A creativity whack for your head…and your iPhone!

Creative Whack Pack promo art Roger von Oech is responsible for whacking me upside the head more times than I can count. 

20+ years ago, he created a fantastic creativity tool called A Creative Whack Pack.  It's an illustrated deck of 64 creative thinking strategies that will whack you out of habitual thought patterns and enable you to look at your life and actions in a fresh way.

It's an awesome way to think different, to see something fresh and to get yourself unstuck.

Well, it's 2009 and so of course Roger has created an iPhone/iTouch app for thiscreativity powerhouse.  And…he's given me 5 promo codes, so you can download it for free!

Here's how you can win.  Leave a comment below and tell us one way you get your creative juices flowing.

I'll do the drawing on Friday Saturday morning so get those comments coming!

Also, check out what David Armano had to say about the app here and here.

UPDATE:  First, be sure you read through the comments — lots of very good ideas on how to get those creative juices flowing.

Second…Congrats to the five winners of the promo codes:  Tara, Michael, Patrick, Kare and Jason.  I've e-mailed the codes directly to you!

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17 comments on “A creativity whack for your head…and your iPhone!

  1. Drew-

    I remember getting “whacked” when Roger’s book first came out. Then I grabbed the deck of cards. Great stuff, indeed!

    One way I get the creative juices flowing is through journaling.

    Often called the “Morning Pages” developed by Julia Cameron,
    private writing can really snap the brain out of “dullsville” into creative territory rather quickly.

    Set the timer for 15 minutes and write non-stop. You just might be surprised what you come up with!

    Looking forward to using Roger’s apps! Thanks for the give-away.

  2. Michael says:

    One method I use often is ask a different question. Some of my standard ones are:
    “How would Einstein approach this?”
    “What am I not noticing?”
    “What a 5 different way I can get the same result?”
    “What’s the relationship between this thing and that (some random) other thing?”

  3. Anil Prabhu says:

    I get my creative juices flowing by entering a crowded place and getting “lost”within the crowd of people. I just observe people and many a time their interactions with each other just stimulate my creativity.

  4. One way I get my creative juices flowing is to force myself on an extremely short deadline using what is known as the Pomodoro Technique.

  5. Gina Batali-Brooks says:

    I have four different techniques I use for getting my creative juices flowing:

    1. Go for a run. There’s something about the physical activity and the outdoors that helps the ideas flow.
    2. Go to a coffee shop. Similar to the comment above, crowded places where there is a lot going on that doesn’t pertain to me allows me to think more clearly.
    3. Pull out my Keys To Innovative Thinking cards. I took a class several years ago and have benefited from it greatly over the years. They have things like Ego Alter and Force-Field Analysis which have you imagining different settings or approaches to problems. The sillier the better for me.
    4. Take a shower. This always reminds me of HP’s What If campaign several years ago (showing my age). I always come up with my best ideas in the shower. The trick…remembering it until I get to out and can write it down :>).

    Thanks for the give away. What a great way to get comments going. I look forward to seeing more on how other people approach getting “unstuck”.

  6. Chris Nolte says:

    Music, is my magic pill! I throw on the headphones and crank up the iPod. Sometimes it’s classical, sometimes it’s jazz, sometimes it’s rock-n-roll. Always helps me get pumped up to think more creatively.

    I find it also helps to regularly read from industries not associated with mine. How they handle challenges often provides ideas as to how to address my own.

  7. Kare Anderson says:

    From the stage when I speak next month to community bankers in Missouri on how to get their message out, I’ll hold up my iPhone, tell them to consider creating a mobile phone app, give an example from Roger’s deck re how they can brainstorm to get unstuck to come up with the news hooks to tell their story to the media AND tell them how i heard about Roger’s app – via Drew’s Marketing Minute +
    I will share the same idea with the Sonoma Mt. Business Cluster (incubating start-ups)

  8. Steve Harper says:

    My dad bought me my first pack of cards when I was a junior in high school. Your post could not be coming at a better time as I was desperately looking through boxes at my storage unit looking for them just last week.

    I get my creative juices flowing but Rippling with someone new. I love hearing what makes people tick and listening to their back stories. I get inspired by by bringing new people into my life and that inspiration stokes my creativity juices on almost a daily basis.

    Ripple On!!!

  9. Jason Mills says:

    What a great idea, very “creative” to put in on an iPhone.
    The best ways I have use to get the juices flowing:
    1. bounce ideas off a willing audience. Nothing stimulates me like feedback
    2. Whiteboard mindmap: putting my ideas in visual form, what AM i thinking?
    3. SCAMPER method: if I realy like one idea, how can I modify it in some way to reuse it http://www.creativeadvantage.com/scamper.html

  10. To get my creativity going, I usually meditate and write out the problem I am trying to solve. Then I don’t let myself stop writing until I have come up with 20 ways to take action on solving the problem.

  11. Megan says:

    I try to explain what my ideas are in the early stages of a project to someone not involved in marketing.If I can’t make it clear what I am intending, then I have to rethink my ideas. Gets you down to the basics – KISS.

  12. Tara says:

    Hi Drew – any idea what might have happened to my comment? I was the 2nd or 3rd commenter when I checked in last Friday night, and I think I was still the last commenter at that time. (It was definitely there because I came back a couple of times to see if you’d done the drawing.) Did you repost the contest or did my comment get deleted for some reason?

    (not a big deal as I have the actual cards – just wondering if I committed a no-no)

    -Tara

  13. Tom Wanek says:

    Wow! What a great suggestion. I downloaded this on my iPhone and the first tip was brilliant: Think like a child. Great stuff, thanks for sharing.

  14. Anna Green says:

    When I want to stimulate my creative juices I will normally start with good old fashioned books. Or Magazines ill take myself off too a book shop or library there nothing like printed paper to get my ideas going.

  15. Anna,

    Interesting. As a writer…for some reason, I can trigger my creativity faster/deeper with visuals and with music.

    I would have thought that words would have been the biggest influencer, but not for me.

    Good to see that there are lots of options for all of us!

    Drew

  16. Thats creative indeed. Roger von Oech is the president of Creative Think, a California-based consulting firm.

  17. The (retroactively labelled) original iPhone was introduced in the United States on June 29, 2007 before being marketed in Europe.

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