Doing a productive activity that you love can help life feel more meaningful. But how do you find out what your passion is? How do you discover your creative direction? Here are 5 thought exercises to help you recognize what truly drives you.

Find your Downstream Focus

What is it that you are naturally drawn to?

Which creative pursuits do you enjoy, that aren’t an obligation?

What do you find yourself doing if you are in a job or school lesson when you have some free time?

If it’s the right activity, you won’t be fighting against the current – you’ll let it carry you. It’ll feel natural.

Imagine Money is No Object

Many of us put our passions on hold when we grow up and enter the adult world because we simply have to make a living. Some of us are lucky to earn money from doing our passions, but many of us are not.

Yet we should be careful not to think that making money and our passions are related. Money does not necessarily correlate to our passions – it may even be impossible to make a living from your passion.

Letting go of this correlation opens up your options. It allows us to imagine what we would do if money was no object. If we no longer needed to work every day in order to survive, we could do things without focusing on what makes money, and focus on what makes us happy.

Remember Your Childhood

When you were a child, what activities did you enjoy doing? When nobody had any expectations of you – when you had abundant free time, what were you driven to do?

Which subjects at school inspired you?

What kind of people did you hang around with?

What games did you play? Which sports did you enjoy?

Perhaps remembering these times will remind you of times that you were motivated and inspired. Can you use these memories to figure out what you enjoy most?

Forget About Obligations

Forget about other people and what they want you to do. Forget about what makes money. Forget about future career prospects.

Don’t be distracted by the end results, live in the moment and enjoy what you are doing.

Discover what it is that makes you live – and just do it. Don’t let family, friends, or strangers on the internet sway you. Let go of your obligations and think about what you would love to be doing right now if money and work did not exist.

Invest some Time

If you still can’t find your passion, you may not even know what it is. The only way to find out is to spend time trying things out.

Fill your days with experiences. Try different things. Expand your horizons.

Getting to know yourself is the best way to find your passion. Learn what you enjoy and what you don’t enjoy. This base of experiences will let you shape your future direction.

Finding your Passion

Doing what we love is what gives our lives meaning. Finding your passion gives your life purpose. It makes us happier and more fulfilled regardless of what else life throws at us.

Live the life you were meant to live – Find Your Passion!

Creating value is the act of creating something worthwhile – something that benefits one or many. We should all strive to create create value in everything we do. Creating values is the responsibility of all human beings. To not do so is to waste your valuable existence and this would be an existential shame.

But what exactly is value creation? Let’s break it down.

Creating is to bring about something new. There is a lot of material out there that goes into how to do this, we have several articles of our own, and we intend to keep writing more. However, to summarize, the act of creating involves integrating two or more concepts together to create a new idea.

Value is typically that which adds value to one’s life, whether that be an individual, a group, or the whole of society. Values are benefits, improvements, they alleviate suffering, reduce cost, increase availability.

Technology is what gives humans more control over the environment. From the first stick picked up by our ancestors, we have been creating new concepts to give us more power to shape and respond to our environment.

Of course we all know that technology is a double edged sword. Many technological creations are capable of both creating and destroying values. But technology is not something that can be stopped, despite the attempts of some minority “Luddite” groups. Technology is simply part of the evolution of the universe. Our minds are geared for creating values, and this often results in new technology.

So how do we go about Creating Values?

You don’t need to be creative to create values. But you do need to utilize certain skills, which we will now discuss.

Given that Values are that which add benefits to one’s life, in order to create them, we must become aware of the human condition. Human behavior is the variable that drives our technological evolution. It is a very complex variable and this is why it may seem difficult to decipher at first. But you are a human too, and the ability to understand human needs is built into you.

Understand Human Needs

To do this, simply Observe. Watch the world, and pay special attention to where people are happy or unhappy. Figuring out what makes them happy or unhappy is a key to creating new values. Try and find out what are the influences which affect happiness.

Also look at cost, efficiency, functionality and availability. Given that these criteria affect happiness, think about how can they be improved.  Many new values are simply existing values that have been improved. In fact, nearly all of them are. Remember that creating involved integrating two or more concepts into a new idea. You will see this to be true when you start creating values by making improvements to what already exists. All you need to do is to take an existing concept and improve it by applying another.

Take the iPhone as an example. Apple didn’t invent the phone from nothing, they just improved on it by applying another, already existing concept to it – the touch screen. They then improved it even further by making it dual touch, and even further still by developing killer software. This multi-layering of improvements is perhaps the secret to their success – most new ideas are only single improvements of existing concepts.

Understand Human Responses

As well as looking at the status quo, pay attention to how both individuals and society respond to changes. This information should be in abundance, given that the world is currently changing so fast and that this change is accelerating.

How people respond to change is very revealing. It shows how people really think, how they let their emotions, their desires, their hopes and their fears dictate their actions. It is their emotions that reveal what they value. Knowing what they value will enable you to create new value for them and improve their lives.

Engage

Of course you are a human too. So engage with others. Live your life alongside other people and learn what makes you tick as well. You are the person with which you are closest, so you have the unique privilege of seeing the innermost desires and emotions of yourself. Yes you are different from others, but humans share many common ideals, hopes and fears. Compare yours with others to help you figure out how can I improve this? How can I get more from the world and benefit myself? The answers will point you in the direction of how to create more for others and this is the nature of Creating Values.

Document Human Needs and Behavior

Humans are complicated and their behavior is not always predictable. However, when you understand human needs, you will be see patterns emerge. It is important that you keep a record of these patterns to help yourself remember. This documentation will help you formulate a plan to create values based on human responses and needs.

Create Values Based on Your Observations

Design

When you figure out what makes people tick, how they respond to the environment, what drives them and what they see as benefits, you can begin the task of creating new values to take advantage of this knowledge. The first step, like it should be in all acts of creation, is deliberate design.

Design is about customizing an idea to meet certain needs. Often these needs might be aesthetic, and this can be very important, especially if your chosen field of value creation is artistic. But aesthetics are more of a “want” than a “need”. They are still important, especially with regards to improving culture, marketability, and sometimes usability, but they are not the focus of this article.

From a business/technological point of view, design needs to give most consideration to functionality. This is the attribute that will lend itself most to fulfilling human need. Functionality is the essence of a creation, its purpose, its reason for existing. Functionality should solve some human need, and that should be the focus of your design.

Work to incorporate some level of functionality into your created values – functionality that fulfills a human need. It should improve on a current concept in one or more areas. The more the better, but you may find that each improvement is the basis for a new tree of ideas – and every route can be followed to create numerous values.

Just remember the most important aspect of design and constantly ask yourself – how does this fulfill human needs?

Create

The often missed step of value creation is the act of creation itself. Turning the idea into a physical reality is perhaps more important than the idea itself. Many people have ideas, but until this idea is turned into reality – it is nothing more than an electrical signal that will disappear when you die. It does not have any effect on humanity, it will not improve anyone’s life, and it will not provide you with any income. Thoughts are nothing without actions.

Even designs drawn on a page are nothing until they are made into something real, because the design itself has no purpose, no impact. Leonardo DaVinci drew rough ideas for a helicopter, but this didn’t impact the world until they were actually built hundreds of years later.

Only when something is built in real life do you find out if it really works – and what its consequences will be. For every value creating action comes a seemingly infinite tree of implications, it’s impossible to know how your creations will impact everybody, and what effects they will have on the world.

This is the exciting bit. Your creations open the doors to other creators to build on your creations. Every creation is a combination of two or more existing concepts – therefore – your new concept will become one of the concepts in a whole new creation. In this way, you become immortal. Sure, it’s not in the way that Woody Allen would have liked, but this is our destiny, our purpose.

And perhaps most importantly, it is an honorable route to prosperity

True creativity resides within all of us, but because of the power of creativity those that aren’t ‘naturally gifted’ feel intimidated to even try. By breaking down the fundamental layers of creativity, we see that the process of creating art is not only simple, but can be applied to all activities of your life.

Imagine you’re painting a picture. You find a nice spot, on the beach. You find an appropriate angle, where you will have an interesting view of the sea, with the beach and a palm tree coming in on one side. In the distance, there is a city skyline. It’s a perfect scene.

Now, many would assume that the creative process involves simply transferring this beautiful image onto a canvas, that this is what it takes to be creative. Creativity is in fact a much deeper process than this. It involves many layers of thought and meaning. The good news, is that this in fact makes it easier for anyone to get in touch with their creative side.

The Subject Matter Layer

In this example, nature has already given you a piece of art that anyone with a camera can share. Nobody should have a problem finding this layer. It is simply an observation, something interesting in the world around you. For a story teller, it could be an event that happened, or is imagined. It’s what your piece represents.

The Creation Technique Layer

In a painting, the next layer is the artist’s personal brush technique. A professional photographer will add this layer in a similar way with their choice of lens, filters, exposure etc. A writer will use their practiced techniques of arranging sentences and paragraphs. Any artist’s use of their tool of choice makes their work different from anyone else’s interpretation. This is a special layer of the piece that requires a lot of attention and is developed over an artist’s entire life.

Style is a very important part of this layer. The same image can be drawn in watercolor, charcoal, or pencil. Shading can be rendered in various ways, even the choice of paper is part of the creation technique. In all forms of creativity, including writing and music, there are infinite possibilities for style.

The Perspective Layer

Painting or photographing a picture is only the beginning of a creative exercise. What turns a generic photo into a piece of art, is perspective. The human holding the camera will always be an integral part of the piece.

In the case of our painting, it is the artist with the brush that provides this layer. They can chose how to present the picture. The audience should be forced to ask themselves, even if it is subconsciously, why has the artist chosen this perspective?

The Interpretation Layer

This is the layer where a piece will really begin to stand out. While the artist’s perspective gives a lot of depth and personality, their interpretation is where they have the opportunity to show something that might not be visible at first. Remember our painting. Well, the artist could see the city in the background as tarnishing the beautiful natural scene, and paint it in a way that makes it look grey, dull, maybe even sinister.

In this layer there is much scope to represent the scene in a way that is based on what it means to the artist, and the confines of reality need not be a limitation.

The Depth Layer

Your view of a cityscape from a beach has a lot more to it than meets the eye. Why is that city there? Who lives there? What are their lives like? What is their history? What does the future hold for them? Any of these factors can be brought into the painting if the artist wants to. As a very simple example, if the artists feels that the people of the city have been mistreated, he can draw something into the picture (or emphasize something that is already there) that represents this, such as a person looking sad.

Another way to represent depth is to think about the ways certain parts of the painting interact with each other. For example, the palm tree that frames the city brings shade to the beach, but it is still brighter than the city. Perhaps this illustrates how nature is more forgiving than the hand of man.

The Emotion Layer

All of the other layers will mean nothing, if your piece doesn’t provoke emotion from your audience. Quite often, your other layers will provide this simply with the story they tell, but perhaps they won’t. You should make sure that whatever else is going on with your creation, you think about how your audience is going to feel when enjoying it. It doesn’t matter if they’re happy, sad, angry, or shocked, just as long as they’re not disappointed. The emotion layer is so important it can almost stand on its own without the other layers.

Connecting with your audience emotionally is an art form in itself that takes a lot to master. There are many ways to press people’s buttons so I recommend you research this topic further. Ultimately, you must relate to their hopes and fears. Learn what makes people have certain emotions and incorporate this into your creations in whatever measure you see fit.

You could probably stop here, and you will still have a phenomenal, multi-layered piece of art that stands out to its audience. However, there is one more layer that you can add to your creations. This powerful layer can turn you from a hobbyist into a respected professional.

The Focus Layer

When you feel like you have enough layers to your piece, add one more. This layer does not add to the creation, but actually takes away. It hides many of the details, but those details are still present, underneath. They still affect the characters in our story. We have just focused in on what is important.

Poets understand this layer better than anyone. It is the metaphorical layer – the images they use to hide raw emotions.

Add this layer either by hiding the creation’s true meaning behind a metaphor, or by telling it from a perspective that does not give everything away. Your audience will still see the meaning, but it will give your piece even more depth. This is the magical layer, the layer that transforms an idea into a story.

Anyone can be creative

Although I used a painting as an example, these techniques can be applied to any and every kind of creative outlet. If you’re a writer, take an interesting event and write about it in your own unique style, using the perspectives of your characters. Give your characters history, emotions, and needs, and guide them using your interpretation of the story. Connect to your readers emotionally by relating to their hopes, fears, and dreams. Finally take this story and express it through a metaphorical veil, refining and clarifying the main points of your story.

Never again should you use the excuses “I can’t draw”, or “I can’t play a musical instrument”. Even if you find yourself held back by your lack of creation technique skills, you can now create powerful pieces of art with your utilization of all the other layers. Learn how to bring perspective, meaning and depth to what you see, and you will become a true artist.

Being funny is a great skill that can be very useful in many areas of your life. Many people live under the false idea that being funny is a genetic thing, that if you’re not born with it there’s nothing you can do about it. While you may not reach the ranks of the big comedians, there’s nothing stopping you improving your ability to make people laugh in every day life, and that will make your life more fun.

There are a few rules involved that once you’ve learned you won’t forget and you can eventually grow your skills in these areas. It does take work, but you’ll be surprised how quickly you can start being funny.

The quickest and easiest way to become funny is just stop giving people straight answers. When someone asks you something, it’s natural to want to help them and instantly blurt out your answer. Stop. Think before you speak. You could respond with something completely irrelevant, or another question. Now here’s the thing, it doesn’t have to be funny. It just has to be unexpected. Which means you could say anything. What happens then is the other person’s guard is knocked down. They are taken by surprise and what you will probably find is that they will laugh. Instead of a conversation, you’re now having banter. Your “pretend disrespect” for the other person changes the mood, and starts you both joking with each other.

This way of responding is a great start because it makes you treat life more casually instantly. You become a more fun person to be around because you’re unpredictable.

Now what you’ve learned is a valuable lesson about humour. It’s unexpected. It’s a surprise. There are other things that make people laugh but you will find this is one of the main ingredients.

Here are some more ingredients.

Obscurity

A lot of comedy comes from being obscure, just look at the knights who say “ni” from Monty Python. It’s unexpected because it’s silly and not normal. This is a vital ingredient to humour. Use your imagination and go beyond the normal, you won’t always find funny there, but combine it with these other ingredients and you stand a pretty good chance.

Perspective

We often laugh at people who think differently to us. Look at Mr Bean for a perfect example of this. His bizarre way of looking at the world makes for an amusing show. When building a comedy character, perspective is paramount, and of course, the character could be you.

Timing

Many jokes come from timing alone, so learn to use it and practice it for the rest of your life. Learn to use pauses, but also make sure you can be quick with a witty remark.

Exaggeration

This goes along the same lines as obscurity. Anything can increase its comedy value with exaggeration. And don’t just exaggerate a little, do it to the extreme. Don’t make your character moan a bit. Make them someone who moans more than anyone else on the planet. One Foot in the Grave fans will understand.

Clash of context

Humour is very often just a clash of contexts. Put something that doesn’t belong in your world. This is a very common tool used in “spoofs”. Take the police car at the start of the Naked Gun films that drives through places it obviously wouldn’t drive through, such as the woman’s changing rooms. Or the bumper sticker on the space ship in Spaceballs. Clash of context can be a normal thing in an abnormal world, or an abnormal thing in a normal world, a la Mork and Mindy.

Jeopardy

People always laugh at other people’s pain. Use this to your advantage not just with slapstick, but with unfortunate situations. Put your comic characters (or yourself) in increasingly more hazardous predicaments and watch the fireworks.

Those are some ingredients of comedy. You can use one or more of them to make your humour. Now aware of them, you can practice using them in your every day life or in your creations.

Now, here are some tools you might find useful for creating jokes.

Stating the obvious

Saying something that is obviously true and doesn’t need saying can be funny. Many a comedian doing a gig at Piccadilly has said “God, it’s like Piccadilly circus out there”.

Suppose one of your jokes leaves the audience dead silent. Say something like “Well that joke didn’t work” and you’re pretty much guaranteed that will get a laugh.

Obvious Mis-truth

Lying about something that it’s obvious you’re lying about, a close cousin of sarcasm, can be a good humour tool. The opposite of stating the obvious, this goes very well with exaggeration or clash of context.

eg: At the opticians, reading the wording from a poster on a different wall instead of the letter board.

Breaking clichés

As you know, surprise creates humour, so a cliché is a great tool because people know what to expect. By breaking the cliché, you’ve got an easy joke. In the Simpson’s movie Homer is about to hammer in a nail, and his thumb is resting on the nail. Tension is built up as he says “Steady…” He then promptly jams himself in the eye with the hammer.

“It’s better to have loved and lost, than to listen to an album from Olivia Newton John” – Holly, Red Dwarf.

If you want more to break, check out this brilliant website: http://www.cambiaresearch.com/clicheweb/

Being rude

This is best used with the surprise element rather than just relying on vulgarity to get a laugh. You will want to deliberately lower the tone and shock your audience with an unexpected bout of obscenity. It goes without saying that you should be careful with this and also remember that it won’t always work if you’re renowned for your filthy mouth, although it still will sometimes.

The rule of three

There was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman. The Englishman did something, the Scotsman did the same thing just to validate the idea to the listener, and then the Irishman came along and did something completely different and unexpected. A bit overused this one, but still works pretty well. You don’t even need a full joke, you can pretty much apply this rule to a single sentence.

Misdirection

There it is again – break the listener’s expectations. Of course the best way to do that is send them in the wrong direction. This is a very useful tool for writing jokes. Lee Evans was explaining how he went to the zoo and it was all: “Oooh ooh ah ah” (making monkey gestures), and he said: “Yeah, that’s great. Two adults and a child please.”

Running jokes

Re-referring to something throughout a story can make it a running joke, even if it isn’t really funny on its own. Try not to rely on these too much, but they’re good for finishing off a set on stage.

Callbacks

Eddie Izzard is the master of these. He will explain something at the start of his show, and quite often you won’t find it that funny. But when he returns to it later it has a much greater meaning, and is received with much amusement.

Conclusion

Hopefully you’ve learnt some ways of being funny that you can use in your every day life and/or your creations. For a more comprehensive guide we recommend the following books:

> The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You’re Not

> Comedy Writing Secrets: How to Think Funny, Write Funny, Act Funny and Get Paid for it

Picture Courtesy https://www.flickr.com/photos/nhuisman/

Many people are of the belief that coming up with an idea is hard. “If only I could think of an idea, I’d be able to create a business”, they say.

They also try and think too big. They hold out for that “killer app” or world changing concept. The next Facebook.

But business ideas don’t have to be that ambitious. And they certainly don’t have to be that difficult to come up with. All you need is this simple formula.

Idea = Niche + Need

Find a niche, find a need. It really is that simple. But let’s dig into it some more.

Find a Niche

A niche is a small area of interest. A specific area of the market for people with a specific interest.

Finding a niche is a balance between finding a market small enough to be focused but large enough to be worthwhile.

Finding the right niche can be difficult in itself, but it can be made easier by following what interests you. This is actually incredibly important. Focusing on an area that you’re passionate about will both inspire you and keep you involved when things get difficult.

Getting to know a niche will allow you to develop mastery, and this alone can open up many business opportunities. However, your skills don’t necessarily have to correspond to your niche. In fact, bringing fresh skills into a niche can open up plenty of opportunities on its own. For example, you could be an app developer interested in gardening, or a designer who enjoys surfing. Blending multiple ideas together is a great way to come up with new ideas.

Find a Need

Once you have a niche, spend some time in it. Ideally you’ll already be doing this and will have been for some time. It’s a hobby, better yet a passion. You might even be working towards becoming an expert in some aspect of your niche.

The better you know your niche, the better you’ll be at seeing needs within it. It won’t be difficult, in fact you’ll probably become aware of so many needs that your problem will be choosing one.

You’ll have to weigh up what kind of resources are required, what is going to be easy to rapid-prototype, what could be profitable, and what area you have sufficient knowledge in. From here, you should have no shortage of “ideas”.

Remember, the idea doesn’t need to change the world. It just needs to fulfill a need. Coming up with an idea is not “the hard part”. If you focus on a niche that interests you, spending some time getting to know it, learning its ins and outs, and perhaps becoming an expert in it, you should be able to identify plenty of needs.

Then it’s up to you to choose one that you’re in a position to fulfill.