How to Develop Creative Thinking Skills

Understanding What Creativity Really Is

Creativity is the ability to combine existing knowledge and experience in new ways and to produce valuable ideas and solutions. It does not belong to artists and designers alone; it is an indispensable skill for everyday problem solving and for improving the way work gets done.

The Harvard researcher Teresa Amabile explains creativity in terms of three components: expertise, creative thinking skill, and intrinsic motivation. Expertise supplies the raw material of creation, thinking skills provide the methods for combining that material, and motivation keeps creative activity going. Creativity, in other words, is not an inborn talent. Anyone can raise it by cultivating these elements.

The Walls That Block Creative Thinking

Functional Fixedness

For example, a state in which you can see something only in terms of its conventional use or method is called functional fixedness. Hold the fixed notion that a paper clip is a thing for holding paper together, and other uses for a paper clip become hard to think of. Deliberately taking that fixedness off is the starting point of creative thinking.

Fear of Evaluation

The fear of "what if people think this is a strange idea" is creativity's greatest enemy. Genuinely novel ideas look odd at first. The key is to build, inside yourself first, an environment where you can think freely without minding how you will be judged.

The Inertia of Thought

Because the human brain puts a premium on efficiency, it tends to think along familiar patterns. Commute by the same route every day and do your work the same way, and your thinking becomes fixed as well. Deliberately breaking the pattern is what stimulates creativity.

Five Exercises to Train Creative Thinking

1. Take In Knowledge From Other Fields

Creativity is known to arise most readily where knowledge from different fields intersects. Frans Johansson called this the "Medici effect." Reading books in genres you do not normally touch, talking with people from other industries, taking up a new hobby: actions that widen the range of your knowledge raise your creativity.

2. Brainstorm on Your Own

For instance, set a theme and practice writing out as many ideas as you can in ten minutes. Put quantity ahead of quality and write down even the most far-fetched idea. This training in "divergent thinking" increases the number of drawers you have to pull ideas from.

3. Set Constraints

Ideas move more easily under moderate constraints than in a situation that is completely free. Told that anything goes, the brain cannot narrow its search range, whereas once conditions are given it starts trying out combinations inside that frame. By deliberately setting a constraint, such as "how would I solve this on a budget of zero" or "how would I explain this using only three words," you get to ideas that differ from the conventional ones.

4. Go for a Walk

A Stanford University study published in 2014 reported that people who had walked came up with about 60% more ideas on average than people who stayed seated, on divergent tasks such as freely listing uses for a single object. The same study, however, did not find a difference of that size on the kind of task whose answer converges on a single point. Walking works in the direction of increasing the number of things that occur to you. Walking outdoors was particularly effective. The rhythm of walking is thought to activate the brain's default mode network and to promote free association.

5. Think From a Different Point of View

By intentionally taking a different point of view, asking how a child would think about this or what an alien would make of this problem, you can break through fixed assumptions. Edward de Bono's "Six Thinking Hats" is another effective framework for switching viewpoints.

Habits That Nurture Creativity in Daily Life

Sharpen Your Observation

The scenery along your commute, how people behave in a cafe, the package design of a product: hints for creation overflow in ordinary life. The habit of asking "why is it like this" and "is there not a better way" trains a creative eye.

Record Your Ideas

Good ideas surface suddenly and vanish at once. Keep a memo app on your smartphone or a small notebook with you at all times, and make a habit of recording what occurs to you right away.

Secure Time to Be Bored

When you are always looking at your smartphone, your brain is kept busy processing information and no room is left for free thinking. By deliberately making time away from digital devices, you create the margin in which the brain can spread out associations freely. Practical guides for enhancing creativity are also worth consulting.

Key Points of This Article

• Know the concrete steps for the walls that block creative thinking
• Five exercises to train creative thinking
• Get hold of the knack of the habits that nurture creativity in daily life
• Know how to become free of functional fixedness

Balancing Creativity and Execution

Producing ideas on its own does not create value. Just as important as creative thinking is the power of execution that gives an idea shape. Out of a hundred ideas, putting one or two into practice is enough. What matters is to keep the cycle of ideation and execution turning. Rather than waiting for the perfect idea, the attitude of trying something out even when it is incomplete is what leads to creative results.