This morning I was reflecting on creative thinking for my newsletter and decided to make a list of what came to me as it emerged, stopping after the first 50 concepts:
- Give your Creative Self space, time and attention
- Be curious and aware - wonder about, ponder and reflect
- Have more questions than answers
- Challenge assumptions and norms - your own, others, societies
- Get clarity about exactly what you are trying to solve or envision and why
- Turn problem statements into vision statements
- Record your thoughts and ideas
- Have brainstorming buddies and a creativity support team
- Break patterns and habits - consciously do something different
- Use the body - walk, dance, move in non-habitual ways - as a creative resource
- Surround yourself with diverse types of people and situations
- Use reverse or opposites thinking
- Look for the story behind or about something
- Meditate - cultivate presence and mindfulness
- Live in terms of exploration and discovery, not just solutions or right answers
- See uncertainty as an invitation to discover
- See mistakes as an invitation to create
- Suspend judgment as you explore and experiment
- Think in terms of "What if?" about seemingly obvious things
- Surround yourself with life-giving and inspiring people, images and objects
- Justify why something works even before you know why - make it up as you go along
- Tell your own Creativity Story and identify the beliefs you have about yourself as a creative person. Make up a second version with you as the SuperCreative Hero
- Experiment without needing it to work - let go of attachment to outcomes
- Use visual, metaphorical and analogical thinking - not just analytical
- Thinking terms of what works rather than the one right way
- Develop positive beliefs about creativity and you as a creator
- Self-creation - think of yourself as a Creator always recreating yourself
- Engage all of the senses - sight, touch, taste, smell, sound
- Use different types of music in the background while thinking
- Think of your vision or challenge in terms of attributes: shape, size, color, texture
- Use the S.C.A.M.P.E.R. technique with your ideas
- Read up on creative thinking techniques and DO them to get practice
- Learn to listen to your intuition to follow hunches and discern ideas
- Be wiling to break rules, and then break them again
- Cultivate your inner bon vivant - have fun, laugh, play
- Embrace, rather than avoid, ambiguity as an essential part of the creative process
- Allow time to stay immersed in the question
- Take improv theater classes to feel more comfortable creating in real time
- Animate concepts and ideas - endow them with human or other characteristics
- Write out the unique ways you already are creative
- Use, and value, the whole brain - including the visual, intuitive and kinesthetic
- Draw or paint concepts
- Create your own rituals
- Adopt alternative views of reality
- Pretend your are someone/thing else while problem solving or creating
- Embrace being wrong as a worthwhile part of the creative process
- Allow discomfort to be an acceptable part of the process
- Give time for divergence as well as convergence - and before it
- Value imagination as much as knowledge
- Finally, there is no substitute for Passion - find what is alive for you and create from there
Michelle James ©2008
A very good list! It also implies that one does not expect one single way to be sufficient, that there's no one answer, and we need to embrace the multitude. Just listing fifty elements instead of the usual magic/gimmick seven or twelve breaks through those common expectations.
Looking forward to following your blog!
Posted by: Antonio Dias | March 03, 2010 at 11:51 AM
Thanks so much, Antonio! Yes, I feel very strongly that there are as many "ways" to be creative as people can imagine...this list is just a few of them...
Posted by: Michelle James | March 04, 2010 at 11:27 AM
Michelle this is brilliant. This is a book, you've just outlined it.
Posted by: Gregg Fraley | January 24, 2011 at 08:50 AM
Thanks so much, Gregg! You know, I had considered that...thanks for this timely nudge to get to that sooner rather than later...
Posted by: Michelle | January 24, 2011 at 11:35 AM