Creative thinking tips: become more creative

In our Western systems of thinking, there is a strong bias towards using the left-brain. We tend to prefer ideas that fit pre-conceived patterns, systems that have been proved and solutions that are low-risk. But in a time of change, where we need to solve major intractable problems, we need to be more creative and instead of known thinking and known solutions, develop new thinking and new solutions, so instead of logical thinking we should think more creative.

Think like a child

As adults we tend to think in a conditioned way aimed at showing how clever we are. Yet, as children, we are simply spontaneous and far more curious in our thinking. To re-capture your childhood curiosity, allow yourself to just wonder at things, to be completely present in the here and now, and to detach yourself from what you thought was real. Questions you can ask yourself include: Why are leaves green? What makes us yawn? What makes us laugh? Why do we have to work?

Be more curious

The search for new answers to old problems starts with being curious about the problem and looking at it with fresh eyes. Sigmund Freud said that such curiosity came more naturally to children than adults. The basis for creative thinking is that you are curious about the world.

Play with ideas

The route to creativity is to see things in ways that nobody has seen before. Albert Einstein, the father of modern science, imagined how his theory of relativity could work by lying on a grassy hillside and picturing himself riding on a sunbeam into the universe. Steven Spielberg, director of the science fiction film “Close Encounters of a Third Kind”, imagined the spaceship he used in the film by standing upside down on his car bonnet and looking at the night lights of Los Angeles.

Make new connections

To be innovative doesn’t require a university degree; it simply requires making a connection between existing ideas. For instance, did you know that ice cream was invented in 2000 BC yet it took another 3900 years for someone to come up with the idea of a cone? It’s when you take two seemingly unrelated items and use the spark of creativity that inventiveness happens. Try this trick for yourself. Put together two unconnected objects in the room right now – such as a stapler and a pair of scissors – and find a use for them.

Be a little illogical

One of the least logical thinking systems in philosophy is the Oriental school of Zen Buddhism. Zen attempts to go beyond the confines of logic to enlightenment.

Zen means “meditation”. It takes problems and presents them in ways that make you think. One “koan”, or problem, with no intellectual solution, asks: “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” and another: “when a finger points at the moon, the imbecile looks at the finger.”

Laugh more

Tom Peters says that the creativity of a workplace can be measured by a laughometer, i.e. how much people in the organisation laugh. Humour is one of the greatest creative devices. It jolts us out of our normal patterns and puts ideas together that shouldn’t go together. It has been found that after listening to comedy tapes, students’ ability to solve problems rises by 60%.

Think outside your limits

Many of the products we take for granted today are the result of people thinking outside their limits. John Lynn recalls attending a computer conference in the 1980’s at a hotel when someone joked that the next thing they’d be thinking of would be computerised doors. When he went back to the same hotel 20 years later, all the doors used computer-programmed key cards. You can practise this kind of thinking with these pointers:

• let go of old ways of seeing, thinking and doing

• question what you see, remembering that we distort what we see with our perceptions

• be aware that thinking in familiar patterns can limit your options of what is possible

• free yourself from judging your own ideas

• find a stream of creative ideas by thinking more like a child

• take risks and dare to do things differently

• be absolutely sure that you will succeed.

When we think vertically, we limit ourselves to what we already know, what’s been done before and the old ways of thinking. The alternative to vertical thinking is lateral, or horizontal, thinking. It is also outrageous thinking, curious thinking, thinking the unthinkable, and creative thinking.

Start increasing your creativity today!

Are you curious about other aspects of creative thinking? Download the book right here: Thinking Skills