I often remind myself that we are products of our surroundings, and we solve our problems and generate our ideas based on our surroundings. The risk is getting stale. How to avoid that?
– Change your surroundings. Get out of the office, go to events, bring things into your office, expose yourself to media (blogs and podcasts!). Keep your surroundings fresh.
– Surround yourself with a variety of people. If you work in a team, interact frequently with the rest of the company. Participate in online groups and conversations (Twitter! Facebook! Blog Talk Radio!). The more people, the more potential ideas.
– Give to get. Unblock your mind by helping others. Sometimes we get great ideas through solving someone else’s problem.
Mobile post sent by DougH using Utterli. 
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Also another way to not get stale is to learn to be able to turn off your mind and all the information overload…it’s why I do yoga…
These are great points, Doug. Speaking as someone who has worked in positions where every day you go into the office and there’s little variety in your surroundings, activities or interactions as well as jobs where I’m constantly on the move at clients, remote offices, trade shows, etc., there is definitely value to breaking up your routine.
A change…any change…to that routine can really reinvigorate your creativity as well as your perspective on the work you do. Yet so often we don’t think to make these changes. And it does make sense (IMO) to cast a wide net in terms of the people you follow on Twitter, etc. because you never know where that next idea or connection will come from.
Derek– I also find these changes are related in some way to the “stop thinking about the question to find the answer” method (which is how I found my MP3 player this morning, tho not before waking up the whole family).
Zote63- I draw the line at yoga ;P
btw– a correction on your URL– http://videopoem.tv/ – that correct?