Let’s do some warm-up exercises now shall we? If you were about to launch into some kind of physical exertion you’d do a few stretches first. Well, it’s the same with mental exercise. You’ve got yourself in the mood, now limber up a bit before you focus on your current creative exercise.

There are lots of exercises you could do, and it doesn’t really matter which you choose – except you don’t want to get stuck in a new rut, so don’t always pick the same thing. There are lots of suggestions online and in books, or you could be properly creative and invent your own. What you’re after is anything that forces you to think divergently for a couple of minutes to set your mind working in the right way.

Divergent thinking means taking a starting point and heading off in as many unexpected directions as you can – which is what creative thinking is all about. It is the opposite of convergent thinking, where your thoughts bring the necessary strands together into a single answer. Convergent thinking is exactly what you need to solve a maths question, for example, and exactly not what you need to generate ideas.

If you ask a naturally convergent thinker how they would use a brick, they’re likely to tell you that they’d use it to build a house. A divergent thinker, however, might tell you that they’d use it to prop a door open, or to weigh down an empty bin so it doesn’t blow away, or to smash a window, or stop a car rolling down a hill, or to break into chunks and put in a flowerpot to help the water drain from it, or to stand on to see over a wall that’s just too high for them.

Now, while most of us tend to lean towards being either convergent or divergent thinkers, of course we’re all capable of either when necessary. Every time you check your change in a shop, you’re thinking convergently. When you try to answer the question ‘What would you like for your birthday?’ you’re probably thinking divergently. And when you want to get creative, you definitely need to be in a divergent frame of mind.

The brick question is a really good example of an exercise to open your mind in readiness for thinking imaginatively. Try to think of ten uncommon uses for a common object within two minutes: a tissue, a mug, a phone, a book, a hole punch …

If you always start your thinking sessions this way, changing the object each time, you’ll just get stuck in a fresh rut. So check out other quick creative exercises and just use this one occasionally. The idea is to stimulate the creative part of your brain and prepare it for the real task, in the same way that a vocal warm-up prepares you to sing or getting your hair wet prepares it for the shampoo.