You probably like to think of yourself as a creative person. You’re fun and interesting. You have good ideas. 

Why, then, does your mind go blank the second it’s time to actually be creative? You arrive in brainstorming meetings with not a single suggestion. You settle in to write a presentation and find the first sentence comes out a garbled mess. You’re asked to come up with an exciting launch plan for a new product/initiative/other big thing, and suddenly everything you come up with has been done a million times before. 

It’s tempting to react to these mishaps by berating yourself, but here’s a better, science-backed option: take them as evidence that you need to warm up before you attempt to kick your brain into that creative gear. 

Yes, we did indeed say science-backed, because a new study confirms just that. In fact, the simple act of ‘warming up’ can make you more creative at work, says research from Cornell University. 

Let us explain. When you’re in a lower position of power at work, it’s much harder to meet your full creative potential. This makes sense, because you’re likely to be less confident in your ideas if you’re not sure they’ll be accepted. The big boss can happily chuck out all their thoughts without worrying too much about how they’ll be perceived, meaning they can try things out until they strike gold. Someone less powerful will struggle to do the same thing. 

But if you warm up, you counteract the impact of lower levels of power. The researchers found that while lower-power workers are less creative than higher-power ones at the beginning of a creative task, they can be just as creative by the end of it. Why? Because they’ve settled in and can feel more able to think freely. 

Waiting until the end of a meeting for inspiration to strike isn’t the most practical option, however, so the study’s authors propose a way to speed the process along: a warm-up period. 

To test if a warm-up would do the trick, the researchers conducted three studies, each with different rounds of warm-ups and participants with different levels of power. They consistently found that while high-power workers were more creative at first, after warm-ups, lower-power workers matched them in the creativity stakes. 

So, what can we learn from this? For one thing, managers and bosses should consider having a warm-up period built into any creative meetings and projects – even five minutes of ‘let’s all just go around and do a brain dump’ could make a difference. The warm-up doesn’t even have to be related to the task at hand; researchers found unrelated creative tasks did the same job. 

Secondly, we can use this technique on an individual level. Just as you shouldn’t go for a sprint without some stretches and movement to get your body ready, don’t expect to dive into any creative challenge completely cold. Before you head into a chat with your team where you want to be firing on all cylinders, spend five minutes doodling. Next time you’re keen to work on your novel, do some unrelated writing exercises before you get stuck in.

The more opportunities you give your mind to be creative, the better. Quit worrying about having a ‘bad’ idea. Give yourself time and space to get the cogs whirring, accepting that the first few thoughts you have might be the pancakes you throw away. 

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