A young Albert Einstein struggled to solve the perplexing problem of relativity. He took to one of his many famous thought experiments and imagined what he would see if he traveled alongside a beam of light. By imagining the perspective of such an observer, he was able to improve his creative thinking skills.
A creative imagination can help get us outside of the proverbial box.
But, ironically, imagining that which we have never experienced can only by realized by the experiences we have.
Lev Vygotsky stated:
“the creative activity of the imagination depends directly on the richness and variety of a person’s previous experience because this experience provides the material from which the products of fantasy are constructed. The richer a person’s experience, the richer is the material his imagination has access to.”
Creative thinking skills.
Therefore, a great way to improve our critical thinking skills is to improve the diversity and quality of our experiences.
Listen to a genre of music you would ordinarily never listen to. Watch some movies you would normally scoff at.
Take up a hobby you’ve never considered. Forcing yourself into experiencing the world in new ways helps you be more creative and imaginative.
By having a diversity of experiences, you have more building blocks to build your imagination with.
When my two children were younger, they were fortunate to inherit several large bins of Legos from a family friend.
What made their eyes light up was not just that there were so many pieces but that there were so many different types. There were helicopter pieces, house pieces, car pieces, animals, people—you name it.
The diversity gave us (yes, me too) the ability to build so many more imaginative things.
If we compared that to a box of 10,000 pieces—but all of the same size, shape, and color—the extent of imaginative possibilities would likely be limited.
In the same way, a diversity of experiences can give your imagination more to build from.
Creative thinking skills … build on others
One of the misunderstandings around creativity and imagination is that you have to be utterly original to do it.
The truth is all creative people stand on the shoulders of those who came before.
Writers learn to write by reading. Painting students are sent to museums to copy the masters. Great chefs learn the already tested basics of cooking to create some new dish.
Innovation stands on a platform that already exists.
Yes, inspiration is involved, those flashes of insight, the ah…ha moments. You start with something that already exists and takes it to another level.
So relax. Let go of thinking you have to do something original. Take the pressure off.
Celebrate that there is all this help available.
Investigate ‘thought experiments’
Construct a few of your own. One such experiment might be to imagine you are a microscopic entity and place your awareness somewhere in your room.
Perhaps leaping from key to key on your keyboard..inhabit the keyboard with a world of imaginary civilizations.
Enact massive wars on a microscopic scale, within your mind…again, let your mind run free.
Develop a taste for novelty
Explore artwork and the result of other people’s imagination. Discover how other people conceived their ideas. Look at the abstract and surreal artwork on Deviant Art.
Change your thought patterns
By this, I mean consciously make an effort to look at the world differently and in a more creative way, as if you were a child.
On a more intellectual level, attempt to vocalize these creative insights.
The more you make an effort to see novel ways of looking at the things, the more these efforts will turn into habits, and the easier it will become.
People are rarely born creatively acute, or funny, or negative, or optimistic; it is learned behavior.
The underlying behavior of creative people is their thought patterns are creative.
Creative thinking skills examples.
Question everything
Want to think what nobody has ever thought? Start by questioning all assumptions.
There comes a moment in time where everyone agrees with everybody about pretty much everything.
For any sized organization that is focused on creating a culture of relentless innovation, hardened dogma is an innovation obstacle they must overcome.
And that starts best with questioning everything, assumptions included.
Pay attention to patterns
Treat patterns as part of the problem. Recognizing a new pattern is very useful, but be careful not to become part of it.
Observe with all senses
Truly creative people have developed their ability to observe and to use all of their senses, which can get dull over time.
Take time to “sharpen the blade” and take everything in. Add thoughts as you go.
Meet new people
Brian Grazer is an Oscar-winning producer and co-founder of Imagine Entertainment. In his book, A Curious Mind, he writes about a personal discipline he has had since his earliest days in Hollywood.
In what he calls “Curiosity Conversations” Brian would schedule meetings with top influencers in the industry.
He found such benefit from these encounters that he branched out to meet with the most successful people in all areas of life.
He has met with Jonas Salk, Barack Obama, 50 Cent, Muhammad Ali, Gloria Allred, F. Lee Bailey, Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, Henry Kissinger, John McCain, Wolfgang Puck, Ronald Reagan, Condoleeza Rice, Tony Robbins, our Betty above Edwards, and countless others.
“It’s refreshing to be reminded, over and over, how different the world looks to other people.” — Brian Grazer
Each meeting exposed him to new angles on familiar concepts and produced an understanding of altogether unfamiliar ideas.
By gaining different perspectives from different people he has been able to imagine and produce stories in a way, he might not otherwise—stories such as A Beautiful Mind, Splash, The Da Vinci Code, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and many others.
In the same way, by opening ourselves to new people, we open our minds to new understandings of the universe.
As we develop relationships with different people, we will find the quality of our imagination increased.
Continuous learning
Both creativity and innovation are based on knowledge.
Therefore, you need to continually expand your knowledge base.
Read things you don’t normally read as often as you can.
Defer judgment
Your perceptions may limit your reasoning. Be careful about how you perceive things.
In other words, defer judgment. Let it all hang out.
Experience as much as you can. Exposure puts more ideas into your subconscious.
Actively seek out new and very different experiences to broaden your idea thinking experience portfolio.
Look for what is not easily seen
Look where others aren’t looking to see what others aren’t seeing.
Creative thinking techniques.
Be observant
Betty Edwards is a world famous author and art teacher known for helping people see what is in front of them as opposed to their perceptions of what they see.
For instance, the average person asked to draw an apple will produce an image symbolic of an apple. Such a drawing often has a high degree of abstraction to catch the essence of apples everywhere.
It’s called drawing what you know, not what you see.
Someone trained to see models properly, however, will draw an apple in front of them with great realism. The exact contour, the angle of the stem, blemishes, even tonal differences are repeated in exact detail.
Her students often produce the symbolic version on the first day of her course and end with extraordinary examples of the realistic.
To produce such results, Dr. Edwards teaches a technique of viewing models upside down to trick the definition-prone left hemisphere of the brain to bow-out.
In its absence, the spatially-oriented right brain can begin to dominate perception. Invariably, observation improves dramatically and immediately because of the part of the brain that judges and names what it sees take a backseat.
Drawing is one of the only ways I know of that this degree of improvement in observation can be developed.
When I was taught this method in my college graphical drawing class, I immediately began to notice things for what they were.
I could see shape and form as something very individual to each person or object I drew. Texture and tone became real to me. I even began to experience light.
A deliberate way to strengthen our experiences is to become more observant by recording them through drawing.
Be able to overlook rules
Rules, to the creative person, are indeed made to be broken.
They are created for us by other people, generally to control a process; the creative person needs the freedom to work.
Ask“what if…”
Seeing new possibilities is a little risky because it means that something will change and some action will have to be taken.
Curiosity is probably the single most important trait of creative people.
Push the boundaries of mistakes
A photographer doesn’t just take one shot, and a composer doesn’t just write down a fully realized symphony.
Creation is a long process, involving lots of boo-boos along the way. A lot goes in the trash.
Collaborate
The hermit artist, alone in his garret, is a romantic notion but not always an accurate one.
Comedians, musicians, painters, chefs all get a little better by sharing with others in their fields.
The bottom line
Since as much as 90% of what we learned in a life-time always come to us via visual cues, we should constantly enhance our perceptual sensitivity to the environment, according to information scientists.
So, more than 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci was right when he said, use all our senses, especially our sense of sight.
Our power of observation and imagination depends on it.
Productive thoughts often have their origins in the combinatorial play and dynamics of sensory inputs from environmental cues.
In my view, our thinking cap is often governed by how far we can stretch our power of vision and imagination.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
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All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
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Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on creativity from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Do you know this guy shown above? Think hard and I’ll bet you’ll get it. The man and his talent are icons. And he represents the creativity bottle itself. He was a master of unlocking creativity with creative thinking techniques.
Yet John Cleese is both an inspiration and somewhat of a mystery. His legend, unfortunately, has obscured much of his story’s true value. He was, in many ways, an exceptional talent.
He, like many talented creatives, managed to see the world through a different lens and helped others to do so as well.
Although obviously intelligent, he showed no special early aptitude. His extraordinary talent and creativity were very much the product of a method and it is one which we can all follow.
“Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.”
Much has been said about how creativity works, its secrets, and what we can do to optimize ourselves for it.
I recently re-watched his fantastic 1991 lecture on creativity and like always, seem to take away something new each time. He offers a recipe for creativity, delivered with his signature blend of insight and comedic genius.
Specifically, Cleese discusses the concept of being open and closed and outlines “the 5 factors that you can arrange to make your lives more creative”.
Creative thinking techniques … open & closed
To get a full grasp of Cleese’s model for creativity you need to understand the interplay of two modes of operating — open, where we take a wide-angle, abstract view of the problem and allow the mind to ponder possible solutions, and closed, where we zoom in on implementing a specific solution with a narrow precision.
He concludes creativity is not possible in the closed mode. The closed mode is the one we are in most of the time at work, running around busy in an “active…slightly anxious mode.”
The closed mode is not a bad thing, of course, and is often crucial for getting things done — but it is not creative.
By contrast, the open mode says Cleese, is more relaxed, less purposeful, more contemplative, and more inclined to humor. “Humor,” Cleese says, “always accompanies a wider perspective.”
The open mode is more playful and curiosity can operate for its own sake since there is less pressure to get to a particular goal quickly. Play, says Cleese, “allows our natural creativity to surface.”
We need to be in the open mode when pondering a problem — but! — once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it.
Because once we’ve made a decision, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, undistracted by doubts about its correctness.
Most work cultures are necessarily dominated by closed thinking. It’s no surprise most people in power are fond of displaying decisive powers:
“The most creative people have learned to tolerate (that) discomfort for much longer. Just because they put in more pondering time their solutions are more creative.”
Cleese goes on to caution against a trap in this duality, one particularly hazardous in politics:
To be at our most efficient, we need to be able to switch backward and forward between the two modes. But — here’s the problem — we too often get stuck in the closed mode.
Under the pressures which are all too familiar to us, we tend to maintain tunnel vision at times when we really need to step back and contemplate the wider view.
This is particularly true, for example, of politicians. The main complaint about them from their nonpolitical colleagues is that they’ve become so addicted to the adrenaline that they get from reacting to events on an hour-by-hour basis that they almost completely lose the desire or the ability to ponder problems in the open mode.
Creative thinking techniques business … the 5 factors you need for creativity
Types of creativity techniques.
Space
“You can’t become playful, and therefore creative if you’re under your usual pressures.”
You can’t be playful and creative in your usual environment with its usual pressures, Cleese says, since to cope with all the pressures you need to be in the closed mode.
Therefore, you need to create a space that gets you away from the everyday pressures of your job. You need a kind of fortress of solitude in which you will not be disturbed.
Time
“It’s not enough to create space; you have to create your space for a specific period of time.”
The space you create for yourself must be maintained uninterrupted for a specific amount of time. Cleese suggests 90 minutes as a minimum. It is almost impossible to get yourself in the open mode by giving yourself space, say, ten minutes here and fifteen minutes there.
“Giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original,” and learning to tolerate the discomfort of pondering timeand indecision.
You have now used space and time to create an oasis of quiet, but it is also key that you do not take the easy way out just to get the problem solved. Cleese believes that the more creative people are willing to tolerate the discomfort of not solving the problem quickly in order that they may discover a much better and more original solution. The more creative people, then, put in more pondering time. The aim should be to give yourself the maximum pondering time possible while still being decisive once your solution is reached.
To play is to experiment and try new things, and this necessarily leads to making mistakes. We must remain open to trying anything without fear of it not working out. You cannot be playful if you are frightened of being wrong. “Nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake,” Cleese says.
You must have the confidence to be free to play. Realizing that there is no such thing as “a mistake” while you are experimenting and pondering in the open mode will help you be more creative.
Humor gets us from the closed mode to the open mode “faster than anything else,” Cleese says. Laughter creates relaxation and humor widens our perspective. The problem is, people confuse serious with solemn. We can be quite serious indeed while still using humor to examine, ponder, and even discuss very important issues.
Laughter does not necessarily make what you are working on any less serious. On the other hand, solemnity says Cleese does nothing more than serving pomposity and egotism of those who are threatened by the freedom and creative thinking that can be generated by humor.
“Humor is an essential part of spontaneity, and an essential part of playfulness — an essential part of the creativity that we need to solve problems, no matter how serious they may be.”
Cleese concludes with an awesome explanation of the premise and promise of his recipe for creativity:
This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious.
What creativity is not
Cleese says that while it’s difficult to say what creativity is, he can at least shed light on what it is not. “Creativity is not a talent, it is a way of operating,” Cleese said. “Creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have. It is…absolutely unrelated to IQ.”
What makes some intelligent people more creative than other intelligent people it seems is that the more creative people are able to get themselves into a particular mood, according to Cleese. A mood or a state “that allowed their natural creativity to function.”
In this state, people are able to explore and discover, even though there may not be any immediate practical purpose to their play. “Play for its own sake,” Cleese stated, is the key.
Final points
While you are in the open mode, you must keep your mind around your subject, Cleese says. You can daydream, but you need to gently keep bringing your mind back to the problem. “If you just keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious.”
If you put in the pondering time first, this reward may come as what feels like a sudden insight from nowhere or an epiphany. Cleese says that it can be very rewarding to create a space and time to play with others on a problem as well. However, it is important that your partner or small group members not create an atmosphere that is defensive.
The lecture is worth a watch in its entirety if only to get a full grasp of Cleese’s model for creativity as the interplay of two modes of operating — open, where we take a wide-angle, abstract view of the problem and allow the mind to ponder possible solutions, and closed, where we zoom in on implementing a specific solution with a narrow precision.
Along the way, Cleese explores the traps and travails of the two modes and of letting their osmosis get out of balance.
As Robert Weisberg pointed out in his excellent book, Creativity: The Myth of Genius, great creative thinking arises out of rather ordinary thought processes. Genius is, of course, helpful, but not essential and many of those that are considered geniuses have fairly normal IQs.
So the secret to unlocking creativity is not waiting for divine inspiration, but through knowing your field, defining problems well, and persistently putting Cleese’s 5 factors to work for you.
Creativity comes from combining ordinary things in extraordinary ways.
Creative animals.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.
It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with innovation and creativity efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration.
But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your creativity, innovation, and ideas?
Do you have a lesson about making your creativity better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on creativity from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
