How to be More Creative
Here is my list on how to be more creative:
1. creativity comes from an overarching need to be creative; a financial crisis, for example, or a war can cause an explosion in creativity;
2. creativity comes from a total mind and body focus on a problem, sometimes over an extended period of time;
3. an extended period of time will also allow your sub-conscious to work on the problem;
4. there are three kinds of thinking— linear, lateral and quantum thinking (http://www.dramatispersonae.org/OrderedThinking.htm)-- only the latter two lead to 'creative' insights;
5. people need to avoid alcohol and drugs and get regular exercise to realize their maximum potential in this regard;
6. people need to be open to new experiences and life time learning— a lot of creativity comes from observing how others are doing things and then realizing that something you learned in a completely different field of endeavour could be applied in a unconventional way to this seemingly unrelated task at hand;
7. creativity comes from a deeply felt human need to be creative— it is intrinsic to the species and is a powerful drive just like sex and money and ambition and power;
8. creativity comes from SEEING and QUESTIONING— t is a way of training yourself not to accept what everyone else does simply because that is the way it is done and the way it has always been done;
9. creativity comes from
being able to reduce problems to their basic building blocks— creativity comes
from simplicity and clarity not complexity-- even Einstein's theory of general
relativity reduces to a simple proposition (when explained by the proper
person);
10. creativity is contagious
and is inspired by contact with others who are upbeat, positive, creative
types;
11. however, creativity
should not be confused with enthusiasm— truly creative ideas are not full of
holes;
12. creativity is often
enhanced by verbalization even if that verbalization takes the form that it did
in the film Castaway where Tom Hanks
has to verbalize his ideas to his ‘doll’, Wilson—Tom starts making better and
more creative decisions after he invents ‘someone’ to talk to;
13. put things down in a written
form— that can take the form of a flow chart, a written description, a
spreadsheet, whatever— the discipline of writing something down and the
formality of it helps complete your ideas;
14. read a lot;
15. creativity has two dimensions—creativity that changes the technology used in a product or service and creativity that affects the technical processes of making or delivering a product or service—most of us think only about technological changes but technical changes are probably at least as important*;
16. remember that ideas are (relatively) cheap— there are around 35 million clever Americans in their basements at any one time thinking up cool new ideas— so while creativity is important, so is execution.
Copyright.
Dr. Bruce M. Firestone, B.Eng.(Civil), M.Eng.-Sci., PhD.,
* For
example, an entrepreneur I know in the moving and packing supplies industry
built the number one firm in his city in just six years by being creative in an
industry not known for creativity. He did seemingly simple things like offering
to deliver packing supplies to the customers of all the moving companies rather
than delivering it to them. In that way, sales people for moving companies (who
were previously re-delivering boxes, wrapping paper, tape, bubble wrap, etc. to
their clients) could spend more time selling moves and less time delivering
boxes to people who had purchased moves from them. As a result of this
innovation, 98% of all local movers became clients within two years. Creativity
applies to the processes of business
as much as to its technology.
http://www.dramatispersonae.org/TwentyFiveSteps.htm
http://www.dramatispersonae.org/Creativity.htm
http://www.dramatispersonae.org/