- Whoa, too close.
You ever heard the saying creativity is a muscle?
Sounds pretty lame.
Seems like it's the one thing that
all these motivational speakers keep repeating.
Creativity is a muscle,
it must be exercised.
It's a muscle.
And the problem I've always had with that,
how do you exercise it?
What's a good way of exercising
your creativity and treating it like a muscle?
Welcome back today.
I'm gonna talk about a bunch of tips
and a bunch of tricks that I use
as not only a content creator on YouTube
to be creative but also as a magician
to be creative within creating illusions
and I'm going to give you some of those
tips and tricks today and hopefully
you can use that towards your own project.
So let's go!
So one of the first things I do is I question things.
Questioning things is a really, really good way
of finding out certain specific things about an item.
So it may seem a little weird,
but if I'm stuck and I want to create something
using an object I will write down 20 questions
about this object.
So first the questions are going to be something like
why is this black, why does it smell,
why is is cylindrical, why is it light
and so on and so forth.
Now this seems redundant, by the time you get
to question number ten, 12, 15,
you start running out of ways to ask questions about a pen.
There's nothing left to ask
so you start looking at the minute and minuscule details
of this object such as why are there three different fonts,
why is there a small, little indentation here
and as these questions get more and more specific
the creative part of your mind starts having
to come up with creative questions.
This exercise is not meant for you to find out
the answers to these questions, it's just meant
to make you ask questions you wouldn't normally
ask about something and putting you in a mind state
of being more creative.
The next important tip to exercising
your creativity is experiment.
- It's alive!
- Probably my favorite of all the tips.
Basically what that means is coming up
with creative exercises that you can do
in order to make a project go further
and sort of advance it.
Put yourself in a position that you have to be creative.
One of the best ways to stay creative
in experimentation is write down your ideas.
So have a notebook with you at all times.
Tend to stay away from my phone when I'm taking notes
just because you have sort of like a tactile
memory thing when you're writing something down.
No matter how silly, no matter how crazy they are
just write them down and keep that in a notebook.
You might get back to them later.
White board experimentation is also
a great way to get creative.
So take a white board and jot down ideas
or draw something or just brainstorm.
Find a word and see how you can dissect it
into different parts, just be creative, be silly
and you might end up in a random position.
And putting yourself in a random position
when being creative is super important, here's why.
It's one of those exercises that you can't do on your own.
Your brain can't physically generate randomness
because everything that your brain is thinking
sort of ties into whatever goes on in your subconscious.
So how do you create a random event?
This is one of my favorite hacks to do
when creating either a magic trick or a YouTube video
or anything at all where I need to be creative.
I take a book and no matter what the book is,
could be a dictionary, a thesaurus, anything at all
and right now for you guys I'm going to create
the plot to a magic effect using a book.
Here we go, I have no idea
where this is going to take me by the way.
So we're going to open up this book to a random page
and I'm going to point to a word.
I have no idea what word I'm pointing to,
let's have a look, however.
Okay not the best word, what's the next word down,
this may be fraternal intimacy.
Okay seems to be the word.
(laughing)
Okay, how am I going to create an effect
with fraternal intimacy.
What does that make me think of?
Fraternal intimacy, maybe that's an effect
where two brothers share a bond,
kind of like Siamese twins and whatever happens
to one of them happens to the other.
Or perhaps the plot is something along the lines of
using two kings in a deck of cards,
which are actually brothers,
but they get lost and due to their fraternal intimacy
they end up finding each other.
Now mind you these aren't the best plots in the world,
but as you can see we've created some random events
which helps us be creative
in a way we wouldn't have been otherwise.
Maybe another example is better here,
let's try to find another one here.
Uh, time dissipates, time dissipates.
(coughing)
That's an interesting one.
Again if you're stumped you can take the word time
and ask 20 questions about time
and that'll start creating really, really
interesting questions I'm sure by question number ten.
What is time, where is time, how much does time weigh,
what does time look like,
if I had no time what would I feel,
if I had more time, if I had all the time,
what if I had no time, can I borrow someone's time,
can I give them their time back,
can I take their time away.
You see where I'm going with this.
Association is the next tip.
So take an object or a thing or a place
or a person or whatever it may be
and think of what does that thing, person or place
or anything remind you of.
Here, this, this is a little cement object.
Not exactly sure what it's for,
but what does it remind me of?
Other than something phallic maybe it reminds me
of an ice cream cone.
It also kind of looks like one of those space shuttles
they launch into orbit and it comes back down to earth.
Another way of associating things
is taking an object and finding other uses for that object.
Sometimes we can take a coin or a card or a ring
and find a different use for it.
Playing card can also be used
to maybe clean out my fingernails.
Kind of disgusting.
You can make a paper airplane with this and throw it.
You can probably use it to cut something open.
You can use it to start a fire.
I'm just spit balling here.
There are many things that this can do.
Another good exercise is white boarding with the object.
So let's say we have a playing card
and let's try to find things that are associated
with playing cards and write those things down
on a white board.
Box, maybe a card clip, poker night,
poker night cigars, what about poker chips,
bookmark and when folded a certain way
this can actually look like a pack of matches.
Now there is an effect out there which already has that.
A person saw something in a playing card
which reminded him of something else
and then came up with that effect which is great.
I think that was Dan White and Dan Hauss,
lit, correct me if I'm wrong.
If you're doing cardistry
maybe you will look at this object
and try to replicate this object using your playing cards.
Maybe that'll put you in such a weird position
that you've never been in before
and it'll get your creativity
and your creative juices flowing, try it out.
Another really good tip for being creative is networking.
Speaking to like minded individuals
or even individuals from different fields than yours
and bouncing ideas off them.
As a magician a lot of the best ideas
that I come up with for performance routines
or plots usually come from things
that are based outside of magic.
So for instance asking a non-magician friend of mine
if I had a pack of matches what would be amazing.
You know and you're going to get
some really crazy responses that you didn't expect.
Oooh just got bright here.
So as another exercise I'm going to network right now
and show you what that looks like.
I'm going to call one of my friends
and the words that we had in the book
was fraternal intimacy and dissipating time,
right time dissipating.
Let's call up my buddy Xavier Spade
and see what he has to say.
FaceTime Xavier Spade.
He has no idea I'm calling him by the way.
He has no idea I'm doing this video.
Yo, I'm filming a video right now
about sort of creative hacks.
One of them was opening a book,
pointing to a random word and then coming up
with something using that word or words
and another one was networking
so this what I'm doing right now with you,
and that's why the camera's on you right now.
The word, did I wake you up?
- Always.
(laughing)
- [Chris] So one of the words or the words
that I found in the book we're trying to get creative with
is dissipating time, time dissipating.
So what's the first thing that comes to mind for you
in regards to like maybe a magic effect?
- Oh man so many things.
I love things like that.
I think the first thing that comes to mind
is an effect that I've wanted to do for years
that I can't and it's pouring a glass,
it's kind of similar to airborne.
Pour a glass and the glass floats,
but everything stops, the water included in midair.
You know it's kind of like freezing time
or you know slowing things down to a point
where it kind of dissipates you know.
- [Chris] Also another one was fraternal intimacy.
- Oh well that kind of.
(laughing)
- [Chris] Kind of like what's going on right now.
- Yeah.
- [Chris] So what would you see
if you had an effect and the name was fraternal intimacy,
what would that effect entail, what would be going on?
- I think it would be something similar to like--
- [Chris] Like a PK touches?
- No not even.
- [Chris] See that's where I was going with it.
That's interesting.
- I was thinking more like a, what's that trick
where the two cards get signed and they end up as one?
- [Chris] Oh yeah like an anniversary waltz.
- Yeah, exactly.
- [Chris] Oh interesting, both two dudes.
- You assuming my gender?
(laughing)
- [Chris] All right thanks man.
- All right brother. - All right peace.
Final tip, whoo that's bright.
And the final tip is do nothing.
It sounds counter intuitive when trying to be creative
and proactive, but doing nothing is actually a great way
to exercise the brain's boredom
and it's just as important as exercising the brain actively.
Just think about it when you're in bed at night
like for me some of the best ideas
that I get during my day are right before I fall asleep.
Right in that small sort of 15 minute gap
where my brain's sort of working,
but the rest of my body's asleep
and sort of the rest of the mind is asleep
and I'm only focusing on that one navigable thought.
Obviously I have a notebook beside my bed
where I write these thoughts down,
but doing nothing allows your brain to relax
and allows it to go places that you may not go
because you're too distracted
if you're doing something else.
Another good thing to do is just take a walk.
Geez that's bright.
Taking a walk obviously has a ton of advantages,
not only for your health but also for your mind,
for your blood, it gets things going.
You're seeing different things,
you're looking at different parts of the world
and you're seeing other people.
You know start making little brain exercises
while you're walking around
or you can just sit somewhere and people watch.
So doing nothing is probably one
of the easiest things to do,
but also one of the more valuable tips on being creative.
And that about wraps up a few tips on how to be creative.
Lastly I want to talk about one last thing
and this is not a paid endorsement in any way.
A magician and creator by the name Rory Adams,
super smart kid, worked for Dynamo as a consultant
at a super young age.
You know came up with a whole bunch of really cool magic.
Well he put out a book and it's a great read man.
It's called Only Ideas, Only Ideas,
your how to guide to creating magic.
100 plus ideas to get you started by Rory Adams.
So basically in this book Rory not only gives you
like 100 throw away ideas that are really, really cool.
No methods, just ideas which I love
cause that is probably the hardest thing to find.
But these plots and these ideas are literally gold
so if you're ever stuck or stumped
I'll leave the link below to this.
Again this is not a paid promotion
this is just something I think you guys
would find really valuable.
It also tells you how to start creating a magic trick.
And coming from a successful creator
and consultant himself, easy to read.
Here let me give you one example out of the book.
Audio predict, you can order blank recordable greeting cards
if you fancy going beyond a written prediction
as soon as you open the card your voice
will begin to speak from within
and that's just one of 100.
So many amazing ideas in here.
Highly recommend picking this up.
Again I'll leave the link below.
All right guys hope you enjoyed this video
and hope you learned something new today.
Hope you apply some of these skills
and some of these techniques that I do.
I don't always use all of these all the time,
but I definitely sample bits and parts here and there
when I need to be creative whether it's
for a YouTube video or a magic effect.
I want to thank you guys so much for the support
on the last video, well most of you anyways.
There was some backlash obviously as I would expect,
but the way I see it there's more to teaching than methods
and there's more to learning than just finding out
how something works.
And if you're willing to stick around
I'm willing to teach you some more things
and hopefully you do so subscribe if you're new here.
Like this video and we'll see you on the next video.
Peace, bye.
(chill music)