Make it habit to purposely pause and notice things. Something outside your normal schedule. The problem with this is that many researchers tend to confine PhD and research students into areas that they themselves cannot research upon. The joy of research and discovering new things is gradually fading away because people are concentrating on the money instead of solving problems in new way.
Focus on your creative energies on just few topic areas that you genuinely talk about. When you have discovered your purpose, put some excitement to it.
Avoid being too narrow in the way you define your problem or topic.
Try to come up with original and useful ideas by making novel associations among what you already know.
When you need creative ideas, pay attention to what your instinct tells you, you could become the main thing to happen in your field
