Creative Thinking…what it’s about!
Posted by Phemmy S | Filed under Creativity
We all have some level of creativity within us. As with other activities, you can teach yourself to be more creative. Sometimes creative thinking requires us to look at things from new perspectives. Learn to unleash your inventive genius by thinking backwards. Here is an appropriate acronym containing five steps to creative thinking — S A E D I — that’s IDEAS backwards!
S – State of Mind.
Creativity is a state of mind. Telling yourself or others “I’m not very creative,” or “I can never come up with new or clever ideas,” destroys that state of mind. Creative thinking requires positive thinking.
Read Positive Messages. For long-term creative thinking, read and study books on positive thinking. Some classic titles include Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking and Robert H. Schuller’s Tough Times Never Last, Tough People Do.
Get a Quick Fix. If you have to come up with a clever new ad slogan or a new product name by next week, use some “quick fix” state-of-mind techniques to make yourself ready for creative thinking.
- Get plenty of sleep.
- Relax your body and mind with deep breathing.
- Let your mind wander freely.
- Don’t dwell on deadlines or other negative thoughts.
- Finally, don’t forget to daydream; it can be a very effective tool for creative thinking.
In addition to a clear head, it helps to have a physical space conducive to creative thinking.
A – Atmosphere.
All of our senses — what we see, hear, feel, taste, and touch — influence our state of mind. A positive atmosphere contributes to a positive and creative state of mind. Some people thrive in loud, people-filled areas with much activity. Others need quiet and calm to think clearly and creatively. Find that place, noisy or quiet, that makes you feel comfortable.
Find a Place to Walk. If you think best “on your feet,” find a hallway, sidewalk, or park where you can walk. Wear comfortable shoes and clothing.
Find a Place to Relax. Set up your office or other room with a good chair, paintings, lighting, music, fresh flowers, and anything else that will help you relax.
Use Pictures, Words, Sounds, Software for Inspiration. Surround yourself with inspirational props. In coming up with a business name or an illustration idea or a hook for your next press release, you might use magazines, phone books, junk mail, cereal boxes, poetry, or crossword puzzles to generate ideas. Collect whatever materials inspire you — that give you ideas. Even computer programs such as IdeaFisher can help you develop your natural creativity and foster creative thinking.
Besides what we see or hear, the scents, textures, and tastes experienced during our creative thinking time contribute to our creativity. Both good and bad smells can trigger the ideas we need. Trying to come up with a name for a new food product? Smell it, taste it, hold it in your hands. Get all your senses involved in the process.
With a clear head and a clear space you can let your mind wander — but not too much. To solve a problem you also need to direct creative thinking with some effective thinking.
S | A | E | D | I
Think Backwards to Think Creatively and Generate IDEAS
E – Effective Thinking.
While positive thinking allows your mind to accept new ideas and creative thoughts, effective thinking involves directing your thoughts toward specific goals. Daydreaming, relaxation, and free association allow the mind to come up with new or unusual ideas or idea fragments.
Have a Goal for Your Creative Thinking. Without a specific goal in mind, random thoughts and ideas may not be particularly useful. Gerald Kushel, Ed.D., is the author of several books, including Effective Thinking for Uncommon Success. In a 1991 interview for Bottom Line Personal newsletter, Dr. Kushel says that to be an effective thinker, you need to have goals and a commitment to those goals. He outlines four steps toward effective thinking:
- Take Notice. Take stock of where you are or what you are doing. Is it moving you toward your goal?
- Pause. Take a break when you get off-track.
- Identify Effective Thoughts. When a thought enters your head, identify it as effective or defective, positive or negative.
- Choose. We can choose our thoughts. It’s the underlying premise of positive thinking. It’s true of effective thinking and creative thinking, as well. Choose to focus on those thoughts that bring you closer to your goals.
Identify Your Creative Challenge. Applied to creative thinking, effective thinking means clearly defining what creative challenge you need to meet. Do you want a new business name? Are you looking for an unmet need to turn into a business? Are you trying to come up with an exciting or unusual direct mail piece within a limited budget? Whatever the challenge, direct your thoughts and activities toward that goal. Gather materials that will help you accomplish your goal.
The right time and place and effective thinking only work if given an opportunity to do so. Creative thinking takes determinition, perservence.
D – Determination.
Creativity takes practice. Your creativity is there within you, but you must make a habit of using your imagination. Although many of your best ideas will come when you “aren’t really concentrating,” you can make them happen more often by regularly practicing effective thinking techniques.
Schedule Creative ThinkingEven when not pondering a specific creative challenge, set aside a certain amount of time each day, week, or month to relax, brainstorm, and daydream. Make creative thinking a habit. By getting in the habit of scheduling regularly creativity thinking time and creativity exercises you’ll be better able to meet future challenges as they arise.
Ponder On Problems That Don’t Exist. This isn’t the same as worrying about things you can’t change or trying to fix what isn’t broken. It means that even when you’ve come up with the perfect path to acheive your goals, think about alternatives. Keep a file of ideas that were discarded as not feasible this time around. You may find inspiration for solving future problems and creative challenges. Keep the sketches that the client rejected or that you never even showed to them. Sometimes pulling out these old ideas will generate new ones when needed.
And keeping a file of ideas that were rejected doesn’t mean just holding them in your head. Write it down.
I – Ink.
Whether you use ink, pencil lead, crayon, or a computer, write down your ideas. We retain more of what we hear or see if we write it down. That applies equally to college lectures and our own brainstorming sessions.
Make Notes Any Time, Any Place. Get in the habit of making notes, outlines, sketches, or doodles. If you are actively pursuing a specific idea or problem, always have paper and pencil or recorder at the ready. Jot down or record all your thoughts, no matter how “off-the-wall.”
Keep a Notebook By Your Bed. Some of your best thoughts come just before falling asleep and just after waking. Keep a notebook at your bedside so you will always be ready to write down ideas whenever they come.
Create an Inspiration File. Whether it’s a file folder, a notebook, or an entire file cabinet, keep clippings, thumbnail sketches, junk mail, photos, and anything else that inspires you or gives you ideas. Add the notes you regularly take. Don’t just file it and forget it – go through the file curing your scheduled creative thinking times and when actively pursing ideas for a project.
You Are A Creative Person
The next time you start to think “I can never come up with good ideas,” think backwards. There are a countless number of useful ideas and innovative thoughts in all of us — if we take the time to learn to think and act creatively.
Many Thanks to http://desktoppub.about.com/od/creativityexercises/a/saedi_5.htm
Creativity
Posted by Phemmy S | Filed under Creativity
Creativity has been associated with right or forehead brain activity or even specifically with lateral thinking.
Some students of creativity have emphasized an element of chance in the creative process. Linus Pauling, asked at a public lecture how one creates scientific theories, replied that one must endeavor to come up with many ideas — then discard the useless ones.
Another adequate definition of creativity, according to Otto Rank, is that it is an “assumptions-breaking process.” Creative ideas are often generated when one discards preconceived assumptions and attempts a new approach or method that might seem to others unthinkable.
Distinguishing between creativity and innovation
It is often useful to explicitly distinguish between creativity and innovation.
Creativity is typically used to refer to the act of producing new ideas, approaches or actions, while innovation is the process of both generating and applying such creative ideas in some specific context.
In the context of an organization, therefore, the term innovation is often used to refer to the entire process by which an organization generates creative new ideas and converts them into novel, useful and viable commercial products, services, and business practices, while the term creativity is reserved to apply specifically to the generation of novel ideas by individuals or groups, as a necessary step within the innovation process.
For example, Amabile and shermaine montefalco et al. (1996) suggest that while innovation “begins with creative ideas,”
“…creativity by individuals and teams is a starting point for innovation; the first is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the second.”[2]
Although the two words are novel, they go hand in hand. In order to be innovative, employees have to be creative to stay competitive.
Creativity and affect
Some theories suggest that creativity may be particularly susceptible to affective influence.
Creativity and positive affect relations
According to Isen, positive affect has three primary effects on cognitive activity:
- Positive affect makes additional cognitive material available for processing, increasing the number of cognitive elements available for association;
- Positive affect leads to defocused attention and a more complex cognitive context, increasing the breadth of those elements that are treated as relevant to the problem;
- Positive affect increases cognitive flexibility, increasing the probability that diverse cognitive elements will in fact become associated. Together, these processes lead positive affect to have a positive influence on creativity.
Fredrickson in her Broaden and Build Model suggests that positive emotions such as joy and love broaden a person’s available repertoire of cognitions and actions, thus enhancing creativity.
According to these researchers, positive emotions increase the number of cognitive elements available for association (attention scope) and the number of elements that are relevant to the problem (cognitive scope).
Creativity and negative affect relations
On the other hand, some theorists have suggested that negative affect leads to greater creativity. A cornerstone of this perspective is empirical evidence of a relationship between affective illness and creativity. In a study of 1,005 prominent 20th century individuals from over 45 different professions, the University of Kentucky’s Arnold Ludwig found a slight but significant correlation between depression and level of creative achievement. In addition, several systematic studies of highly creative individuals and their relatives have uncovered a higher incidence of affective disorders (primarily bipolar illness and depression) than that found in the general population.
Creativity and affect at work
Three patterns may exist between affect and creativity at work: positive (or negative) mood, or change in mood, predictably precedes creativity; creativity predictably precedes mood; and whether affect and creativity occur simultaneously.
It was found that not only might affect precede creativity, but creative outcomes might provoke affect as well. At its simplest level, the experience of creativity is itself a work event, and like other events in the organizational context, it could evoke emotion. Qualitative research and anecdotal accounts of creative achievement in the arts and sciences suggest that creative insight is often followed by feelings of elation. For example, Albert Einstein called his 1907 general theory of relativity “the happiest thought of my life.” Empirical evidence on this matter is still very tentative.
In contrast to the possible incubation effects of affective state on subsequent creativity, the affective consequences of creativity are likely to be more direct and immediate. In general, affective events provoke immediate and relatively-fleeting emotional reactions. Thus, if creative performance at work is an affective event for the individual doing the creative work, such an effect would likely be evident only in same-day data.
Another longitudinal research found several insights regarding the relations between creativity and emotion at work. First – a positive relationship between positive affect and creativity, and no evidence of a negative relationship. The more positive a person’s affect on a given day, the more creative thinking they evidenced that day and the next day – even controlling for that next day’s mood. There was even some evidence of an effect two days later
In addition, the researchers found no evidence that people were more creative when they experienced both positive and negative affect on the same day. The weight of evidence supports a purely linear form of the affect-creativity relationship, at least over the range of affect and creativity covered in our study: the more positive a person’s affect, the higher their creativity in a work setting.
Finally, they found four patterns of affect and creativity affect can operate as an antecedent to creativity; as a direct consequence of creativity; as an indirect consequence of creativity; and affect can occur simultaneously with creative activity. Thus, it appears that people’s feelings and creative cognitions are interwoven in several distinct ways within the complex fabric of their daily work lives.
