Do you consider yourself creative? Whether you’re an artist, a professional, or someone who thinks they “just aren’t creative,” this episode is for you! In this solo episode I dive into the true essence of creativity and show how everyone can access their own creative genius. Building on last week’s conversation with Dan Nestle about AI, I share how creativity can make us more adaptable, resilient, and innovative—essential skills in a rapidly changing world.
In this episode, you’ll learn practical techniques to access your creativity and apply it to one of today’s most talked-about tools: AI. I’ll demonstrate an improv game to unlock creativity and share exercises to overcome creative blocks, particularly with prompt crafting and using AI as a creative partner. Get ready to shift your mindset and discover ways to use creativity and AI in tandem to amplify your potential.
Key Takeaways:
- Creativity as a Universal Skill: Why every person has a unique creative genius waiting to be unlocked.
- The “Expert Interview” Game: A powerful improv exercise to access spontaneous creativity by letting ideas flow without judgment.
- Techniques to Bypass Your Inner Filter: Learn how to clear mental blocks and let ideas emerge by calming the mind and practicing rapid idea generation.
- AI as a Creative Partner: Discover the benefits of using AI as a tool to stimulate creativity, rather than just a source of answers.
- Steps to Get Started with AI: Tips for beginning your AI journey, brainstorming prompts, and using AI responses to inspire new ideas.
Links and Resources:
Un-Edited Transcript
Welcome to Yes And, the podcast where we explore the powerful idea of saying yes and instead of yes, but, and how you can use it in your career, your business, and your life. I'm your host, Avish Parasher, and this is yes, and. Hello, my friend, and welcome back to the podcast.
Let me ask you a question. Do you consider yourself creative? Do you consider yourself to be a creative genius? Well, regardless of your background, your work, your hobbies, I hope you answered yes. Because in my 30 years of performing and teaching improv comedy and 20 plus years of working with professionals on improving their creativity and communication while using improv, I have figured out that, yes, all people are creative. Everyone has the capacity for tremendous creativity. In fact, I think everyone has an inner creative genius, and that is what we're gonna talk about on this episode.
This episode is actually a follow-up to my interview last week with Dan Nestle, where we talked a lot about marketing communications and a whole lot about AI, artificial intelligence. So in this episode today, I'm gonna dive a little deeper talking about creativity in general and specifically how you can use your creativity to more effectively start using AI tools. If you missed the episode, go ahead, back and give it a listen. It's an awesome interview, and, we talk about a lot of fun stuff, a lot of things you can apply right away. Just a quick recap for you, though, whether you listen to it or not. Few things Dan and I talked about. We talked about humanizing artificial intelligence.
Dan talked about not thinking about it just as a cold tool, you know, like a Google search or something, but rather as a collaborative partner. Now I know it gets a little creepy there, almost Terminator area. Right? Like, where it's like, oh, this is a person. So, yeah, it's a machine. It's it's learning language model. But if you approach it as a partner and not as a tool, you actually get a lot more out of it.
And this is how I've been doing it. When I take my chat GPT account and think conversationally with the tool, like, how would I ask a coach? How How would I ask a client? How would I ask a friend? I get much better results. So think about it in those terms, not just as a tool, how can I use this, but how can I collaborate, with this as if it was a person? We also talked about curiosity.
Dan used the term unearthly curiosity when you're exploring, anything, but specifically new technologies. Like, too much too often we put pressure on ourselves to do everything right and get it all figured out. But if you have an unearthly curiosity with something new, it's gonna really open your mind. It's gonna shift your mindset, and you're gonna learn so much more, so much faster. It's also gonna help you progress through setbacks and obstacles if you're curious versus really focused on getting it right and achieving results. Dan also went in some practical insights about AI, how it can streamline tasks, improve productivity, and, yes, enhance creativity where, we are going to get much more into that. Now Dan said that AI isn't here to replace us, but to enhance us enhance our work and help us work smarter, which I agree with, but I think that's only true for people that are gonna take this mindset with AI.
I think AI has the capacity to replace a lot of us, frankly, a lot of jobs, a lot of job functions. And, you know, I heard a great quote in the early days of of Chad Gbt when it really exploded in AI. It's like AI is not gonna take your job. A person who knows how to effectively use AI is going to take your job. So there are a lot of people. I've been doing programs on this. I've been speaking to associations and companies just really trying to get people to change their mindset around AI because at the end of the day, this is the big change our world is going through.
Some people are embracing it. Some people are resisting it. And the people who are resisting it are gonna be left behind. So if you want to not be left behind, if you wanna not be replaced, this is an area everyone needs to start moving into. Then as we're gonna talk about here, Dan and I did talk a bit about creativity and AI, and I'm gonna go much deeper into that. And then I'll let you go back and listen to the episode with Dan because he did give a framework, for making better AI prompts. I think one reason people struggle with AI and one reason that people, don't get good results from it is they don't understand how to structure their prompts, correctly and for the maximum effect.
So go back. He shared a framework called the RACE model, r a c e. So go back and listen to that episode.
You get that information. So that's what Dan and I, talked about. So go listen to that. What I'm gonna talk about here is we're gonna go deeper into the creative aspect. So I'm gonna share with you completely unrelated AI, why I think all people are creative geniuses, and how you can start tapping into developing and applying your creativity. And then I'll come back and share how you can specifically use your greater creativity to more effectively use artificial intelligence and get started with it. I am gonna use an improv game as I'd like to do on these solo episodes as often as I can.
It's one of the my foundational improv games that I use when I'm teaching creativity. And if you've in the past few episodes, I have shared links to a webinar where that goes deeper into how to access your creativity. That's what I'm gonna talk about here. A lot of the things I talk about on the webinar, I'm gonna share here. Now if you go and sign up for the webinar, and you could do that by going to avishparasher.comforward/webinar, You'll get a, link to the recording. You'll get the info on how to access your creativity as well, plus ways in applying it to set bigger goals to identify what you really wanna do, and there's visuals and slides for that kind of person. So go to avishparasher.comforward/webinar, and that way you can have more information on how to access your creativity and apply it.
But that's what I'm really gonna go into here. We're gonna dig deeper into how to do that. So let's talk creativity. Now depending on your job function or sort of what you your top priorities are in your life, you might be thinking, you know what? I don't I'm not a creative person. I'm not gonna write or perform or do comedy. I don't really need creativity.
I don't think this is for me. Well, let me explain to you why I disagree with that premise. Creativity is a key skill. It is a key skill for innovation and problem solving and adaptability. Now right out of the gate, you can see how those skills will apply to any field. Innovation. Again, if we don't innovate, if we don't grow, branch out, try new things, we're gonna be left behind.
Number 2, problem solving. Now I guess if you have no problems ever, you don't need creativity. But, of course, we have problems. Everyone has problems.
Obstacles come up. We want something we can achieve. We set up one course of path, but then a problem arises. We gotta figure it out. And your ability to access your creativity is gonna directly impact your ability to solve those problems.
And number 3, adaptability. We live in a world of constant change. I'm doing this episode to talk about artificial intelligence, which for it's been around for a while, but for most people, it wasn't really on their radar even 2 or 3 years ago that, oh, I'm gonna have to learn AI. And now all of a sudden, everyone has to learn. Right? And then there's huge changes that have happened, like the global pandemic or the financial crisis that you know, things that throw us all off, but then there's smaller adaptability issues, like a small change, which might be a big change in your life, but not a global change, like you're moving or you start a new job or this friendship you had starts to deteriorate. You're not sure why.
Like, whatever it is, we need to adapt. And if we keep always doing things the same way, then that's just gonna increase our problems, increase our stress. And all these things stem from creativity. Now beyond that, beyond the specific applications of creativity, creativity is a foundational skill for other reasons, the way I teach it at least. Because when you're doing creativity properly, when you're accessing your creative genius, what you're really doing is stripping away a lot of the filters, a lot of the thought process, a lot of the what I should do, and and what I'm insecure about, and getting sort of deep into who you are. And we'll get into when I explain how to access your creativity, But you are accessing your subconscious and expressing ideas from it. Now when you do this, number 1, you are touching into your authentic self.
And I can't think of anything that's really more valuable for a human, whether it's a professional, personal life, whatever, in understanding and applying your authentic self. I think that's one of the reasons we're on this earth is to figure that out and express it. And I think because of societal pressure, because of financial pressure, because of responsibilities, because of expectations, so many of us walk through life tamping that part of ourselves down. We've got this inner desire. We're not gonna pay attention to it. Are we happy with what we're doing? Sort of, but not really.
But we're not gonna take the time to figure out what would really make us happy. And so when you realize that creativity is simply tapping into unlocking and developing your authentic self, you can see how it impacts absolutely everything. There are all the applications of creativity as well because of this. Pretty much any workshop I do, I talk about creativity. Even if it's about leadership or communication, even presentation skills, like, it is so foundational, this ability to tap into your inner creative power and your authentic self and what makes you you. It's it applies regardless of what you think your job is or your job function or your top priorities in your life are. It'll be immensely helpful.
So let's talk creativity. As I said, I believe all people are tremendously creative. Everyone has an inner creative genius. It's just that society tends to beat that out of us as we grow up. Think about it. Children are incredibly creative. I've got 3 little kids now.
The 2 older ones are now 96, and you probably had this experience if you have kids or been around kids around the holidays. They get showered with gifts. Right? At Christmas time, tons and tons of gifts. And when they're really young, what do they play with an hour later? The box. Right? This is the answer.
I ask this question all the time in my programs, in my keynotes, in my workshops. They are playing with the boxes, maybe the wrap paper, maybe the garbage, but they've got all these toys, and they are just loving playing with the box. Why? Because when you're really young, you don't need all these fancy doodads and technology. Just your imagination is enough to keep you very busy. And now that I have a 9 year old and a 6 year old, I can see the difference. Right? I can see as the the older kid how he occupies himself when we're just playing at home by ourselves versus my 6 year old.
My 6 year old still has that creative imagination where he'll play with his dinosaurs or his animals and makeup stories. And my older one now really wants to read or played board games or when we give him screen time, play video game. Which don't get me wrong, the younger kid likes that too. But we're already seeing that, like, creative restriction that happens because what happens is when we're young, we have unlimited creativity. We just express ourselves, and it's great, and we're learning, we're trying. But as we get older, society tends to give us feedback that makes us limit our creativity. Because from the moment you can start walking and talking, your parents start telling you things like, oh, don't say that.
That's not polite. You have to be nice. That's not proper. You have to do it right. And then you get a little older, and you go to school, and the teachers have to do the same thing. Right? You gotta pay attention.
You gotta not talk. Oh, you didn't do this right. You know, I once got corrected on a creative writing assignment because the prompt that they gave for the writing assignment, I went in this completely different direction. And someone's like, well, why would that happen based on this prompt? I'm like, it's a creative writing assignment. Why are you criticizing my creativity? Like, if anything, you should be lauding people like, oh, wow.
You really express your creativity. But this is what a lot of our education system does. And, there's I forget who it does.
It's Ken something. He did a TEDx talk or the a TED talk. 1 of, if not, the most watched TED talks about how education kills creativity.
Go check that out. Just look up that title and TED. But he he reinforces this idea that, really, our creativity is not something that is valued. So as we grow up, we develop this little voice. It's a filter that evaluates every thought we have. Now let me pause for a minute and talk about the mind, the brain. If you think about the mind as having 2 parts, the conscious and the subconscious.
The conscience is the part that thinks. It's the part that you're aware of. And I should say conscious. I think I might have just said conscience, which is different. The conscious part of the mind, it's that part that focuses. But here's the thing, the conscious part of the mind is very weak. You can only really focus on one thing at a time, And this is where you get tunnel vision, and you can only kinda keep your focus just on what you're thinking about right there.
Now your subconscious lies under your conscious mind, and your subconscious is very powerful. All of your memories, feelings, and associations are stored in your subconscious. All of those ideas that are just not even you're not even aware you would have, like, when sometimes some, a thought pops out of your mind. You're like, where did that come from? It came from your subconscious. So if we want to be creative, if we wanna access our creativity, we need to tap into our subconscious. The problem is that the conscious mind has that filter.
In my language, that little yes, but voice. That every time your subconscious tries to get into the game and give you an idea, your conscious filter immediately starts evaluating. Oh, yeah. But can I say that? Yeah. But will I be praised or criticized for that? Yeah. But is that the right answer? Yeah. But where is this gonna go if I start exploring this idea?
Now every time that happens, your conscious mind grabs control, knocking you out of your creative flow back into your conscious mind, back in the thinking part that's very weak. And you know the subconscious is a powerful part of your mind because let me ask you a question. When do you get your best ideas? When do your best ideas come to you? When do the solutions to your problems pop into your head? Now if you are like every single audience I have ever spoken to, the answers you came up with are, while I'm about to fall asleep or in bed, when I'm exercising, when I'm driving, when I'm in the shower. Right? These are all the answers.
The common theme to all of these answers is when I'm not thinking about it. Right? When my conscious mind is not thinking about it. In 30 years of teaching creativity and improv and 20 plus years of doing this for professionals, I have never once asked that question and had someone say to me, sitting at my desk in front of my computer. Right? Because when you're sitting at your desk in front of your computer, you're using your conscious mind. And yet, what do we all do when we are trying to solve problems?
What What do we all do when we're trying to create new ideas and innovations? What do we do when we're trying to write? We sit at our desk with our computer, or document on, or maybe a pad, and we think, what can I do here? How can I solve this? What can I try? Every time using the weak part of the mind. So if we want to truly access our creativity, we need to bypass that filter, turn it off, and access the subconscious, and let ideas flow out of there, which for most people is very hard because it's a very new way of thinking.
And it's contrary to the 20, 30, 40, 50 years, however many years of processing the world in a certain way. It requires a big mindset shift to start accessing the subconscious. And when I'm teaching people, whether it's improv comedy performers or professionals in a workshop or at a keynote or a training, I give them 2 techniques that I'm gonna share with you now to bypass the filter. Number 1 is to go is to have what I call an empty mind. See, take this metaphor. Imagine a pond. You throw a pebble in, you'll see ripples.
Now if it's a very calm day and the pond is very still, you throw a pebble in, you'll see lots and lots of ripples. But if it's a windy day and there's a lot of chop on the pond, you throw a pebble in, you won't see any ripples even if they were to try to form. Now the metaphor there is the pond is like your mind. The pebble is whatever idea or question you're throwing into it, and the ripples are the ideas your subconscious is trying to give you. If your mind is calm and still, you'll hear all those ideas your subconscious is trying to give you. If, however, your mind is turbulent like that wavy choppy pond, you won't hear any of those ideas even your subconscious mind is desperately trying to give them to you. So the first step is to have an empty mind, is to not overthink, which is hard, especially when you're under pressure or when you're trying to solve a problem that's been bothering you for a long time or when you put the pressure on yourself to try to figure out how to achieve a goal that is really important to you.
This is why if you ever feel like, you know what? I'm really talented. I'm smart. I know my stuff, but sometimes I freeze up under pressure. This is why. It's because when you're under pressure, what happens? Our mind starts racing.
We start thinking. We start stressing out. And what we've done now is we're right in our conscious mind, completely blocking ourselves off from our creative power at the time we need it most. So the first step is to calm your mind and have an empty mind. And in a minute, I'll share a few ways you can do that. The second technique I teach people is to go fast. It is possible that you can go fast enough generating ideas very quickly where you're able to get them out, before your filter has a chance to even kick in.
This is why if you ever seen me perform improv in a keynote or workshop or maybe you've known me for a long time, you've seen me do it on stage or or listen to my improv comedy podcast I had, you know, I I talk fast. You probably get that here too. But especially when I'm doing improv, I go fast, and it's not because I'm afraid or insecure. It's because when I go fast, it gives me a better conduit to my creativity. So what I'm gonna do right now is I'm gonna drop in the audio of an improv game that demonstrates this idea of accessing your creativity and going fast. It's a game called the expert interview. The recording I'm gonna drop in is from an improv class I taught, virtually over the pandemic, and I demoed this game for the students.
So what you're gonna hear is me playing the game with the students over Zoom asking me questions. So let me explain how this game works. In this game in general, I start out as an expert. And then what I do is I get an area of expertise from the audience, and then I let them ask me any question they want. Now the key here is when I get the area of expertise from the audience, I make sure I pick something that I am not actually an expert in. It's something I know nothing about. And then I let the audience ask me questions, and I have to answer immediately with confidence as if I'm the world's leading expert.
And in fact, the audience is allowed to ask me ridiculous questions. Like, oh, tell me about, an experience you had where you were trapped on a bus and you had to use knitting to your, to get out. Or they can ask me, you know, one time I was next around school buses and someone asked, why is it when school buses come, they always steal you or why is it when UFOs come, they always steal school buses? Like, I don't know, but I had a couple of answer. So the audience asked ridiculous questions about a topic I know nothing about, but then I answer with confidence as if I am the expert. So I'm gonna drop in an audio, and then I'll come back to explain the takeaways, how that game works, and what you can do with it. Alright. Hello, everyone.
Welcome to my, I'm the world's leading expert on ironing. And I know you have burning questions. It's not a pun. Burning questions about ironing. So who would like to kick things off with an ironing question for me? Yes, David. When did you switch your area of expertise from laundry to ironing?
What was that transition like for you? Well, it really happened the day of my first job interview because I was loving laundry. I did laundry all the time, but I finally need to get a real job because laundry did not pay the bills. So I went, but the problem is my clothes were so wrinkled that they threw me out of the office without even talking to me. That's when I realized that laundry without ironing is like a man without a good woman, and I didn't wanna be that, so I started learning ironing as well. Alright. Next question. Cat z.
What's the most expensive thing that you burned? I burned bridges. Really left and right. You know, I used to have so many contacts and friends, but because I would never shut up about ironing, they all cut me off, and so I'm on my own. And you can't measure that in mon in money, but in life experience, those bridges are my status loss. Alright. Tom. What's the proper temperature for ironing polyester?
I like to set my my iron to 800 degrees, because I figure that that is the temperature that a self cleaning oven goes to. So if I'm gonna iron, then I may as well kill 2 birds with 1 stone. The polyester gets cleaned and strained at the same time, and sometimes it even melts and forms a whole new garment. So it's like every time I wear the polyester, I got a new outfit. So it really 3 birds with 1 stone. Kat. Oh. What is the craziest thing you've ever had to iron?
I had to iron my face once because I looked in the mirror one day and I woke up and I'm like, oh my god. I'm getting old. I have these wrinkles. I hate it. You know, I lost my love as I told you about and then but I said I'm going on a date tonight. I didn't wanna look like an old man so I ironed my face, and it was a trade off really. It was it was I got rid of wrinkles, added some burnt scars, but it made me look tough.
And, you know, we've been married 3 years now. Alright. So I'm gonna stop there. Alright? So there you go. That, is the expert interview. So that's an example of the expert interview.
Now when you are listening to that game, you might think that the goal of the improviser is to think of funny responses to the question, and it is not. That is how some people approach it, but when they do, they struggle. There's really only one improv technique or or technique really I use in that game. It was a very advanced improv comedy principle called open your mouth and start talking. That's it. When the question comes in, I just immediately start answering. Now a novice improviser or one who's trained differently, what they might do is when the question comes in, they'll pause, and they'll think to themselves, oh, how can I answer that?
Or what'll happen is they'll get an answer. Right? Like, the question is the pebble in their pond, and they'll get a ripple. And their immediate thought would be instead of just going with it, they'll think, oh, but can I go with that? Where is that gonna go?
Is that gonna be funny? Is that gonna be appropriate? In all these things, what they're doing is turning the power over to their conscious mind. All I'm doing is when that question comes in, I just open my mouth and start talking. And I usually don't know where I'm gonna end up or how it's gonna go. But, usually, if I just go fast and and go with the first idea, what happens is I become the pebble in my own pond. So I start answering the question, but my own creativity because I'm going so fast acts like the next pebble, which gives me the next ripple.
So I keep talking, which becomes the next pebble, which gives me the next ripple. So I keep talking, and eventually I'll end up somewhere funny. In fact, I only have one other technique I use when I play that game, which is if I've reached the end of my answer and the audience hasn't laughed or reacted, I just keep talking. Because if I've reached the end of my answer, then almost by definition, I'm out of conscious ideas, which means if I keep talking, I have to apply my subconscious creativity. Now sometimes, sure. I'll I'll keep going, and the audience still won't laugh. I still won't say anything particularly good or funny.
Well, that's okay. Then I just cut bait. I end the question. I move on to the next one. This is one of the the skills and disciplines that come with doing improv for a long time. You start to realize that failure is not final. It's not the end of the world to have a bad answer.
It really frees up your creativity to keep going. So that's all there is to it. And in fact, if I was when I do this game in workshops, I don't just demonstrate it. I have the audience play this game in small groups or with partners. And it's amazing because when I first tell the audience, alright. You're all gonna play this game, most people get very nervous. They're like, I can't do that.
Or they're like, oh my god. How is that gonna work? It's gonna be so awkward. I I'm gonna fail. And then I give them a little bit of instruction about open my mouth and start talking, and then they play it. And almost without fail, every time after they play the game, they come back, and we deride how the experience was. And almost every group was like, wow.
That ended up being much easier than I thought. Or, yeah, I was way more creative than I thought I would be. Or holy cow, I said something that totally surprised me. Because it's not about being funny. It's not about thinking effectively. It's about accessing and applying your creative flow. Alright. So I'm gonna share with you a few ways that you can start applying this creativity to your own life, start developing the creativity, and then how you can apply it in general and also specifically to start and to more effectively use AI tools.
So, really, what you wanna do, number 1, it sounds weird, but you can play this expert interview game. I highly recommend it. If you do a team meeting, if you got kids, they'll love it. If you can get a group of people that might be interested, play the game. Right? Pick an area of expertise. Just, make sure it's something you know nothing about, which is kind of a trick, because if you do know something about the topic, your conscious mind will try to kick in with the right answer, which is never creative or funny.
So pick something you know nothing about, and then just have people ask you questions, and just open your mouth and start talking. That's the only thing you're evaluating yourself on. Not how funny it was, not how good you you were. Just did I open my mouth and start talking? Now if you don't have other people who can do this game, but you can actually do this game by yourself. Pick something you know nothing about, and just start talking. Pretend you're giving a lecture, to an audience, and see how far you can go before you stop, before you pause, before you quote, unquote run out of ideas.
You know, this used to be one of the audition processes I would do. When I ran an improv group for 7 years in Philadelphia, we'd have people come into audition, and one of the things I would have them do is I'd say, okay, you're an expert on cuckoo clocks or furniture or skydiving. And I said, give me a lecture, and just keep talking, and don't stop until I tell you to. Because I just wanted to see how creatively inhibited were they. Would they pause? Would they run out of ideas? Or would they just go with the flow?
So you can do this yourself. It's a great way to practice. Now if you don't want to do that, a couple of things you can do. You can, number 1, practice emptying your mind by simply practicing basic meditation or breathing. Again, nothing spiritual, but just practice calming your mind. Take a minute, couple minutes, 5 minutes, and just sit, and focus on your breathing, and try not to think, which is incredibly hard. If you've never done it before, 5 minutes is gonna feel like an eternity.
But it's not about being mad at yourself or trying to adjust. Try to focus on your breathing, Thoughts will pop up. When they do, just let them go, and then refocus on your breathing. You're trying to have as an empty mind as possible. Because think about it, if you cannot empty your mind when you are just sitting by yourself in peace, how are you gonna be able to empty your mind to access your creativity when the pressure is on? So that's one way to start developing that. To practice going fast, if you don't wanna play the improv game, just do free writing.
So take a notebook and just start writing, and set a timer for 5 minutes or 10 minutes. Do not stop. You can write anything at all. I'm being very vague here because there's no journal prompt. It's not, like, write about your days. Just start writing. And if you are not sure, just start writing.
Say, here I am doing this exercise I've each told me to do. And then the only rule is the pen cannot stop until the timer goes off. Now what you write is not important. You could write, I don't know what to write. You could start writing about your day. You could write about top of mind.
Just keep going. What you're doing here is practicing the ability to get in a flow where ideas just come out of you without editing. Right? Because if you stop the pen, that means you have now started editing and evaluating and saying, yes, but, and using your conscious mind. So those two exercises, simple breathing meditation, free writing, will start developing this creativity for you. And of course, any of the improv comedy stuff is gonna help you develop your creativity. So first, I'm going to share with you 2 general application bits you can do, how you can start using this right away.
The most obvious one is brainstorming and problem solving. So if you got a prime you're trying to solve, take a piece of paper. At the top, write down the prime you're trying to solve, and then just start brainstorming a list of ideas. Now I know you're thinking, wow. It's real rocket science of each. You're telling me to try to come up with ideas for my problem. Yeah. But this time, you're gonna apply this creative mindset.
So just like with the free writing, what most of us do when we are problem solving is we write down an idea and then pause, and then think, alright. What else can I write? And then write down another idea, and then pause.
What else can I say? No. What you're gonna do here is you're just going to set a timer and just start writing potential solutions to your problem. And, again, just like free writing, you're not gonna let the pen stop. So set a timer, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, whatever. And, again, you'll have to write down, I don't know what to write. What else can I write?
My mind is blank. Just don't let the pen stop. Now if you're really gonna do this, though, it means you're gonna have to write down those ideas that pop into your head that are stupid, impossible, that would never work, that have been tried before and failed, that are illegal, like, whatever. Not you're not writing these down to implement them. You're writing them down to explore, to get it out of your head, to be the next pebble in your pond. Right? This is how you get in the creative flow.
So next time you gotta bra brainstorm, try this method. Don't let the pen stop. Get in the subconscious flow and just see what ideas you come up with. The second way you can use these creative tools right away is writing. If you write anything, reports, presentations, articles, proposals, long involved emails. You probably open the document or the app and think, what can I write? Well, you're gonna know exactly what I'm gonna say here because I've already said it 2 or 3 times.
You're not gonna do that next time. You're gonna set a timer. Make it short. Give it a try. 2 minutes, 5 minutes, and just start writing and say, I'm not going to stop writing until this timer goes off. And, again, you'll have to write stuff that's terrible. You'll have to write, I don't know what to write.
Like, literally those words. You'll have to write, what should I write next?
And then boom. Something will pop in your head. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can get a draft one done if you take the evaluative conscious mind out of it and just flow. And then you can go back and edit and write and fix it up. Now word of warning, if you're gonna do this for an email, write the email in a Google Doc or Word Doc or some other app, so you don't accidentally hit send. But other than that, just free write and just see how you can use your creativity to become so much more productive. And overall, the quality of the writing will improve, not necessarily the initial quality because these first drafts will need some editing, but the idea quality, the conceptual quality, because you're using your powerful subconscious as opposed to just thinking the top of mind stuff that everyone's already thinking of.
So those are general applications. Little how and where you could use AI. So many people get very limited when they're thinking about artificial intelligence tools. And they're like, well, I guess I could use AI for this one thing. I gotta write down I gotta write, an article. Let me give it a few ideas and have it write a draft for me. And then they get tunnel vision.
Like, well, that's all I can use it for. That's just, like, bottom up approach of AI. Like, well, here's a tool. Here's what it's for. Let me just do that. But if we expand our creativity, you can do it in 2 I'll give you 2 sort of exercises using this brainstorming model. Number 1, start with the prompt of, I would love AI to do blank.
I just free write. Again, don't overthink it. Don't edit. Just dump it all out. The second prompt which is similar is just here's everything I have to do, and just dump. Or here's everything I have to do that I don't want to do, and just dump. Now what you do is you after you brainstormed on that for a few minutes, you've got a giant list of tasks.
Then let your creative mind play. Don't just look at an answer and say, oh, yeah. No. Creativity can't help me with that, or AI can't help me with that because it's not writing an article. Then let your mind play. Well, how could AI help me with this? Or it's even better if can AI help me with this?
And you know the best way to answer that question? Ask the AI tool. I just had a recent revelation where, you know, over the years, I've kinda come in and out of cold marketing, researching leads, finding companies or associations that might be a good fit. And it's definitely not work I enjoy, but it gets results. So I was thinking about, alright. Coming into the new year, maybe I'll I'll start doing that again. But, man, I did not wanna do it.
And in the past, I've had an assistant help me. I'm like, well, that requires training and money. And I I listened to a program for another speaker where they're talking about how they were using AI to do some of this stuff, and for some reason, I had never thought about it. So I was like, Oh my god. Maybe AI can help me. So I I wrote out my process first in a document if I was doing it myself. Here's everything I do when I'm cold marketing.
Here's how I research. Here's how I find the leads. Here's what I do with the leads. Here's how I enter them in the spreadsheet. And then I took that, and I just dumped it into chat gpt and said, here's what I normally do. What of this can you help me with? And it came back with all these ideas, and I'm like, oh my goodness.
I can totally streamline my process now. Right? So we need to get just be more creative. Be more open minded to where you can use an AI tool to make your life easier. And I think picking the stuff that's repetitive, picking the stuff you don't like to do, picking the stuff that drains you, start playing with that. It's gonna have an immediate improvement to your life. 2nd way to use your creativity is to write better prompts.
You know, in the introduction, I said that if you go back and listen to that episode with Dan, he'll give you a framework for for writing prompt. You know, it's called prompt engineering now. But at the end of the day, the quality of the response you get from artificial intelligence is gonna be directly based on the quality of the prompt. And too many people give up on AI tools because they give it a prompt and don't get the result they want. They're like, oh, that's not what I wanted at all. AI didn't understand what I wanted. AI is dumb.
It's never gonna replace humans. Well, instead of having that approach, right, think like an improvise. Right? I talk a lot about step by step and act, analyze, adjust. And if you don't get the result you want the first, make a little adjustment. So use your creativity to come up with different ways of asking the question. If you ask if you give AI a prompt and it comes back with an answer you don't like, instead of just writing it off, say, okay.
How can I ask this in a different way? How can I refine the prompt I gave it to get a better result? How can I improve this the next time? Right? So attacking the problem from different angles will give you different AI responses. The more access you have your creativity, the more able you are to look at the problem you're trying to solve. And instead of asking it just one way, ask it in 10 different ways to figure out what's the best result I'm gonna get from this prompt.
So use your creativity to come up with better prompts. The 3rd way to more effectively use AI with creativity is to use AI as the pebble in your pond. And this is probably one of the best ways I've been using it for myself. You know, right now, when you give AI a prompt, that's the pebble you're throwing into the AI pond and it's giving you back its ripple. But you can take the response from the AI tool and treat that as the pebble in your pond. So for example, I have not yet trained my AI tools to write articles for me to my satisfaction, and I'm still working on that. Right? I'm not giving up, not writing it off, but I will enter a prompt.
I'll say, here's something. I'll do it a lot with podcast episodes. I'll say, here's a podcast episode. Here's a transcript of it. Can you give me an article that follows up on this? And it usually gives me one whose language I don't like, whose doesn't hit the right points. It doesn't know enough about me to inject stories.
But what it does is it gives me a starting point. It's a pebble in my pond. So I can't tell you the number of times I will put that prompt into AI for an article or social media post, and I will use basically nothing of what the AI tool gave me. But that will trigger for me exactly what I wanna do.
I'll be like, oh, yeah. No. This is a terrible article, but this gives me an idea. And then I'll just go write my own article or my own social media post. So this comes way back to the very beginning when I talked about humanizing AI. Right? Thinking about it as a collaborative partner, not as a tool.
When you stop using it as a tool to just give you the answer and be done, but rather as a partner to give you pebbles in your own pond to help you get past your blocks, to help inspire you for new ideas, it becomes incredibly powerful. So, hopefully, you found that helpful in terms of how to access your own creative genius and how to start using it in your own life and specifically for AI. It can be a little overwhelming, so I'm gonna give you a couple of tips just on how to get started with AI if you're not into it yet. The big one is number 1, just start. Right? This is not the end of the world. Now if you're in a sensitive place, like, I I've done this for a lot of government groups with the Department of Defense.
They can't just go into work and start using an AI tool. Right? That tech has to be vetted. But in your own life, you can start getting caught with the idea of AI. You know, sign up for a free account at one of the free services, like chat GPT has a free thing. Just start, and then just start playing around with it. Number 1, I would say, go back to some of those prompts I was talking about.
Think about what are your think about your daily grind. Right? What are your biggest challenges? What do you procrastinate doing? What do you wish you don't have to do? And just start playing around with prompts. One way I've started is with recipes.
I well, sometimes when I'm feeling lazy, I do most of the cooking in our family. When I'm not sure what to make for dinner, I'll just say I have a whole chat in chat gpt for this, and I'll say, hey. In my fridge right now, I have some chicken thighs and some celery and some bell peppers. I also have some rice and some pasta. I don't need to use all of those things, but can you give me 5 ideas for potential recipes that involve these ingredients?
And it helps. Again, a lot of this is just overcoming procrastination and overcoming some sort of mental blocks. It gets me started.
So, again, playful. Playfulness. Right? It's not about solving all your biggest problems right out of the gate. Just play around with it to get a feel, and then start using it. Play around with prompt engineering. And what I mean by that is don't just look for a solution.
Go in specifically with a chat and say, you know what? I'm gonna try a bunch of different ways of asking this question just to get a feel for our different prompts result in different answers. So number 1, just start.
Number 2, think step by step. Right? Iteratively, like an improv scene. I play an improv game called 2 word story with most of my audiences, which is really about building a story step by step instead of having it all figured out. So don't go in on day 1 with your tool and feel like you have to have it all figured out. If you just play around with it and are a little bit better at the end of day 1, then at the than you were at the beginning of day 1, you've made progress. And then come back on day 2 and play around a little bit more.
Just think iteratively. And then as you get more comfortable, start expanding how to use it. Ask it to write you a draft of something, of an email or a proposal, or ask it to give you advice on a situation you're dealing with. Right? Based on a podcast I listen to, I have a whole chat where I I ask Chad GPT to be my personal business coach and consultant. And whenever I'm feeling stressed or overwhelmed, I just start chatting with it there, and it gives me ideas. So just start, play, think iteratively, use your creativity to unlock the tool, and use the tool to unlock your creativity.
I hope that helps. If you got questions, please go to my website, avishparshare. com. Drop me a line.
Let me know. If you like this podcast, please share it with a friend. You probably know some people who are kinda not yet ready to dip their toes into AI. They're resisting it. Or you've got friends who don't think they're creative and wanna know how I I wish I'm feeling stuck in my life. I'm feeling limited. I don't know what to do with my life.
I'm in this place where I'm very unclear. All these creative tools will help even without the AI. So send send them a link to this episode or just share it on your social media platform. And if you did like this episode and like the podcast as a whole, if you could, go ahead on Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, give it a 5 star review. And if you really like it, if you leave a short review, oh my goodness. That goes so far into helping into the algorithms, helping to show up in search, and helping people find it. So thank you for listening, and I look forward, to connecting with you next week when I interview another awesome expert, and we dive deeper into the ideas of Yes, And.