We all experience occasional bursts of inspiration that give us new insights into old problems. Such creative thinking seems to come naturally to some people, but it is also something that everyone can mix.
Creative Living
- Immerse yourself in your chosen area of creativity, researching or practicing as much as possible. Your creativity needs material on which to work.
- Pursue interests in areas well away from your sphere of work and usual occupations. The most creative individuals often have very diverse interests and hobbies.
- Record your dreams, daydreams, and doodles. Concepts and feelings arising from the unconscious brain can open up new perspectives.
- Take exercise. Regular exercise increases the amount of nutrients and oxygen available to the brain.
- Experiments with doing routine tasks, such as housework, in completely new ways. Make creative thinking a habit.
- Reward yourself for your creativity, and you will begin to think of yourself as a creative person.
Creative Problem Solving
- First, frame the problem. Think of as many ways as you can to express the problem you want to solve, then analyze these to identify the precise question you need to answer.
- Write down any potentially useful thoughts that bear on the question as soon as they arise. Collect them in a notebook and review them regularly to see if they can be applied to any problem in mind.
- Put yourself in a stimulating but comfortable environment, and take regular breaks while thinking about the problem.
- Rhythmic activities, such as walking, swimming, painting, or even washing, can help to tone down conscious things king and let subliminal ideas emerge from the unconscious.
- Set yourself real targets – for example, the deadline by which a problem must be resolved.
- Get other people to contribute their ideas. The more ideas you can generate, the better your solution is likely to be.
- Employ creative thinking techniques to generate new ideas – some are described on the opposite page.
Mind Mapping
If you want to generate creative solutions to complex personal decisions, try this technique derived from mind mapping, as pioneered by Tony Buzan.
- Take a large sheet of paper. In the center, draw a picture that represents your problem, then use this as the hub to draw out a branching network of associations. Each new thought should be broken down into its components until all possible ideas connected with the central problem are made visible. Hop fully; you will then spot obvious answers or gaps where perhaps you need more information.
- Use colored pens to code different kinds of thoughts – for example, red to highlight drawbacks, yellow to highlight wild possibilities, and blue for very obvious connections. Use images rather than words to illustrate your thoughts wherever possible. Go back over the main connections as they start to emerge, making heavy lines that really stand out.
- Once you have made your map, copy it out again in a way that is more organized, or that uses some newly discovered idea as the central starting point.
Group Creativity
One of the most effective methods of creative problem-solving in a group is brainwriting. This technique is often more effective than verbal ‘brainstorming’ sessions because it avoids social constraints on putting forward ideas to a group and because more ideas are generated in the given time.
- Begin the session by outlining the problem to be solved. Each participant then writes an idea on a sheet of paper and passes it to the person on his or her left. The recipient can either use this idea as a stimulus for a new idea, which is written on the sheet or can modify the first idea before passing it on again to the left.
- After a set period, the ideas are organized into groups and evaluated.
Random Responses
If you are simply looking for a new perspective on a problem, abutting incongruous ideas or words can open up new patterns of thought. In the East, this technique has achieved the status of an art form (as in haiku poetry), but it can be adapted into a simple method for triggering creativity.
- Open a dictionary on any page and select a word at random.
- Repeat this procedure until you have a whole list of words, and then apply each to the problem in mind. You will find that almost every word stimulates some ideas on the subject.
- The technique works just as well if you use a phrase as the stimulus: try aphorisms or proverbs like a stitch in time saves nine or ‘put the cart before the horse’·
