One response to a chaotic world – a completely understandable one – is to panic. Stress is a natural concomitant of the speed, the apparent randomness, and the negativity of especially the virtual world today. But, as we’ve learned, stress can be your friend. A creative response is a healthy one, and one that redefines or simply uses the stress rather than being used by it. So here are my 5 favorite, research-backed ways to increase your creativity — and give you more options when faced with a stressful challenge. Enjoy!

Imagine the future

A simple way to induce a creative response is to project the issue into a distant time or place. How would citizens of the future solve the problem? How would people in another country reframe the issue? How might you crack the conundrum a decade from now? In a study of people instructed to put the task at hand in a distant time or place, problem-solving ability doubled. (Jia et al., 2009)

Reframe the issue — first

The key here is to stop yourself from jumping into problem-solving mode right away and instead spend some time reframing your challenge with lots of “what-if” ideas before you begin. In a classic study from three decades ago, participants created better solutions when asked to reconceptualize the problem before attempting to solve it. (Mumford et al., 1994)

Meditate

Meditating is not only relaxing – it can open your mind to divergent thinking, which is a great way to increase your creativity. So sit down, get comfortable, break out the green tea, and let your mind begin to produce alpha waves, indicative of relaxation, and low beta waves, involving access to your unconscious databases – a good place to go for intuitive answers to complex, stressful questions. Theta and gamma waves can also be accessed and used for deep thinking during meditation. (Colzato et al., 2012)

Put opposites together

A study of Nobel Prize winners from several decades ago found that putting opposites together to solve difficult problems is a typical way these geniuses proceed. So start juxtaposing – especially things that seem to be part of the problem! (Rothenberg, 1996)

Take a beauty break

Finally, my favorite way to jump-start your creativity is to take a beauty break – specifically, art. Get yourself to a museum and start wandering through your favorite galleries. There is a caveat, though: you can’t just look. You also need to think critically about what you’re seeing. Ask yourself questions like “How is this painter using color?” or “Why do these shapes seem to jump off the surface?” or “What was this artist rejecting from what came before, and what was she embracing?” The actual questions matter less than thinking about the art as a created object and questioning what the artist was trying to achieve. (Mikalonytė et al., 2025)

Use any – or all – of these methods to provoke a creative, instead of panicked, response to the chaos of life today, and watch your stress levels and productivity both improve.