Prepare to Create Gather information, hunches, impressions, colors, textures, sounds. Look for relationships between things that are not related. Our own habits are what often keep us from being more creative. The more you follow the script, the less you can improvise. Breaking even little habits can shake up the system enough to allow new connections to happen, new points of view to form.
Some people like to listen to music, others prefer silence once they are in the creative flow.
Experiment until you find what works for you. Time without your conscious manipulation. Time for seemingly random thoughts and bits of input to percolate and bump into each other. In certain environments, time is so precious that this seems like an unrealistic element of developing your creativity. But even five minutes could make a difference.