Photo by Tim Mossholder
You need some creative thinking ideas. But you’re not sure where to look. Here’s what you need! Every proven, creative thinking technique (like those we find in books, in courses, on YouTube, etc.,) is based on one or more of the eleven techniques below.
The reason people expect more, proven creative thinking techniques is simple. It’s business! These core techniques have been rebranded, renamed, remixed and combined. Then, they’re sold as something new. They sell millions of books, speaking engagements and courses.
But at their core, they’re all based on one, or a fusion of several, in this list.
Here they are. In no particular order.
First Principles Thinking
Most assumptions about how something works, or has to be done, are inherited. They’re assumed rather than examined. This technique strips everything back to what is provably true. It then rebuilds from there. Using this creative thinking process, you often discover the accepted way of doing something has no logical foundation.
It just persisted because nobody questioned it. As you’ll see in the next well-established creative thinking technique, almost all so-called creative thinking trainers/coaches commit this error.
The 6 Thinking Hats
We tend to think about a problem from our own perspective. This creative thinking technique opens up new perspectives. How? By deliberately shifting our perspective, we get to think about the problem through a different lens. Traditionally, this technique has been limited to 6 lenses (or hats); data, emotion, optimism, caution, creativity, and process. You can, of course add as many lenses as you need. Including the lens of how a person in history, or Sherlock Holmes, might have looked at the problem.
Side note: the limited 6 Thinking Hats technique only exists, because it’s used by uncreative ‘creative thinking experts’, who assume there’s only 6 hats. Why? Because ‘that’s how it’s always been done’. If you see anyone suggesting this, it’s a red flag. Avoid them!
By looking through these additional perspectives, you shift your thinking. With each lens revealing things the others missed.
Analogical Thinking
A persistent problem in one area, frequently has an effective answer in completely different field. This technique involves intentionally looking at how something works in nature, sport or industry for example, and applying it to your problem.
The distance between the two domains is often what makes the insight powerful.
Constrained Creative Thinking
Out of the box thinking is not an effective way to boost your creativity. It does the opposite, causing creative block. Conversely, constraints force the brain to work harder and find pathways it would never have considered outside that box.
Consider a poet working in a strict form, a designer given half the usual project time, or a musician allowed only three chords. These limitations tend to result in more inventive, creative work than their unconstrained counterparts.
Combining
Almost nothing new is created from scratch. Most innovation comes from putting two or more things together and pondering what happens if they become one.
The belief that for something to be new, it has to be wholly original, is bogus. The smartphone combined a phone, a camera, a map, a music player and a computer. And todays tablet devices were preceded thousands of years ago, by clay tablets.
Problem Reframing
Most people work very hard on the wrong problem, because they accept the original definition of it without questioning. This technique asks, what if the problem isn’t what we think it is? Reframing the question frequently makes previously invisible solutions obvious.
For example, businesses waste thousands or millions of dollars every year on lead generation (advertising, campaigns, social media, etc. What they need isn’t more leads. They need more customers or clients. When you look at it this way, you’re free to use massively better techniques, most of which cost little or nothing. For example, a joint venture with a suitable partner can generate a year’s worth of revenue in a matter of only weeks. And it costs little or no money.
Incubation
The conscious mind is sequential and logical, which makes it bad at the kind of associative leaping that produces genuine insight. Stepping away, by going for a walk, listening to some music or doing doing something unrelated, can be a catalyst for creative thinking. Most people have experienced this as the answer arriving in the shower. It isn’t accidental.
People like me who are often referred to as creatively gifted, are neurodivergent. Here’s how my brain is rewired. However, by switching your inputs with techniques like Incubation, anyone can make their thinking more creative. And the more you practice and find what works best for you, the more creative you’ll become.
Bisociation
This describes the moment when two entirely separate ways of seeing the world suddenly illuminate each other. Not just merging, but creating something that couldn’t exist in either framework alone. This is what we see in jokes, scientific breakthroughs and in metaphors. In essence, two incompatible things collide, and the collision itself is the insight.
It comes from The Act of Creation: a 1964 book by Arthur Koestler. (And it’s well worth a read).
Beginner’s Mind
Expertise is enormously useful, but it also creates blind spots. For example, the more you know about something, the harder it can be to see it freshly. The brain considers it as something understood.
The beginner’s mind technique involves deliberately unknowing what you know: approaching the familiar as if you have no prior relationship with it. It’s not easy. And it takes a lot of practice. But those who persist often find it to be extremely effective.
Brainstorming
The fear of judgement can kill an idea almost instantly. The judgment process and the generating process work against each other, when run simultaneously. This technique separates them. You generate without filtering first. Then evaluate afterwards.
The idea that eventually works is frequently not the one you’d have chosen early in the process. It’s the one that only appeared because you kept going past the obvious answers.
Provocation
Logic filters out ideas that lack immediate coherence. The challenge is that genuinely good ideas often lack immediate coherence. So, they appear invalid, until their implications are understood. The provocation technique works by introducing a premise that is deliberately false or impossible, then reasoning forward from it.
The false premise creates distance from established thinking. And it’s in that distance, where viable new ideas are frequently found.
That’s pretty-much it
In short: every creative thinking; author, YouTuber, podcaster, trainer/coach, public speaker or social platform influencer, is simply offering you a rebranded version of one (or more) of the above.
