I’ve been inactive for a few days again, I am definitely going to find away around being very busy and writing at the same time. One of the key things that have kept me busy in the last few days is the topic above. The company I work for – Generis Solutions, trained the middle management staff one of the leading banks in Nigeria on – Maximizing Creative and Logical Thinking. It was a 2 days event, very intellectually stimulating and exciting for the participants, and very satisfying for the Generis Team.
In case you are wondering what kind of training this is, this is meant to give you a few of the insights into why this needs to be trained. The human brain does not think naturally, thinking is by conscious and deliberate effort.
The first thing we need to understand is how the human brain works. For a long time the particular position of the human brain was not even known, talk less of understanding it’s workings. Even today, when the average person is asked to point at where the sit of his or her emotions is, he or she will point at the chest area… All these functionalities sit in the human brain, and that is in the head. Current research has also shown that the human being does not have one brain – He actually has two! Not two parts of the same brain, two different brains with different functionalities. It is also interesting to know, that the human brain is not a thinking machine, rather it is a pattern making organ. The brain seeks to develop a pattern or subroutine for everything it has done or seen. The mind finds it easy to set, hence mindsets.
In studying the human brain it was also observed that when faced with a problem, a human being does 2 things. It perceives and then it processes. More often than not the main problem with inability to solve problems is not the processing but rather the perception. Like Albert Einstein was quoted to have said, it takes thinking on a higher level to solve a problem created at another level. When faced with a problem, we all have the tendency of latching on directly with our developed mindsets. This is contrary to creative thinking.
To think creatively, one of the first things we must do is break the natural pattern of the need for convergence by the human mind. The human mind is naturally convergent and seeks to make explanations for what it does not understand. Let’s say you wake up after hearing a cry in the middle of the night for example. You mind desires to comprehend what just happened, you stand up and look out your window, everything seems calm, you remember you have a cat downstairs, and say to yourself, “its a cat” and go back to sleep. You mind has converged, whether or not it is logical is not the question. This is the natural tendency of the mind. The creative thinking process however encourages you to deliberately utilize tools that will help you diverge. It helps you to seek other possibilities of what the problem can be before going ahead to provide a solution.
A man woke up one morning and found water on his water bed, he immediately got up, took his phone and called the person he believed could fix the bed. The man came around checked out the bed thoroughly and charged him for his time. The next morning the man woke up again, and there was water on his water bed. Angry, he calls this man again and complains that the same problem he had paid him for yesterday had surfaced again. He went on and on about poor service in the country and how he had been cheated. The repair man explained to him that nothing was wrong with the water bed, he had only charged the man for wasting his time. The real problem was that the water was coming from a bathroom upstairs. How often do we rush into solving the wrong problems? We do this because our minds focus immediately, we get the perception wrong and the processing cannot be right. The first thing to do when faced with a problem is to clarify the issue. This we can do by using a number of brainstorming tools.
Once we have clarified the issue, the next thing we do is a restatement of the problem. More often that not, it is interesting to see that the problem we thought we had wasn’t the one we had. Almost through the training on Monday and Tuesday, I could not help noticing that every one of the role plays showed that the problem was always different from what the participants had thought it was. Can you imagine that?
Once you have a restatement of the problem, the next step is to again break the natural convergence tendency and brainstorm for possible solutions. You will be surprised that you could at times come up with close to 50 possible solutions you never would have seen if you didn’t venture to think divergently. Again this requires the use of some standard tools. After generating these solutions, the you then converge together with your brainstorming team and minimize to a few of the solutions. All these processes (clarifying the issue, problem restatement, searching, focusing, developing solutions, e.t.c.) require the use of standard some tools.
Your brain is capable of achieving much more than it’s presently positioned to achieve. Start maximizing your creative and logical thinking today. For more information about this or to be scheduled for training on this, feel free to contact me.
All the best.
16 thoughts on “How to Think Creatively”
Great stuff!! You didnt mention what tools we can use to either develop or acquire the skill of creative thinking.
One suggestion to resolve the issue of being busy and having to write is to limit the number of times you post to either once or twice a week. Apart from giving you time, it allows readers to assimilate and digest each topic very well before the next one.
What you have created is a routine for the brain; to always expect something from this site everyday, so some of us feel starved when we dont see any posting! You need to understand how I look forward to Abati’s column in The Guardian every Friday and how I feel disappointed sometimes when I miss it.
Keep up the good work.
Briann tracy in one of his write ups,;creative thinking; also asseted that there has to be a deliberate concious effort to think creatively.The brain has to be put to work.
I must actually commend you for being very busy and still be able to post articles on the site. I also think as an addendum that before creative thinking comes thinking itself. A lot of people will not succeed at what they do not because they don’t think but because they never finish the thinking process
@ Babatunji – Well said, some of the tools include fishbone mapping, brain writing, mind mapping, e.t.c. as you know, mind mapping alone might require 2 posts 🙂
About the regularity of posting, I think I’ll still try to ensure I post everyday for now, I should also simultaneously begin to look for like minded people who are willing to start writing here as columnists, I’m sure that after a while, I’ll be doing more reading here than writing 🙂
Deolu,
This I must be frank strikes a chord deeep within me.
I have a great quest to better myself and live the full potential, that is in fact one of the reasons we met.
I will be glad to learn more about putting the brain to work differently from the way we have always done.
This posts leaves so much thirst within me.
Thirst I will be glad to satisfy.
Thirst I know I will need your help to satisfy
This is a masterpiece write-up. Creative thinking alone will solve burden of problems this country are faced presently ; from economy to education, health, agriculture, social activities and even politics. This one , politics; is worst affected by lack/inadequate creative thinking. You can imagine of all the issue-based problems facing this nations, none of Y’adua/Jonathan,Atiku/Who-Knows, Orji Kalu etc has profer overtly or covertly of how to tackle them and use it to buy the electorate instead of using money. I blame them, they just wake up and think(sorry want ) to occupy AsoRock. I THINK THE DAYS ARE here that to occupy a seat at NATIONAL ASSEMBLY in 2011, YOU start thinking NOW on how to solve some perenial or likely-to-come problems. DEOLU,pls dont stop this what you are doing, i pray for you daily and soonest WE WILL GET IT RIGHT AND DO IT RIGHT as we say in DAYSTAR!
Creative thinking is very important. God Himself is a very creative God. Creativity lets one do the same thing in different ways. Keep up the good work!!!
Godspeed!!!!!!!
We just have to analysis situations before acting on them
great writing
Creative work – good thinking! Please, could you recommend relevant books to this issue? Thanks
i love the subject of good thinking! some good books on the subject are:
1. Six thinking hats—- Dr. Edward Debono
2. teach yourself to think—–same author
3. thinking for a change—–john maxwell
deolu, thanks for that posting! thinking i believe, is an art which can be learnt and improved upon. some find it difficult to think. however, i’ve come to realise that u have to recognise how best u think!. some are good abstract thinkers, some think in images, some while thinking have 2 be writing @ the same time 2 enhance coordination. anyhow, just make sure u give some quietness to urself often. think reflectively (looking back), think strategically (planning the future), think wide (find other possibilities), think deep (everything about 1 thing). God bless
yes o. i believe that the beginning of any great venture begins with thinking. one very popular brand says” GOOD THINKING, GOOD PRODUCT.that i think is the summary of the whole matter.
this is an evolution. when i read The Word for Today last week Friday, a particular portion i shared here last week revealed that the more we put our brains to work, we may get older but our brains get younger and vice versa.
@omozele that was Toyota you were quoting: good thinking, good product. aas a man thinketh in his heart so he is. so being productive begins in the brain.
thanks a million times for this evolution.
i do not doubt the viability of the brains of Nigerian Youths because i’ve seen the on countless occasions making meaning out o life the way they think is right.
i tell people that we Nigerians have the sharpest minds in the world but we just do not channel the wealth of our brains to productive ventures. Nigerians are great thinkers and problem solvers. use your brain wisely.
any thinking that cannot be converted to its cash equivalent can be very frustrating. thats why our world do not celebrate mere thinkers but peolple who have converted their thinking to something into reality. we wouldnt be talking about aeroplanes had it not been for two brothers who not only thought it but converted their thinking into what we could see.