3 Techniques To Be More Creative

Creativity is one of the human characteristics most valued and recognized by society. The happy or optimistic person is not exalted or rewarded, but the creative person is. There are numerous awards and recognitions for those who find ingenious solutions to difficult problems or those who are capable of illuminating novels, films and works of art of great sensitivity.

What do Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, Miguel de Cervantes, Salvador Dalí, Bill Gates or Steven Spielberg have in common? We recognize them easily, as they have shone for their ingenuity and their creative capacity in many different fields of science, the arts and technology.

The primitive man who discovered fire did so using his creativity. The light bulb, the telephone, penicillin, nuclear energy … the great inventions of humanity were born from the creative minds of people who had a revolutionary idea and dared to carry it out.

Sometimes creativity allows us to take familiar elements and combine them in an original way, while at other times it manifests as the ability to create something innovative out of nothing.

The creative is associated with a type of divergent thinking that allows us to continually break the patterns of experience. The creative mind is in constant operation and questions aspects that, in general, are accepted and taken as socially valid.

Creativity techniques: open your mind!

People who stand out for their creative talent …

• They tend to open their mind to new experiences.
• His thinking is usually more flexible and tolerant of ambiguity.
• They resist frustration better.
• They are very independent people , with high levels of motivation and especially sensitive and receptive.
• In addition, they are generally comfortable taking risks.

But the creative process is not only the heritage of great artists, scientists and geniuses. We are all born creative and, like all human qualities, creativity can be developed and enhanced.

When it comes to enhancing and developing our own creative abilities, we can resort to simple thinking techniques, such as these that I present below and that we can practice individually or in groups.

Six Thinking Hats

Developed by the psychologist Edward de Bono, it is very useful when solving a problem, since it allows us to face it from different points of viewand come up with creative solutions. Using this technique, the thought expands to its full extent.

Let’s imagine we have six different colored hats. Each represents a specific way of approaching a problem, a different style of thinking. Now, let’s imagine that we successively place them on our heads and try to find solutions to the problem by thinking only and exclusively as the hat we are wearing indicates.

• White hat : we focus only on the available data.
• Red hat : we use intuition, feelings and emotions.
• Black hat : we are cautious and highlight the negative aspects of the problem.
• Yellow hat : we think positive and find the benefits.
• Green hat : we use creative thinking, we open our minds to associations that we would not normally make. We improvise, we use our imagination.
• Blue hat is the closing hat. We summarize and establish our own conclusions regarding the problem.

Mental maps

The psychologist Tony Buzan developed, in the mid-1970s, a powerful idea to enhance mental creativity: the mind map, a tool that allows us to stimulate and organize our ideas around specific problems in a graphic and descriptive way.

The end result of this representation on paper is a kind of cell with many branches that symbolize different strands of thought.

To put the mind map into practice, we must write in the center of a sheet of paper the word that defines the main issue we want to analyze. We can also make a drawing. Next, it is necessary to add all the ideas that we relate to that central word, using lines and branches of different sizes, shapes and colors.

If we want to make it easier, there are computer programs that allow us to make mental maps directly on the computer screen.

Brainstorming

Another technique for fueling ingenuity is brainstorming , or brainstorming, developed by publicist Alex Osborn in the 1930s. This tool is especially useful for group work, as it is really simple and effective. We can apply it when, with a group of friends or co-workers, we want to solve a problem or start a project.

Brainstorming consists of saying and writing down all the ideas that come to mind, without any barrier. Any criticism is prohibited and any contribution is welcome.

• It is necessary to set a work time ; the goal will be to get as many ideas as possible, the more exposed the better.
• We can start with a previous warm-up by writing down, for example, objects that can be bought in a stationery store.
• Once all the ideas have arisen, we can begin to work with them, qualifying and improving some and discarding others, with the participation of all the members of the group.
• We can also add new concepts that come to mind.
• It is about polishing all the ideas that we have generated until we are left with the best and most complete.