit of new experiences.

Furthermore, if you’re a self-proclaimed perfectionist, you might want to consider striving for excellence instead. Perfectionism negatively impacts your mental health, leads to burnout, and decreases your creativity, BPS states.

On the flip side, when you strive for excellence over perfection, you tend to come up with more original ideas and are more open to new experiences.

“Although looking for perfection can be tempting when engaging in creative activities, looking instead for excellence could bring us closer to our goals – and protect us from anxiety and burnout too,” BPS writes.

Complex problems don’t necessarily require complex solutions. You can sometimes accomplish the task in a simple, straightforward manner. Well, so long as you’re willing to try out a few different approaches and view failure as an opportunity to grow, not a reason to give up.

Once you get the result you wanted, the solution sounds super obvious! Everyone might think that they could have come up with the same idea. But coming up with a creative fix to an issue is harder than it seems if you’re constrained by lots of assumptions about what may or may not work and how you’ll be judged by your peers.

Not only that, but having a fabulous idea doesn’t mean squat if you don’t implement it. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Good, even average, ideas that are tested out in reality are much rarer!

The unvarnished reality is that the vast majority of people don’t enjoy failing at things. It’s natural.

You don’t want to embarrass yourself in front of others or be judged. And you don’t want to experience the dissonance between how skilled and smart you think you are and what you’re actually like.

However, if you’re unwilling to fail or handle a bit of social discomfort, you’ll be less likely to experiment with different approaches or voice your opinion if it goes against the grain.

According to Josh Kaufman, the author of ‘The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything... Fast!’, most people are “deeply disturbed at the prospect of being horrible at something, even temporarily.” This applies to many things, including learning new skills.

“When you try something new, you’re usually very bad, and you know it. The easiest way to eliminate that feeling of angst is to quit practicing and go do something else, so that’s what most of us do,” Kaufman told Forbes.

“The early hours of trying something new are always challenging, but a little persistence can result in huge increases in skill. The human brain is optimized to pick up new skills extremely quickly. If you persist and practice in an intelligent way, you’ll always experience dramatic improvements in a very short period of time,” Kaufman explained.

According to him, it’s vital to push through the early frustration of learning something new. You can do this in a few ways.

For instance, when learning a new skill, you should precommit to putting in at least 20 hours of deliberate practice so you don’t quit at the first sign of difficulty.

Moreover, you should learn just enough of the skill to start putting it into practice. It also helps if you break down your efforts into smaller, bite-sized chunks. And it’s never a mistake to enjoy the actual process of learning and to have a bit of fun.

This way, hopefully, you’ll become “reasonably competent” in the new skill. You’ll then get use out of it and perform “well enough for your own purposes,” even if you’re not a top-tier global grandmaster in it.

Kaufman stressed to Forbes that you should be honest with yourself about the skills and topics that you’re personally the most interested in right now. In other words, stop thinking about what you ‘should’ be doing and focus on what you’re inclined to do.

“When you’re naturally interested in a particular skill, you’ll learn extremely quickly, so follow your interests where they lead, and avoid forcing yourself to grind through topics you’re not really interested in exploring.”

That’s not to say that you should ignore every skill that you’re not particularly passionate about. Some (boring) skills are useful in life. Others help you reach your goals and get ahead at work. So, in these cases, focus on getting excited about the results. That should, with a bit of luck, get you at least a bit excited about the topic or learning process, too.

Which of these ingenious solutions to problems impressed you the most and why? Did we feature any examples of creative ideas that you actually came up with independently, too?

What are some of the most out-of-the-box and unconventional things you’ve personally done to solve complicated issues? We’d love to hear from you! After you’ve upvoted your favorite pics, share your thoughts in the comments at the bottom of this list.