Developing creative thinking skills
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
– Maya Angelou
Like other skills, creativity can be practised and developed. You can create the right environment for creativity to thrive and do thought exercises that strengthen your creativity. Like in the Maya Angelou quote above – “the more you use, the more you have”.
Reflect
- In what situations or environments do you feel the most creative?
- Can you replicate or cultivate those conditions intentionally?
How to stimulate creative thinking
Sleep on it.
Over the years, researchers have found that the REM sleep cycle boosts our creativity and problem-solving abilities, providing us with innovative ideas or answers to vexing dilemmas when we awaken. Keep a pen and paper by the bed so you can write down your nocturnal insights if they wake you up. It’s also important to get enough sleep to be in the right mindset to think creatively, most adults need seven to nine hours per night, as poor sleep is likely to result in reduced cognitive functions in general, including creativity thinking.
Move your body.
Studies indicate that exercise stimulates creative thinking and the resulting brainpower boost lasts for a few hours. Going for a walk, a swim, or hitting the gym, are all great ways to get your creativity flowing. It’s not always possible to go for a run when you need a creativity boost, though, so if you aren’t in a position to immediately start doing star jumps, try a few minutes of stretches.
Change location.
A change of scenery helps you look at things from a new perspective. Who wouldn’t want to spend a week in the mountains admiring nature and nurturing their creativity? But a much more realistic and economical option is to take your laptop to the local library, a cafe, or a park bench. If you can’t leave the house, you could try sitting in a different room for a while or moving your desk to another wall.
Let your mind wander.
Overthinking things can be a barrier to creative thinking. Far from being a waste of time, daydreaming has been found to be an essential part of generating new ideas. When you hit a mental wall, thinking about the problem or what you need to do can often become stressful, and you might find yourself going around in circles. As frustration builds, it’s hard for creativity to find a way in. If you’re stuck on a problem or creatively blocked, think about something else for a while and come back to it later.
Keep learning.
Creativity, innovation, and problem solving in one discipline can often be applied to another. Studying something far removed from your area of expertise is especially effective in helping you think in new ways. For example, the popularity of gamification in education was inspired by the success of the gaming industry and the realisation that games could make lessons more engaging and interactive, as well as helping knowledge retention.
Step outside your comfort zone.
Put yourself in situations that push you out of your comfort zone once in a while to fire up your brain. The novelty and excitement, and perhaps a little bit of fear, can offer a shift in perspective and open your mind to creative insights. You don’t need to do something extreme – you could try practising a language you’re learning with a new person, signing up to read poetry or give a talk, doing an escape room, or indoor rock climbing.
Keep a record.
Keep a notebook with you or use a notes app on your phone so that you always have a way to record fleeting thoughts. They’re sometimes the best ideas of all. Your notes are just for you until you decide to share your ideas, so try not to worry about what other people would say or judge your own ideas before they’re fully formed as this will block your creativity.
Put yourself in a (metaphorical) box.
To think outside the box, your creative process might benefit from being in one. Restrictions are important for creative thinking as they provide focus, direction, and purpose. Watch the video below to learn more about the power of creative constraints.
Reflect – Barriers to creative thinking
It’s not always possible to have the perfect conditions to stimulate your creativity.
Can you think of anything which might get in the way of people’s ability to think creatively?
Expand the section below to see some suggestions.
Some of these things you’ll be able to change, but others may be out of your control. Being aware of the barriers to creative thinking can help you understand why some days you feel ready to innovate and on other days you might hit a creative wall.
- Do many of the barriers in the section above apply to you and your life?
- Are there any changes you can make to allow for more creative thinking to take place?
Lateral thinking
What happens when you have the right environment set up to stimulate creative thinking, but nothing is happening? You could consider using lateral thinking techniques to help enhance your creative thinking process by breaking free of conventional approaches. Lateral thinking is an idea that was introduced by Edward de Bono in the 1960s. You might be familiar with it from the term ‘thinking outside of the box’, and it basically means not following traditional problem-solving procedures, and instead, coming up with more creative solutions. Let’s learn about some of the ways that lateral thinking can be employed.
Random stimulus
This technique involves introducing a random idea, object, or concept into your creative process.
Imagine you and your team work in the marketing department of a health snacks company. You are trying to come up with a name for new protein bar but you have hit a creative wall. To stimulate new and creative ideas, your team decides to introduce an unrelated object into your discussions.
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- A word generator is used to pick a random word and the generator picks the word ‘bulldog’.
- You and the team then try to find links between your product and the word picked.
- This leads the team to generate comparisons between the protein bar and the strength or tenacity of a bulldog.
- One member likes the idea of bulldogs being ‘rugged’ and ‘tenacious’ and how this could relate the product.
- The team takes that idea and brainstorms and ultimately comes up with the name ‘Rugged Dog Protein Bar’.
This process could also be used by choosing an unrelated image or phrase and looking for connections between your product and the chosen stimuli.
Role reversal
Role reversal requires you to adapt a different perspective or take on an alternative role.
Imagine that you’ve just set up a psychology practice in the inner city. You initially had quite a few clients accessing your services in person, but you’ve found that the majority of them don’t return after their initial consultation. You’ve hired professional staff who are excellent at their jobs and don’t overcharge, and you’re scheduling plenty of online consultations. You can’t figure out why you’re not getting more in-person clients.
To get to the root of the problem, you enter the office imagining yourself to be a new client instead of the owner. You see that the lighting in the reception area is low, and the walls are painted grey, creating a dark atmosphere. The reception area has a large window that looks out onto a busy street. You sit down in the chairs to wait, like a client would, and make accidental eye contact with someone walking past outside.
As you reflect, you realise that the dark environment might be considered gloomy by some people. Although the designers said it was trendy, it might not be conducive to a positive environment. You also realise that your clients’ privacy is not being protected, as the people passing by the windows of the office can see right in.
Through role reversal, you see your practice through your clients’ eyes and identify changes that could be made to improve their experience at your practice and also improve your bu
siness.
Cross-pollination
Cross-pollination involves taking ideas from unrelated fields and using them to solve problems or generate ideas.
For example, the producers of fitness apps sometimes use video-game style rewards to inspire their users to keep up their health kick. These include ‘level up’ when certain fitness milestones are reached and earning rewards for completing certain exercises. By using ideas from the gaming industry, training apps have become more engaging for users, and profitable for producers.
Another example is taking inspiration from nature. A sportswear designer might observe how well sharks move through water, which could inspire them to find out what it is about the shark’s physiology that allows them to do that. When the designer discovers that shark skin is incredibly smooth and allows them to reduce drag as they swim, the designer gets the idea to create a material with similar properties for wetsuits for surfers and divers.
Challenging assumptions
Assumptions are everywhere. Everybody makes them, every day. Assumptions are based on our experiences and beliefs and what we expect to be true. Some assumptions can be useful. For example, I might assume that if I walk down a dark street in the middle of the night, something bad might happen — this assumption may help me stay safe. However, there are other assumptions that can block to innovation and creativity.
One such assumption is that a business should continue to do business in a certain way because that’s the way it’s always been done. This is what is called a conventional perspective or an established approach. A great way to spark creativity is to challenge long-held assumptions like this to come up with alternative views. Here is an example:
Conventional perspective: You run a supermarket that provides ‘reusable’ plastic bags for customers. You know these are not great for the environment, but you know that customers will not shop at your store if there are no plastic bags for their belongings because it will be too inconvenient. You don’t change anything.
Alternative view: Customers will appreciate your commitment to the environment if you stop providing plastic bags and provide them with a more environmentally friendly alternative. Even if they need to pay a small amount for the bags, they will continue to shop at the store, and in fact, the store’s green initiatives will be a point of difference to your competitors and may attract new customers.
Personal creativity exercises
Doing daily creative warm-up exercises may help you become a more flexible thinker and help you approach work challenges with less fear and a more playful attitude. Here are some exercises to get your started, and you can find many more ideas online.
- Creative Adaptation. Take any household product you use daily, such as a coffee cup, a hairbrush, a toothbrush, a pen, a notebook, a laptop, etc. Imagine you are going to change the product and that the change you make will provide a new function and value to the user. Choose to either add something to the product or take is away. What can it now do or be used for? For example, you might add another handle to a mug, making it easier to hold or making it into a sippy cup for toddlers (if you also added a lid) or you might remove the handle on the mug altogether, turning it into a travel mug that will fit in a car cup holder.
- Write a Six-Word Story. According to literary legend, Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest authors of all time, was challenged to write a complete story in six words. Never one to shy from a challenge, he came up with the famously haunting text: ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn.’ Draw on your creative thinking skills to write your own complete six-word story.
- Packaging Yourself. If you were a product, available for sale at your favourite retail store, what store would you be sold in? What would the packaging look like? What would your catchy product title be? What would it say on the box? This is not just an exercise in creative thinking, but in establishing your own personal brand in a fun and inventive way.
- Find Creative Uses for Everyday Objects. A pen is just a pen…or is it? What do you have around you right now that could be used for something completely different? Alton Brown, the chef who knows his science, refuses to buy objects that have just one use. He finds ways to use kitchen tools in the most inventive ways. So, what can you do with that stapler, the pair of scissors, or that old bookend?
Sources:
- Strimaityte, A. (2019, November 26). We might think creativity is a talent and not something everyone can have, but luckily that is not true. Creativity is a muscle that you can train. https://innovationlab.net/blog/9-best-exercises-to-spark-creativity-in-ideation/
- Sugget, P. (2020, February 6). Creative exercises to get the wheels turning. https://www.thebalancecareers.com/creative-brain-exercises-39352
Content on this page in the ‘How to stimulate your creative thinking’ section has been adapted from College Success by Lumen Learning, licensed under CC BY (Original: Creative Thinking Skills by Linda Bruce, Lumen Learning, licensed under CC BY).
Content on this page in the ‘Barriers to creativity’ and ‘Personal creativity exercises’ sections has been adapted from Chapter 2: Thinking Creatively – Leading Innovation, 2nd Edition by Kerri Shields is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA, except where otherwise noted.
Sources
Angelou, M. (1989). Conversations with Maya Angelou (J. M. Elliot, Ed.). University Press of Mississippi.
Dam, R. F. and Teo, Y. S. (2020, August 16). Understand the Elements and Thinking Modes that Create Fruitful Ideation Sessions. Interaction Design Foundation – IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/understand-the-elements-and-thinking-modes-that-create-fruitful-ideation-sessions
TED-Ed video: The power of creative constraints by Brandon Rodriguez, embedded from YouTube, unless otherwise indicated TED-Ed talks are licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
World Economic Forum (2021, February 23). Exercise not only helps with mental health – it makes us more creative too, say scientists. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/exercise-mental-health-creativity/
