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How To Elevate Your Creativity And Sharpen Your Focus In 60 Seconds

And improve your problem-solving skills too

4 min readMay 13, 2019

It’s no gimmick, and I’ll prove it to you. A simple change to your thinking will enhance your focus, creativity and problem-solving skills. Let’s begin with a few random questions.

What’s your favorite television episode of all time?
What about your favorite song?
Can you share a favorite memory?

Most people need a few seconds or even a minute to formulate an answer. The vast scope of the questions scatters your attention. It’s like picking out an entrée from a menu of sixty-five choices. The extensive selection paralyzes you.

But we could easily remedy the scope challenge from those earlier questions. Let’s tweak them to narrow the boundaries.

What’s your favorite episode from the show Seinfeld?
What’s your favorite song on Spotify right now?
Can you share a happy childhood memory involving your mother?

In each of those three questions, I added at least one constraint (highlighted) to focus your mind and make it easier to search for an answer. It took me less than sixty seconds to add those random constraints. By imposing boundaries on each question, I was able to narrow the…

Thank you for this article! I teach elementary school and I was just speaking to the students about the need to narrow their choices — the creativity in constraints. Now I have better language to hone the point, for myself and in my work. Great read! Jared

Good point! As an architect for the last 50 years, I have found that projects with more constraints are easier resolve, and if it isn’t already there I often add “Spending as little as possible…” to the brief.