Creative Thinking: What is it, Why is it Important, and How to Develop
it?
So what is creative thinking?
Creative thinking is the process of nurturing your imagination allowing you to “think out of the box”. Being able to train your mind to think creatively helps you invent, problem-solve, create and communicate in fresh, new ways.
Creative thinkers are in high demand in the job market and creative thinking is one of the key skills needed in future jobs according to a recent report by the World Economic Forum.
“Everyone is born creative” – Hugh Macleod
A group of CEOs were asked “What is the skill you most value in your people?” as part of a survey, they said creativity, the ability to solve problems, come up with new solutions, and use brainpower to figure things out.
Everyone Should Become a Creative Thinker
Being able to train your mind to think creatively helps you invent, problem-solve, create and communicate in fresh, new ways.
Importance of creative thinking
1. Thinking creatively adds value not only to your life but also to the life of others. Translating your thoughts into beautiful work, projects ‘yourself’ clearly into the world you live in.
2. Creative thinking helps you become self relying and more confident. You can think on your own without the help of others making you a stronger, truly-happy person.
3. Being creative helps you express your feelings allowing you to be whatever you want to be in this world.
6 Ways to Apply Creative Thinking in Your Everyday Life
Successful people today are great creative thinkers.
The following are 6 ways to apply creative thinking in your life:
1. Risk Taking: Being adventurous and ready for life’s challenges pushes you a step forward to creativity.
2. Playing: Trying to play and be funny at times gives you the chance to manipulate the given problem accordingly to what you need.
3. Regularly asking Why: Being curious and nosy, wanting to ask questions all the time opens endless doors and possibilities.
4. Generating large quantity of ideas: By producing a big number of possible solutions, a smart, unique, unexpected answer might be discovered.
5. Day Dreaming.
6. Reading.
Thinking Hats: Approach Creative Thinking by de Bono
6 Thinking Hats – by de Bono :- the 6 thinking hats and what each color represents:
1. “White Hat”– stating facts and information.
2. “Yellow Hat”– looking at the bright side, being optimistic and positive.
3. “Red Hat”– expressing feelings and emotions.
4. “Blue Hat”– managing and controlling.
5. “Green Hat”– exploring other alternatives.
6. “Black Hat”– being realistic and practical.
The above 6 hats, when combined together, allows your mind to think clearly and objectively.
5 steps involved in Lateral Thinking:
1. Change the focus of your thinking
2. Break free from limits of traditional logical thinking of reason.
3. Develop new ideas and shape them to fit the situation you have on hand.
4. Use diverse unrelated data to help you come up with new concepts.
5. Look beyond obvious alternatives.
Creative thinking is the ability to free your mind to create, interpret and visualize possibilities.
The following are 8 things you are advised to avoid in order to be able to
unleash your creativity:
– Complain about a problem.
– Worry about what others think.
– Stay in your ‘comfort zone’.
– School limiting your creativity.
– Hold back when you have a good idea.
– Ego.
– Stop learning.
– Assume certain perceptions
Conclusion :-
Ellis Paul Torrance is considered the father of creativity. He developed benchmarks for quantifying creativity which proved that IQ is not only measures of intelligence. EQ plays a vital role.
Thomas Edison:- An icon for innovation and creative thinker. His creative thinking came problem solving thinking.
Leave a Reply