Creative Blog

Unleashing Creativity with the Thirty Circles Exercise

Creativity is a muscle, and like any muscle, it needs exercise to grow stronger. One of the best ways to warm up your creative thinking is through fun, time-sensitive challenges. Enter the Thirty Circles Exercise, developed by IDEO—a simple yet powerful activity designed to push the boundaries of ideation.

What is the Thirty Circles Exercise?

The Thirty Circles Exercise is a fantastic warm-up for brainstorming sessions, workshops, or personal creative practice. The challenge is simple: fill up a sheet containing 30 empty circles with as many recognizable objects as possible in just three minutes.

How to Do the Thirty Circles Exercise

  1. Take a Thirty Circles sheet and a pen.
  2. Set a timer for three minutes.
  3. Draw recognizable objects inside the circles as quickly as possible. These could be everyday items like a pizza, clock, apple, smiley face, or basketball.
  4. Once time is up, review and discuss your outcomes (if working in a group).

Discussion Points

After completing the exercise, take a moment to reflect:

  • How many circles did you fill?
  • Did you notice any patterns or themes in your drawings?
  • Did any participants “break the rules” by combining circles or creating unexpected designs?
  • Was it easier or harder than expected?

Key Takeaways

The Thirty Circles Exercise is more than just a quick doodling session. It highlights two key elements of creative thinking:

  • Fluency – How many ideas can you generate in a short time?
  • Flexibility – How different or divergent are your ideas?

Some participants may focus on variations of a theme (e.g., different types of sports balls), while others will create entirely unique concepts for each circle. The exercise showcases how our ideation processes differ and encourages us to break out of conventional thinking.

Tips to Enhance the Challenge

  • Switch Shapes: Try using squares or a mix of shapes instead of just circles.
  • Add a Theme: Make it more challenging by sticking to a specific category, such as “only animals” or “only food.”
  • Increase Time Pressure: Reduce the time limit to force quicker thinking and prevent overanalyzing.

Final Thoughts

The Thirty Circles Exercise is an excellent way to warm up before a brainstorming session or to kickstart your creative mindset. Whether you use it in a classroom, workplace, or personal creative practice, this simple yet effective challenge can reveal a lot about how you approach problem-solving and innovation.

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