Creativity training. Exercise "Unusual situations"

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1. Limit your choices

Research shows that limiting choice can stimulate creativity. If we deliberately close some of the opportunities for ourselves, we can better focus on the rest.

2. Don't wait for inspiration

Many people who consider themselves creative individuals do not try to create anything for a long time, stating that they are waiting for a spark of inspiration. It is important to remember that the spark often flashes already in the process of work. Athletes do not wait for inspiration to start training after a break. They just go and start training. It is important to have patience and not worry about whether the result will be good.

3. Focus not on the result, but on the ways to achieve it

Imagine that you are lost and instead of following the turns on the road, you only think about your destination. Of course, you won't get far. Often we are too caught up in thinking about the “masterpiece” we are about to create, without even thinking about what exactly needs to be done for this.

4. Distance yourself from the creative project

We have more creative solutions in our heads for tasks that we perceive to be distant in space or time. The greater the imaginary distance, the more we switch from concrete to abstract thinking, which helps to discover unexpected relationships between seemingly unrelated ideas.

5. Work in a coffee shop

Studies have shown that the level of background noise in a coffee shop (about 70 decibels) promotes creativity. Medium (but not low) noise levels increase the complexity of information processing, which activates abstract thinking and enhances creative productivity. Too loud noise, on the contrary, interferes.

6. Get Intense Exercise

Physical activity helps hidden (in the unconscious) ideas to emerge. Scientists are still investigating which type of exercise best promotes creativity, but Einstein is known to have come up with the theory of relativity while riding a bicycle.

7. Do your daily chores with the other hand

If we use the other hand, we activate both hemispheres of the brain and spur creativity. An active exchange of information between the hemispheres leads to the fact that both emotions and thoughts become clearer and more understandable.

8. Start at the end of the story

Novelist Roxana Robinson says she tried writing short stories by first coming up with an ending. This helped her overcome creative crises.

9. Appreciate random thoughts

The pictures or ideas that pop into your head from time to time often seem meaningless, but they can be the foundation of a creative breakthrough. It is useful to always have a notepad or voice recorder with you.

10. Know Less, Guess More

Today we are surrounded by information on all sides. It is useful to put aside your phone, laptop, tablet for a while and let your mind wander where it pleases. Do not peep answers to emerging questions on the Internet. Cut off from the usual sources of information, your brain can come up with something very unusual.

The constant pursuit of efficiency and the setting of clear goals can hinder the emergence of creative ideas. Try, walking along the street about your business, stop every minute and carefully look at everything that surrounds you. Unexpected sounds or sights can give a fresh perspective and help activate the thoughts hidden deep within.

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12. Laugh out loud

Laughter stimulates activity in the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex, areas associated with creativity. It also uplifts the mood, which helps creative activity. You don't have to look for something hilariously funny, the physical act of laughter itself is beneficial.

13. Do something mindfully

Meditation - reliable way clear your mind, focus and be in the present moment. It stimulates thinking (the brain visualizes the problem and offers several different solutions), which helps to solve creative problems.

14. ... or unknowingly

When faced with a complex problem, we usually begin to think hard about the solution. Sometimes this creates a lot of unnecessary noise in the head, which only increases our dissatisfaction without giving clear solutions. A break can be just as beneficial as taking a short break during exercise. When you return to your problem, new ideas may come up. You can, for example, take cards and play solitaire - this activity occupies the brain, but does not require extreme concentration.

Read more "14 Surprising Ways To Boost Creativity", dailygood.org

Today, the most creative and caring people succeed in the social sphere, economy, education and industry. Logical thinking necessary, but that alone is no longer sufficient. Organizations are looking for employees who can find innovative solutions. Fortunately, anyone can develop Creative skills. How exactly? Read about it in our news"flexible mind" . And now - a few tips and exercises from it.

"Free" thoughts

When solving problems, we rely on past experience, what happened before or what we once dealt with. Unconsciously we ask ourselves: what have I learned in life? After that, we choose the most promising approach and reject the rest.

Such thinking lacks flexibility, it generates standard and unoriginal ideas. The solutions found with its help exactly repeat our past experience or - at least - outwardly similar to it.

With a creative approach, we do not rush to the problem, armed with past experience, but ask ourselves: how many points of view on it, how to rethink and solve it? The goal is to come up with as many answers as possible, including non-template ones.

One of the forms of creative thinking - conceptual mixing - allows you to make associations between different topics. Kids are real experts at this. Their thoughts are like water: just as pure, fluid and all-encompassing. Everything is mixed and combined, many connections are created. Therefore, children spontaneously create.

In school, we are taught to define, discriminate, separate, and categorize. In later life, these categories remain separated and do not touch. The "liquid" thinking of the child seems to freeze in an ice mold, where each cell is a category. That is why it is so difficult for many to use their imagination and creativity.

For new opportunities, you need to “free” your thoughts. Fortunately, our brain is able to learn and change until death. This means that we can increase our creativity if we practice.

Warming up for the brain: creating associations

Choose four words at random.Come up with a criterion by which one becomes superfluous.For example: dog, cloud, water and door.

Criterion 1: The dog, water, and door can be in the house, but the cloud is not.

Criterion 2: The words "dog", "water" and "cloud" contain the letter "o", but the word "door" does not. Etc…

Additional techniques:

Randomly choose six words and divide them into two groups of three words. Each group should have its own selection principle.

Make two lists (A and B) of four words each. Come up with a criterion by which a word from list A is associated with a word from list B.

Make a list of five words chosen at random. Choose one of the five words and find principles by which it can be connected with the other four.

- Choose any two words. Create a murder scene with these two words. Add three more words chosen at random. Each of them must become evidence. With the help of this evidence, come up with the circumstances of the murder and the suspect.

Pick four words at random. Using exactly these words (not derivatives and not associations), come up with a newspaper headline. Write an abstract for this article.

Formulate a task

What is the essence of your creative task? Can you describe her in one sentence of six words? “Do what no one else could”, “Clients who are happy to use my product”, “Pass all exams this session”, “Stay happy as a bachelor for as long as possible”, etc.

Describing a complex problem in one sentence of six words stimulates your imagination. The more precise the wording, the easier it is to find a solution. Imagine that a creative task is a drawing on a box, without which it is difficult to assemble a puzzle.

100 ideas

One of the obstacles to creativity: when it comes to your mind a good idea, it can prevent you from coming up with a better one. Therefore, you need to produce ideas, without thinking about whether they are good or bad, whether they can be implemented, whether they will solve the problem.

Give yourself the opportunity to think uncensored. To do this, set a goal in terms of time and number of ideas. By doing so, you channel your creative energy into right direction. Innovative companies most often set a quota of 100 ideas per hour. Let's try it too.

Come up with and write down 100 uses for bricks. You will see that the first 10-20 will be standard, familiar, well-known: build a wall, climb higher, build a grill, maintain bookshelves, etc. The next 30-50 ideas will be more original. As you get closer to 100, your brain will start making extra effort and produce more creative and unconventional alternatives.

For this process to be most effective, you need to curb your inner critic and start writing down all ideas, including the most obvious and bad ones. The first third will most likely include old, identical ideas, the second third will contain more interesting ones, and the last third will most likely reveal noteworthy, unexpected and difficult inventions. If we had not set ourselves the goal of producing so many ideas, these last thirty would not have seen the light of day.

Get rid of the routine

Routine often becomes the enemy of creativity. Make changes to your daily routine. Make a list of what you do out of habit, always the same. Usually, activities from such a list are performed almost thoughtlessly.

Try changing the way you do them a little over the course of a week, day, or month. For example, take a different route to work or school, change your sleep and work hours, start reading a different newspaper, meet new people, drink juice instead of tea, go to a different restaurant, take a bubble bath instead of a shower, watch a different TV program, etc. d.

Technique: questions

Most have been taught not to question authority, especially at work, school, or family. Because of this, we rarely ask the right questions. To achieve a fresh look and develop curiosity, you need to constantly doubt everything. Make it a part Everyday life.

Why?This question helps to understand the current state of affairs, to question the generally accepted opinion.

What if?..It helps to explore new possibilities, to imagine what will happen to the world if you change something or implement a new idea.

Why not?This question will help you understand the limitations and factors that stand in the way of positive change.

If you need to get to the bottom of a problem, use the five whys method:

1. Why do people prefer competitors' fries over ours? Because it tastes better.

2. Why is it tastier? Because their seasonings are better than ours.

3. Why are their seasonings better than ours? Because their chef is the best.

4. Why is our chef worse? Because we considered the change of chef to be unimportant, and for twenty years now we have been working with an incompetent employee.

5. Why haven't we hired a new chef yet? Because no one dared to offer it to the owner.

mental maps

Mind maps are one of the simplest and most effective tools for releasing creativity. They were designed by British scientist Tony Buzan, inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.

Today, mind maps are an integral part of training courses and problem solving methods in many companies and institutions. You can use them for personal purposes such as holiday planning.

This technique allows you to generate many ideas in a short time and present a large amount of information in a limited space. All key concepts related to a particular topic will be organized in such a way as to encourage the search for associations.

It is the search for connections between ideas that makes us more creative.

1. Take a white sheet, the more the better, and five or six markers or colored pencils. Lay the sheet in front of you horizontally. In the center of the sheet, draw or symbolize the theme of your card as brightly as possible. Don't worry about the quality of the drawing. Use different colors.

2. Having completed the central image, begin to write down the most significant ideas along the lines emanating from the center. Then add keywords and concepts to them, like branches of a tree. Feel free to form associations and try to complete the sheet as quickly as possible. Generating ideas in the form of keywords is easy.

3. Once you feel that you have collected enough material through free association, look at the result. All your ideas are on a piece of paper. You will notice connections that help organize and summarize these ideas. If there is a repeated word, it may be something important. Connect different parts of the map with arrows, codes and colors. Delete unnecessary parts of the map.

Don't forget to use images as they serve as anchors for remembering keywords. Try to write one word per line. It trains attention and disciplines. The mental map can be endless. It is completed only when there is enough information to solve the creative problem.

Reading, silence, play

It is well known that the right hemisphere is most active in the process of creativity. All of these techniques help to train neural networks in this area. And here are a few more ways:

1. Reading stories, short stories and novels. Fiction develops the intellectual abilities needed to think differently, more creatively.

2. Silence. By engaging in activities that do not involve talking, we significantly suppress the activity of the left hemisphere. Thus, we reduce the activity of dominant thought patterns in neural networks, as if reducing the volume of our consciousness.

3. Any activity or game that trains the imagination. puzzle, board games, crosswords, theatrical, musical or dance improvisations and many other activities not only train our ability to produce different ideas, but also allow us to see the entertaining side of the creative process.

Creative thinking is necessary for different professions. It allows you to look at the solution of even the most ordinary problems in a different way. Knowing how to develop creative thinking is important to success in many areas of life, but first you need to define it. In a general sense, this is the ability to create new, extraordinary solutions that are different from traditional ones. This is the ability to go beyond the system and constantly be in search of original ideas.

In this article, we will talk about ways to develop creative thinking. They will help you learn to think not only differently, but also to look at yourself and the world from the other side. The presented exercises are simple to perform, but they will make the brain work and develop creative thinking.

See the world differently

This very simple exercise will help you uncover something that you have never paid attention to. Get outside. Look at it not in the way you usually look, but make out every object, every building, object that meets on the way.

Notice details you didn't pay attention to before. This roof has an unusual cornice, but here the colors do not match, and the shape of this house suggests that it was built a very long time ago. Look at how the windows in houses are decorated and imagine why people chose to do it that way.

Every day, passing along the same route, we stop paying attention to the environment. But if you are asked what color the gate is at house number 8, then you probably won’t remember, or maybe you don’t know that there is a gate there.

Be curious and be surprised

As adults, people lose this property or are embarrassed to show it. Forget about what others think, be interested in what attracted attention, find out the smallest details. Curiosity helps not only to learn new facts, but also to gain experience.

Try to be a little child, because children are so curious, and their imaginative thinking is only developing. Ask more questions. Ask about any phenomena that attract you, but do not just find out the answer, but analyze, apply the new fact to different circumstances. This will help develop abstract thinking and learn to think more broadly.

Monotonous work, boring life - and now we stop being surprised, but there are so many interesting things in the world. Surprise is the ability to admire the world around you. Surprise and curiosity often go hand in hand, and this is no coincidence. Impossible to develop creative thinking without the ability to be surprised and to show curiosity.

New use for a common item

This exercise is often used in brainstorming and creative thinking training. Take any item that is in front of you. Come up with the most unusual ways to use it. Record everything that comes to mind.

Additionally, you can figure out how to use this item with other things. For example, from a fruit vase you can make a bird feeder, a place to store office supplies, a house for dolls.

The more unusual the idea, the brighter and more original the result, the stronger you will develop figurative thinking.

Break the stereotypes

We are used to reacting to events in a certain way. Our words, thoughts, reflexes are the same and repeat in many situations. Such repetitive actions lead to the fact that creative thinking fades, and it is increasingly difficult for us to come up with something new. Try to react differently next time.

Imagine what words you could replace your usual phrases with.

This will give an additional load on the brain and help develop speech. Change your usual activities.

Breaking stereotypes will not only help develop abstract thinking, but will also surprise others with the novelty of your behavior.

Solve puzzles

Start with very simple ones to get used to the new task. Puzzles perfectly develop abstract thinking, help to look for logic in the most unusual combinations.

At first, guessing even the simplest puzzle will seem like an overwhelming task, but with each new riddle, you discover interesting properties of your brain that help you see objects from a completely different perspective.

From the stage of solving, move on to creating puzzles, develop imaginative thinking, forcing yourself to come up with something new.

Meditate

This way to develop figurative thinking may seem strange, however, it is successfully used by representatives of various professions. First you need to find a comfortable place and relax. We completely disconnect from any thoughts, they themselves will come later.

Now we present a simple line. We begin to mentally rotate it around its axis. The line begins to expand and turns into a rectangle. Then it takes the form of a three-dimensional cube.

The cube spins and becomes a ball, the ball turns into a cone. Present the figures in one color or in changing colors, change their shape. Such an exercise perfectly develops abstract thinking, improves imagination and the ability to focus on a specific object.

More impressions

Creativity does not come from nowhere, it must be nourished, the brain must be exercised, and impressions must be received.

Imaginative thinking will help develop visits to museums and exhibitions folk art. See what interesting things people invent with their own hands, perhaps among them there are ideas that can be taken as a basis. An ordinary walk in the fresh air can also invigorate intellectual activity, but it should not be aimless wandering.

Look around - what you see unusual, pay attention to the change in shadows and light, imagine how this or that object would look in your house, office or on paper. Constantly train your imagination, because creative thinking is a movement.

Write poetry and prose

You can say: I have no ability. It does not matter at all, because at first only you will see your works.

Match the rhyme to the most in simple words The more you practice, the easier it becomes to do it. Try to create unusual poems, for example, consisting of nouns, this is also great for developing abstract thinking.

Write short notes about what you saw today, what impressions you had. Creative thinking does not come from nowhere, it must be constantly forced to work, nourished with new ideas.

Draw

This exercise does not require any advanced drawing skills, but it is useful for developing hand motor skills, which in turn affects the brain.

Take a pencil or pen. Draw what comes to mind. Supplement them with unusual details, this will help develop abstract thinking. Draw something that does not exist in reality, but you can create it in your imagination. Stop paying attention to quality, the very essence of the process is important.

Creative thinking is available to everyone, you just need to make your brain work, feed it with new information and be able to find interesting and unusual things in the world around you. People of creative professions never stand still, they create, change and enjoy it. It is the pleasure of creativity that will help develop it and make it a part of your life.

The famous psychologist Maslow said that creativity is inherent in all people, but it is lost due to the influence of established norms of behavior and thinking in society.

Creativity is the ability to create something new, deviating from patterns and generally accepted schemes. With the help of creativity, new ideas, schemes of actions, objects and much more come. Thanks to such thinking, a person can easily find a way out of a difficult situation or outwit an opponent in business at the right time. Therefore, the development of creativity is an important point for people who want to become successful.

There is a difference between creativity and creativity. The latter is the process of creating an object of art, while creative thinking is directed much more widely and operates even in everyday life when implementing elementary dreary tasks.

IN English language there is a great expression that accurately conveys the concept of creativity. It translates as - "think outside the box." At the same time, the film "The Matrix" shows a person that the limits exist only in his head.

You can develop creativity every day without spending extra time on this process. The main ways in which you can increase the level of creative thinking in everyday life:

• Reading signs from the end to the beginning, which is sometimes quite fun, as the results can be very varied;
• When reading a book, try to read the sentences from the bottom of the page to the top, that is, the actions will take place in reverse order;
• In a free moment, you can do inventing a variety of names, by combining completely random letters that come to mind;
• Good for the development of thinking is drawing, especially all non-existent things, creatures;
• While no one sees, you can pee with your left hand (or right, if left-handed), and the most fearless can even try with your feet;
• Excellent help to develop attempts to combine at first glance incompatible words;
• Also, you can take any word and present it as an abbreviation, which then needs to be deciphered;
• For each item of everyday life, you can come up with a non-standard application;
• You can also stack one item with another, trying to achieve improvement.

By doing these simple and seemingly meaningless things, you will learn to see non-standard solutions for a given situation, as well as generate ideas by combining the incompatible, thereby developing creative thinking.

Through research, it was found that creativity can be developed at any age, unlike memory. In addition, two types of people have been identified: in some, creative thinking is maximally developed even in adolescence, while others increase its level gradually, reaching a maximum in middle years.

Exercises and Ways to Increase Creativity

Steve Jobs said that creativity is nothing more than finding connections between different things. That is why, he believed, to the question: how did you come up with this? - many people find it difficult to answer, because they just noticed this connection.

All exercises for the development of creative thinking are aimed at making a person learn to discard generally accepted concepts and connections, and instead build something new, previously unknown even to him.

There are several most effective ways to develop creativity:

• You need to take any book, but also better dictionary, and randomly select two words. And then you should think about what is common between these words. Moreover, the excuse - yes, nothing at all - is not accepted. Communication can be found everywhere. And the more unusual and incredible it is, the better.
• The second way to develop thinking is related to design. Ask a friend to come up with 10 any noun words. Write them down. These words are mandatory conditions that must be met when designing a house. It is not the ability to draw or draw that matters. It is important to figure out how to embody absolutely any words in architecture and design, for example, chicken or shoe.
• One more effective method tuned to the development of associative thinking. Having chosen any object in your environment, come up with 5 suitable epithets or just adjectives for it - it's pretty easy. However, after the first part of the task, you should come up with as many absolutely inappropriate associations for the same thing.
• Excellent creativity and creative thinking drawing. However, there is one feature - first draw on paper a lot of identical crosses, circles, and even ordinary scribbles (most importantly, the same ones). And then turn each of them into some separate meaningful drawing.
• It also develops the ability to get out of various situations next way. For an hour, no matter what you do and wherever you are, answer all questions either in the affirmative or in the negative. At the same time, others should not suspect that you have any problems. Behavior should be natural and as casual as possible.

Using these interesting exercises, along with your daily search for something new, you can quickly and effectively develop creative thinking. And our resource BrainApps will help with this with the help of various tests and games.

Hello!

We have previously discussed the importance of ().

Today we will consider the most elementary exercises, so to speak, "in between times", which do not take much time. But they are good for developing non-standard thinking.

Development of creative thinking “in between”

☻ When riding a bus or walking, read store signs backwards. Sometimes it can be frankly funny, try it! For example, you will read the sign “Everything for the home” as “Amod yald esv”

☻ While you are waiting for your turn, you can get a book and start reading sentences not from top to bottom, but from bottom to top. For example, you will get that the hero of the novel performs all the actions in reverse order. First, he leaves home in the morning, then he has breakfast in his kitchen, brushes his teeth and gets out of bed, and then only hears the alarm clock.

☻ During the break, come up with 10 exotic names: separately for men, separately for women. For example, Malaruktigara or Penigestior.

☻ As an option, you can draw, especially if you have never done it or always thought that you were bad at it. Draw something unreal for example, a non-existent animal and call it a non-existent name.

Incidentally, there is projective technique"Non-existent animal", by completing which you can diagnose your internal problems. In addition to this, this psychological test promotes the development of creative thinking.

☻ While you are at home, take a pencil to left hand and write! And if you are absolutely sure that no one will catch you doing this, take a pencil with your toes. You can draw or write text.

☻ In your free time, make up phrases from incompatible words. For example, sweet salt or true lies.

☻ Take any word and try to imagine that it is an abbreviation. Try to decrypt it.For example, MILK: One Can Love Very Much Giving Oneself to One.

☻ Think of 20 ways to use the chair. Just do not take the battered options that you can sit or stand on it. It would be much more original to make a cat house out of it or use it as a gymnastic apparatus.

☻ Stimulate your ingenuity with the forced connection method. Take an object and think about how you can modify or improve it.Consider, for example, a book. Try to "attach" other things to it. For example, a mirror. Perhaps it will be a book with a mirror image. And now "attach" the player. Yes, it's an audiobook!

This method is used by the so-called idea generators. There is even such a profession in the West. Why so many varieties of products? The assortment range itself has hundreds of items, and all this is the work of creatives, whose task is to generate a lot of ideas.

The meaning of these exercises is to move away from the standard. Thus, our thinking opens up new horizons that extend far from the imposed and boring stereotypes.

(One well-known TRIZ tool, the theory of inventive problem solving, is based on the same principle. It is called focal object method. Maybe one day we will tell you what it is and how to use it correctly. And you can use it almost everywhere.)

Performing these simple exercises between times for only 15-20 minutes a day, in a month you will feel a grandiose change in your thinking.

Also, keep an idea journal handy at all times. No matter how crazy your insights seem, write everything down. Thus, your creative thinking will soon gain momentum, and even genius will be on your shoulder!

What other ways development of creative thinking known to you? Tell in the comments.

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Ludmila Ponomarenko