How to think creatively

I’m sure you have creative thoughts many times a day, but have you ever ‘metacognised’ deliberately about your creative thoughts? That means going ‘beyond cognition’. In effect, have you ever thought deeply and analytically about the processes and skill involved in creative thought? If not, I’ve set out some of the points you might consider below. You’re invited to dip in and become a deeper thinker.

     

The term ‘creative thinking’ of course refers to the ability to form new, useful ideas or innovative new combinations of ideas to fulfil a purpose or need, or to get original and innovative results in a task. This means the generation of fluent and novel ways of tackling problems or creating things and of organizing and systematizing data.

 

Be a thinker

It also relates to divergent thinking in which a variety of creative solutions are envisaged that deflect away from the mainstream, as well as the early stages of hypothesizing where several tentative, alternative solutions can be framed to solve problems.

 

The Neanderthal forerunners of human beings are reputed to have had larger brains than modern humans do, yet they were apparently less intelligent than we are. Modern human brains evolved to incorporate more convolutions of the grey matter, with a continued development of the neo-cortex, and the vital frontal lobe in particular. But, having a big brain capacity is not enough to predict intelligence; it’s largely how one uses it that counts. So it’s not the size of the engine that counts, but the creative horsepower it can generate

 

A person’s schooling is sometimes to blame for stodgy, routine thought dominating. In South Africa, for example, we have perhaps suffered for too long from an over-dose of examinations that can lead to linear thinking as we converge on exam requirements at the expense of risky, exploratory creative thinking.

 

Teachers within the schooling systems in many countries stand accused increasingly of not teaching learners to think well; yet intelligent, creative thinking is precisely what formal schooling should foster. In studying, young people often try to get as quickly as possible to a routine way of doing things, repeating a procedure or habitual method of action without thinking of alternatives. Routines can be very useful indeed, but should remain open to improvements or even abandonment.

 

In following the directions of unimaginative teachers, learners and students often try to master the process of internalizing ‘spoon-fed’ knowledge without concerning themselves about how to gain the knowledge themselves. They also want to get to a familiar procedure and use it to generate more mental security and reassurance in an often-threatening environment.

 

There is usually nothing wrong with that for some parts of a curriculum, but it is not enough! Sometimes this ‘feeding in of information’ is all that a teacher or lecturer wants to achieve. It runs counter to what your brilliant brain actually wants to do, or should yearn to do; which is to exercise vigorously and creatively as it works things out for itself.

 

A sadder truth yet, is than many learners and students carry the pattern of dependence into adulthood. They have no larger vision; nor do they have the tools to implement creative, divergent, innovative thinking.

 

Remember that, because for security and certainty the brain might have trained in formal institutions to be ‘brilliantly uncreative’, if we are to be creative our minds need to wean or even startle themselves out of their set routines. To consider such critical skills (processes) as ‘assessing priorities,’ ‘seeking alternatives’, ‘forming hypotheses’, generating new ideas’ we sometimes need to jolt ourselves a bit to get away from the single-solution approach. We must sometimes cross an emotional barrier.

 

So do investigate your own attitude of mind. Is it sufficiently determined to be brilliantly proactive in the wider world, or at least open to a divergence of ideas? Force yourself to seek alternatives if necessary.

 

In seeking creative solutions, perhaps first find the easiest, most obvious ideas and solutions and set them aside and out of the way. Then try for difficult-to-emerge alternative solutions, and seek amongst them for those that present ‘practical possibilities’. Do brainstorming to generate a range of ideas. Force yourself past your inhibitions if you must. Preferably, work in a supportive context free of criticism.

 

If creativity is the obvious context to your thinking, try the heuristics that follow below.

·         Prepare for creative thinking by pondering the issue or domain of concern to identify and clarify the nature of the task or problem. If possible, create a supportive, non-threatening human and natural environment free of criticism. Enjoying a lack of criticism assists one to generate initial ideas freely.

·         Break any chain of sequential linear thought, to move sideways and think laterally.

·         Incubate the theme by mulling over it and freeing the mind from sequential thought so that lateral and divergent thinking can emerge, perhaps at a subconscious level.

·         Look for diverse concepts, structures, processes, relationships and solutions that might assist the task in hand.

·         Add to your idea bank, subtract irrelevant ideas from it, reverse your thinking, look in very different domains, worlds, cultures or categories for answers, put ideas to varied uses, modify them, erase bad ones, complement them with additions and adapt the ideas to a variety of uses.

·         Suspend assumptions and defer judgment as you alter your perspective often. Restate your problem many times to get the most productive statement. Especially if you are conservative by nature, overcome any feelings of fear or embarrassment when seeking creative thoughts; just go for it. Think fluently and generate many ideas to have many options and become a creative thinker.

·         You might express your thoughts by such means as diagrams, mind-maps, illustrations and so on. See new and fresh links, relationships and connections. Look in distant places for fresh ideas and examine all sides of an issue. Use analogies, humour, absurdity and unexpected outcomes.

·         When working with ideas that seem most useful, try to rearrange and modify them.

·         Communicate openly with ‘interested others’, perhaps working in a group.

·         Do role-plays if they seem useful. Ask what, why, when, where, how and who questions.

·         Allow time for your ideas to incubate. Await or provoke inspiration or illumination, which typically comes in a flood of useful ideas.

·         Change perspective, pick up another track or even juxtapose ideas that are apparently unrelated to each other.

·         Generate a variety of creative hypotheses or novel, tentative solutions. Verify the solutions by perhaps testing them very methodically.

·         Define and pursue problems demanding creativity. Read widely, brainstorm ideas, and use mind- mapping.

·         Also use inductive reasoning (build up a principle or concept by considering the common features in many different examples related to it) and deductive reasoning (work from a principle to find things that it applies to)

·         Then instead of using convergent thinking that leads to a single conclusion, use divergent thinking that explodes out to many original conclusions or ideas.

·         And what about lateral thinking that leads into obscure byways you can explore by thought?

·         Analysis (taking something apart) and synthesis (putting parts together) are also very usable to generate fresh new ideas.

·         Finally use comparison, and see fresh, unusual relationships between apparently unrelated things.

Now, if you’ve never tried metacognition (that is, ‘thinking about your thinking’), it’s never too late to start. And, it’s great fun when you get into it. Above all; be a thinker!