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Creativity is a sought-after commodity among employers and those seeking personal or professional fulfillment. It comes in handy not only while concocting works of art and literature but also in planning a corporate event or devising a new business strategy. Some people seem more naturally open to new ideas and able to put them to innovative uses. Many of these individuals also tend to be a little…well…different, as Harvard psychologist Shelley Carson wrote in the May/June 2011 Scientific American MIND. But you don't have to be eccentric to be creative. You don't even have to be born with a knack for innovation.
Psychologists, artists and others have developed tactics and advice for unlocking people's creative potential (see, for example, "Let Your Creativity Soar" by Mariette DiChristina, John Houtz, Julia Cameron and Robert Epstein in Scientific American MIND, June/July 2008). In her recent book, Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity and Innovation in Your Life (Jossey-Bass, 2010), Carson outlined seven different "brainsets," or mental frameworks, that facilitate original thinking along with tips on how to cultivate these states of mind. Depending on your personality, some of the brainsets below may feel more comfortable than others. The idea here, though, Carson wrote, is to expand your mental horizons by venturing into your discomfort zone. The following slides describe each brainset, along with exercises that will help you train your brain to think in these mind-expanding ways.
View the slide show on the 7 ways to boost your creativity.
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25 Comments
Add CommentAgain, I am going to disagree with you. Creativity is not a brain set created by man (you can do it, but the person is going to be very uncomfortable and feel degraded), you are born with the ability, just as a good surgeon is born and that ability is recognized at a very early age. If the parent or teacher helps the child develop that creativity, at that young age, the child can, and most often do, become very successful...remember Tiger Woods and golf, and Michelangelo and art?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJames, your examples of Tiger Woods and Michelangelo only confirm that ultimate creativity requires combination of many factors including good genetics, early exposure to the activity and a lot of of work. Like every math function max of creativity is reached at the certain optimum values of multiple parameters. On the other hand, and that is what is that article about, it's absolutely clear that any ability will increase with adequate training. Genetics is not enough and is is not a guarantee that you will reach your maximum creativity in your life. I met several math geniuses in my life, winners of International Math Olympiads with an excellent early age abilities, who never realized themselves as creative scientists later in life due to the lack of regular exercise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can do it with three straight lines
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA question: How would you recognize who is going to be a good surgeon early in life?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat aside, I must disagree with the idea that the quality of a human being can be determined solely by genetics. Since it is possible to build up muscle through excercise and knowledge through education, why should it be impossible to build up creativity through some form of practice?
A very good set of ideas, but I am not sure I agree with them all. Stopping extraneous thoughts is good for getting a job done, but I is actually anti-originality. It is those random thought which are the basis of creativity. Battling boredom by trying to do a job as quickly as possible is another efficiency booster, but trying to think of alternate ways to do a job, like Hercules cleaning the Aegean stables by diverting a river, is more likely to increase creativity. I also think that cultivating contrariness should also be included in the list. A study I read some years ago claimed that the top creative people answered word association tests with opposites: up for down, fast for slow, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut to make this a true science, what is needed is to test these ideas by having a study where people try each of these methods and see if their creativity is increased.
White Might: you should include your solution rather than just making a claim. (My 3-line solution is that the lines must be very long (since there is nothing that says the lines must go through the exact center of the dots). As the size of the dots approaches zero, the length of the lines required approaches infinity).
Inspirations have I none, just to touch the flaming dove
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Bowie
Image 2 description describes my state of mind all the time-I am an artist, and this is the way I look at the world, fascinated everyday by clouds, trees, the little things of spring as the environment changes, and I see everyone else hellbent on some mission for family or money or job, and I think they miss the greatest wonder of all, the universe we live in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou might be pre-programmed to do what you have to do in this life. My Father, a marvellous Music Teacher, was hell-bent to turn me into another Mozart.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn my sixth Birthday I announced that I was going to invent Gravity Control when I was BIG. Great hilarity amongst the guests, all Teachers and Principals.
My Father started me on the violin at age three, Piano at four, Alto violin at six and a friend Organist started me at that at age ten. Unfortunately he discovered that I knew all about the organ. Going home with me I told my father that I had played it at age four in a church that did not have electricity, how he was dressed in Gold Velours and had a white wig and that the people behind me were all laughing. "Which Church was that?"
My father told me that I was a liar and ordered me to go to my room and write one thousand times: "I must not be a liar". Then the organist told him, who that happened to.
My Mother came to my room to tell me that I did not have to write those thousand lines. Then we got visits from French, Belgian, German, English and famous musicians, who all gave me tests. Simple ones, like play a piece of music using four or five notes.
I wanted to be an engineer. No, my father was not going to pay a cent for that, I had to go into music. Two hours every day Piano and violin, plus all the High School work (24 subjects all the time).
Then we were liberated in 1944 and I joined the Netherlands Marines, trained in the USA for the invasion of Japan. I came back after my stint in Indonesia and became a self-taught electronics engineer and Techwriter.
I emigrated to Canada, worked as a Technician, Techwriter and Engineer and discovered in 1967 the technology of the Flying Saucer, GRAVITY CONTROL.
Offered to Nasa, it was misused by Propulsion Engineers and declared not suitable for Space Travel.
It could have been applied to the Shuttles that thereupon would have been able to fly without rockets all over the place for another thirty years at low cost.
An invention is first ridiculed ( I had that till I got the patent), then it is attacked, (these Nasa guys were probably programmed to do that) and eventually it will be declared self-evident when I construct a real Flying Saucer. The nay-sayers will probably go down in the history books as a bunch of stupids..
"just as a good surgeon is born and that ability is recognized at a very early age"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a 7 year old who cheats at golf and has a lawyer .. could he be surgeon material?
I think you're confusing your observations of creative people with a prescription for creative behavior. You have described, for example, many of the things I do naturally as a creative person. I'm not sure that means someone could perform consciously according to your description and, therefore, "become" creative, however.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI want that 5 minutes of my life back. Worthless.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGeorgeVth - you're a true wonder-tracker.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can't have your 5 minutes of life back unless you get with ennui and use his gravity control to travel through time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can do it with 1 straight line. All I have to do is warp the space/time continuum. Without cheating though, it takes me 4 lines.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have a very simplistic view of reality. All of my early assessments said I would be a factory worker on an assembly line. I write fairly sophisticated software. As usual, your post shows a very narrow view of reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSteve3 - you are aiming too low. If he cheats at golf and has a lawyer while that young he will obviously be either the CEO of a mega bank or the President of the country.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we all need to learn and practice a lot more humility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it's interesting how your recommendations are very structured and linear. In my experience (as a chief creative officer myself) it's necessary to have structure around the brainstorming process, but the the true creativity comes when analyzing the ideas and delineating the best from the rest. Our process for our clients, when creating creative ideas for campaigns, requires us to push past the initial ideas and mash them up in a different way. To me, true creativity is exercised when you can recognize unexpected patterns in ideas that create exciting twists on concepts that may have not been paired together before. This skill requires critical thinking coupled with time to allow your mind to venture out in an imaginative way and mentally explore the possibilities of many ideas. Once those are out and down on paper, it takes m ore critical thinking to connect with the ones that will garner attention. Creativity, to me, is connecting with that place that lives inside every human being that reminds them of what it's like to be light and free. It's a gift we all possess, but in my humble opinion most people listen to others at an early, influential age the cynicism and doubt and start believing it. The people who hold creativity as an important part of their identity guard it close and protect it as they age, making it seem like they were born with the skill as a unique talent. It wasn't that they were born with it; it was that they chose to not let it go. I believe everyone is creative in their own right, and if people could see this delicious wonderfulness inside of themselves, the world would be a much more fun and positive place to thrive and produce. That is my wish for humanity... To recognize this in themselves and understand it's power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBtw, ennui, you sound like a very interesting person and I would love to hear more of your story! Please email me at Courtney@PureMatter.com so we can connect. Thanks for listening!
Camaraderie can reward creativity I like the site http://www.halfbakery.com where a person describes a new technology under fairly stringent rules then peers suggest improvements
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe most stringent social effect at the halfbakery might be that you think the new idea actually will work as well as providing instructions such that a group of reasonably knowledgeable people could build it. You cannot just say A sunscreen that lasts as long as henna You would say Using the micheal reaction (wikipedia reference) that attaches henna to skin protein create a functional group that does the micheal reaction then attach that to a sunscreen molecule to create a transparent colorless sunscreen that lasts as long as henna
theres an amazingly brilliant idea there every day
also a thing I was doing that either built up creativity or just caused creative activity is looking at an entire list or catalog then improving every item at the catalog. Every Item. like every single item at the hammacher schlemmer catalog or R&D magazines list of top new technologies Its both fun n gruellingly weird
Its like "um a new diamond coated bearing" aha "they could use cvd to put a layer of c14 diamond on the diamond bearing then spectroscopy lasers could automatically view the bearing to see where the c14 had worn away to reveal bearing wear"
anyway you do this to hundreds of items because you cant turn the page until you think of something you honestly believe is better although its possible to just go with an entirely new idea as well
There are hundreds of books on creativity but the best way is to travel to a foreign country and you will see life—and ideas— in a different, more creative way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're not connecting all of the dots if you're only using three straight lines.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is all this total BS doing in Sci-Am? I thought I'd accidentally logged onto National Enquirer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm pretty sure the current discussion goes back to the aged debate of Nature VS Nurture. There is more evidence that it is a combination of both that attribute to who we become, not one or the other. If one is left to just his nature, then he does not learn right from wrong, just and unjust. If one is forced by another to behave a certain way (Nurture) opposite of what is in his nature, then he will become neurotic as his intrapsyche fights against what it was made to due. Ones Nature is guided by ones Nurture. Creativity is rooted in ones Nature, but does not blossom without a good Nurturing environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI always found "Creativity exercises" as anathema to "Creativity". Never found such Western, standardized exam type "exercises" to be stimulating. They can dry and forced.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are many ways to be creative. Wordplay in contemporary rap/hip hop culture, installment art appreciation, Superbowl ads... Point is what Buddhist call Mindfulness or Flow in modern psychological parlance.
One's mileage may vary. Found the visualization exercise to be of interest.
I also suggest Roger van Oech [sick [siq [siks [sic]]]]
I agree with sdswa. I too am creative and work as an artist, writer, fix-it-man, etc. The element of joy was missing from most comments. I get a kick from creating and solving seemingly intractable physical problems. However, I believe it's possible to open up a closed-person's creative impulse with some basic techniques, which address all the senses as well as consciousness (Buddha's contribution). I am putting together a program to help creative-blocked people. It's a challenge to find the right mix. But I believe I have the basic outline already. Enjoy all these intelligently considered opinions.
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