In my view, there's one simple directive to help keep the noggin fresh and peppy: get out. In all possible ways. Get out of your office (or your garage). Get out some evenings to do something other than hanging out with your team in a bar over beer and chips. Get out of reading the same old, same old, and mix up TechCrunch with the Economist or vice versa. Get out of your chosen field and meet people in others, and if you're very much in the left brain world, make it a point to get to know folks in the arts. Mostly, get out of your comfort zone and do something different fairly often.
Which brings up the obvious point, not all entrepreneurs think that they need to be creative - they'll leave it to the design guy or the marketing gal. There are many entrepreneurs who believe they're done being creative as they came up with their business idea and now they should just focus on execution. But execution draws on outside the box thinking too.
An example is a possible new market niche for us, an idea that came to me when I was sitting at the Startup Conference in Mountain View a few days ago with a friend who wanted to check it out (I attend one of these occasionally as part of my 'getting out'). Funnily enough, the keynote speaker, Dave McClure, started off by pretty much calling all the entrepreneurs there losers for attending a conference instead of being busy building their companies. It is a totally valid point on how to use your time, or not. These events may be worth attending if you're just thinking of starting a company, and want to know what others did (no live-streaming video of yourself - Justin Kan already did that.) But my expectations are pretty much to hear something different and maybe meet someone I wouldn't have otherwise met - an unusual mental break for a few hours. Best of all, it worked!
There's another hot new book being pitched to entrepreneurs - Jonah Lehrer's 'Imagine: How Creativity Works'. (Side note: seriously, how does one keep up with all the reading and still accomplish something? Sure, it's part of keeping your brain fresh but your time is limited. Realistically, the best one can do is to skim blogs to pick and choose the few books that resonate.) Anyway, there's a listen-worthy interview with Lehrer on video here. He provides a well-reasoned approach to creativity, offering some hope that creativity can be cultivated and you can keep it going even as you get older - you don't have to lose it.
Choose to be more creative. Shaking up the brain is good, but you need to care enough to want to zumba.
