Go places you've never been before, or where you rarely go. It can be a new large park or a jewelry store in a nearby neighborhood.
New smells
Buy bottles of essential oils or any scented items. Every morning, as soon as you wake up, inhale a new smell – this will “wake up” the brain.
Closed eyes
In the evening, do not turn on the light in the apartment – go through the rooms from memory. This exercise will increase your attention and concentration. You can also take a shower with your eyes closed. Since you can't see anything, your other senses are sharply activated.
Changing hands
Brush your teeth not with the working hand, but with the one that is less active: if you are right – handed, brush your teeth with your left hand, if you are left-handed-with your right.
New wardrobe
Wear different things. Scientists have proven that depending on a person's clothing, not only their feelings change, but also their way of thinking.
Braille (reading and writing system for the blind) and sign language
Braille and sign language are difficult to master, but the ability to read and talk with your fingers will develop your senses tremendously. In sign language, it is enough to learn standard communication phrases: greetings, simple questions, and answers.
New road
Go to work (to the store) in a new, unfamiliar way. Even if the new path is longer, it's okay. This will not only have a positive effect on the brain, but also help to maintain slimness.
Self-confidence
Be more confident in yourself. Even if you are offered a job that you don't know much about, accept it. The brain quickly activates when you don't know exactly what to do.
Non-standard responses
Answer standard questions in a non-standard way. Even to the question ” how are you?” you can respond with dozens of different phrases – give up the stereotypes.
Coins
Learn to distinguish between coins of different denominations only with your fingers. This exercise is useful when you are waiting for someone or something. Time passes faster, and the wait becomes less tedious.
New magazines
Choose magazines and newspapers that you don't usually pay attention to. For example, if you are interested in fashion, buy a magazine dedicated to economics. Do you like to read about travel and other countries? Give preference to an animal magazine. It is not necessary to get carried away with something new, it is enough to change the topic of what you are reading from time to time.
TV without sound
Turn off the TV sound and try to play a dialogue or monologue while looking at the image. If you perform this exercise together with your friends, it will be very comical and interesting.
Diverse recreation
If you usually spend the weekend in the city, then next time go to nature. Don't like listening to music? Go to a music concert – you will get a lot of new sensations. Even if you don't like it at all, you can leave.
New pace
This exercise can be done on a day off. If you usually do everything slowly, try to speed up the pace by 2 times. If you can't even sit still for a minute, force yourself to do everything slowly. This requires a lot of concentration.
Jokes
Coming up with new jokes and anecdotes is very entertaining and useful for the brain. This not only encourages mental activity, but also develops the ability to think creatively.
This is neurobiology-mental gymnastics, aerobics for the brain, aimed at improving mental activity. The term was coined by Lawrence Katz and Manning Rubin from the United States.
I think that you can develop creative thinking only through practice. And to do this, you need to solve some interesting problems that you can invent for yourself.
For example, you can go to https://www.artlebedev.ru/matrix/ and generate a combination of words. Then make a tic-tac-Toe about it, draw a comic strip, write a story, make a poster, pretend it's the name of the movie, and write a review, whatever. The main thing is to make the brain think, and not necessarily stop at the first idea, you can think further and come up with new ones.
The second option is to invent artificial restrictions for your daily work, come up with a challenge for yourself. For example, if you write texts, you can avoid using words with the same letter in the same sentence. If you are engaged in design, then make one option as correct as possible for the customer, and the second one using, for example, only black and white, or only the same font size. This option doesn't have to be shown to the customer, the main thing is to make your brain work. And even in the work of a taxi driver, you can invent such a challenge, for example, to greet each passenger in a new way, without repeating yourself. At first it will be easy, but after the banal “Good afternoon”, “Hello”, “Hello” you will have to think.
A challenge can also be a huge amount of work, for example, some designers make a “Poster every day” challenge throughout the year. It's hard, but it definitely develops creative thinking, because each poster must be unique. Musicians ZAMAI and Slava CPSU recorded an album for 101 tracks, this is also a kind of challenge.
By the way, we came up with a special book Wreck this journal, where you just need to perform some interesting tasks. I think you can use it as well.
There are various techniques, for example, some are described in Julia Cameron's book “The Artist's Way”. This is a 12-week exercise course. The course is not easy, mainly due to the need to repeat actions every day with not obvious results, but the book is definitely worth reading, as it gives an interesting look at the anatomy of the creative component in a person.
First, of course, I want to ask: what do you mean by “creative thinking”? Well, because the answers may be different:
## Ability to find a way out of a confusing situation
It happens that you are “walking in circles”in your head. Or another analogy: you can't get out of a “mental rut” – this is when you constantly stumble on your old decisions that you already thought about and threw out because they didn't suit you.
## tip:
Your thinking needs outside help.�
If you can gather a few friends, arrange a brainstorming session. Right here I have described the most common mistakes, please read them before you start.�
If you can't call anyone, use the focal object method.� ## The method of focal objects
For this method to work, you need to use it quickly and a lot. Draw your problem, object, or issue in the center of the sheet. Place three random objects at a great distance around the object (well, just offhand, for example: a TV, a book, a potato). Write 5 unique characteristics next to each item. Now take several of these properties at once and try to apply them to your problem or your central subject. Don't just say “some bullshit”, play this game for a while-try to explain these random properties of your object, try to give yourself up to the current and swim on. Which way do you want to think? (go there and swim)
## Ability to come up with cool stuff from scratch
Often, creative thinking refers to the absence of a whitelist problem, when a person can immediately come up with hundreds of ideas.�
This can be learned. How easy is it? – it depends on many things, and first of all on your personality type. If you are flexible and process-oriented rather than result-oriented — you will grasp the essence very quickly and enjoy coming up with ideas. If on the contrary-you are a conservative at heart and resist everything new — you will have a hard time.�
The fact is that creativity is very afraid of criticism. That is why in the classic version of brainstorming, the stage of generating ideas and the stage of evaluating them are separated in time. You probably have often encountered this — as soon as someone starts to fantasize, expresses the first idea, there will definitely be a neighbor who will say “oh, well, this won't work”. At this point, you no longer have any desire to invent.�
Therefore, it is very important to play along with each other at the stage of generating ideas. Imagine that you are playing ping-pong, and your task is to beat the serve-this means to complement the idea of your colleague or friend and bring it back. The friend, in turn, should supplement what you have added, and so on. You won't believe how far this game can take you! And the further you go, the more unique and high-quality your ideas will become.�
If you like to do everything alone, then here's what you need to know about the creative process in general: it always consists of two stages — analysis and synthesis. The reference point can be anything — a word, a problem, a task, an object, or a goal.�
Stage 1. Analysis-expansion of the information field. At this stage, you try to outline different concepts, ideas, and objects on your map. You can use mindmap applications, but I prefer to take a pack of post it and paste them on a large sheet of paper. There is an important rule here: one sticker = one idea. Well, that is, just take and write everything that comes to your mind. Don't limit yourself to anything.�
Stage 2. Synthesis-focusing. First, you need to sort out a little of the chaos that has turned out. For example, you can group stickers. You'll come up with the grouping principle as you go along. Take the first piece of paper that comes across and glue it to a new paper in the center. Take the second sticker and compare it with the first one — if they are somewhat similar and create a group, then stick it next to it, if not, make a new group. Etc.�
Sometimes grouping is enough. But you can go further and, for example, combine some ideas. Here you will understand exactly why it was necessary to write one idea on one sticker → they can be moved! This is an incredibly simple and powerful principle. You can add, subtract, and combine ideas — and this is the secret of creative thinking.�
Creativity is your mind's response to seemingly incompatible things. This is how you explain this incompatibility. This is how you land abstract pieces on a specific case. This is how you transfer a principle from one area to a completely different one.
To develop creative thinking, you need to develop the ability to become a child for a while, look at the world with wide-open eyes, play in it and laugh.�
It is believed (and not without reason) that the right hemisphere is “responsible” for creative thinking. Therefore, the question can be reduced to the question of how to stimulate the work of the right hemisphere. If you're right-handed, try writing with your left hand as a right-brain exercise. In general, trying to do something with your left hand that you usually do with your right-this will force your right hemisphere to solve new tasks for it, which will lead to new connections between neurons and, possibly, improve blood circulation (in the right hemisphere). If you are left-handed, then try to write with your left hand – this way the right hemisphere will not be stimulated, but the left hemisphere, which is “responsible” for analytical thinking, will be stimulated. The development of analytical skills can, in principle, indirectly affect the creativity of thinking – because everything is interconnected. In general, you need to “pump” your brain: do something that you have not done before (try to say hello to someone with your left hands, and not with your right as usual – the sensations are very funny=)
I now watch a lot of design lessons, and I notice that almost every one of them starts with the item “looking for inspiration”. Indeed, it is very difficult to come up with something really new, you need to look outside in order to get more information, more material for work. Taking other people's work and copying it, drawing the same thing, but green is, of course, plagiarism and lack of creative thinking. But it is useful to watch what others are doing, learn techniques, and get ideas that can be turned upside down in your head. The method of looking not at other people's works, but at real things, objects, and interpreting them, simplifying them, highlighting the features that define this object, and trying to convey them, possibly hypertrophiing them, also works well. The association method also works well in order to express a thought in the design not directly, but through images associated with this thought. This allows you to make the design more original. Well, just looking at the work of professionals is very useful. This develops the taste, allows you to understand, at least, which works are impressive, look impressive and professional, and which are not. Often, beginners have a problem with self-esteem in that their work seems to them just a world masterpiece, although in fact, professionalism is still oh so far away. This does not mean that you should consider yourself incompetent, at any stage a person does what he can, and this is great. Just to make progress, you need to be able to see the difference, understand what professionalism is and what to strive for.
We need to form new neural connections.
Here are a few rules I follow.
Go places you've never been before, or where you rarely go. It can be a new large park or a jewelry store in a nearby neighborhood.
Buy bottles of essential oils or any scented items. Every morning, as soon as you wake up, inhale a new smell – this will “wake up” the brain.
In the evening, do not turn on the light in the apartment – go through the rooms from memory. This exercise will increase your attention and concentration. You can also take a shower with your eyes closed. Since you can't see anything, your other senses are sharply activated.
Brush your teeth not with the working hand, but with the one that is less active: if you are right – handed, brush your teeth with your left hand, if you are left-handed-with your right.
Wear different things. Scientists have proven that depending on a person's clothing, not only their feelings change, but also their way of thinking.
Braille and sign language are difficult to master, but the ability to read and talk with your fingers will develop your senses tremendously. In sign language, it is enough to learn standard communication phrases: greetings, simple questions, and answers.
Go to work (to the store) in a new, unfamiliar way. Even if the new path is longer, it's okay. This will not only have a positive effect on the brain, but also help to maintain slimness.
Be more confident in yourself. Even if you are offered a job that you don't know much about, accept it. The brain quickly activates when you don't know exactly what to do.
Answer standard questions in a non-standard way. Even to the question ” how are you?” you can respond with dozens of different phrases – give up the stereotypes.
Learn to distinguish between coins of different denominations only with your fingers. This exercise is useful when you are waiting for someone or something. Time passes faster, and the wait becomes less tedious.
Choose magazines and newspapers that you don't usually pay attention to. For example, if you are interested in fashion, buy a magazine dedicated to economics. Do you like to read about travel and other countries? Give preference to an animal magazine. It is not necessary to get carried away with something new, it is enough to change the topic of what you are reading from time to time.
Turn off the TV sound and try to play a dialogue or monologue while looking at the image. If you perform this exercise together with your friends, it will be very comical and interesting.
If you usually spend the weekend in the city, then next time go to nature. Don't like listening to music? Go to a music concert – you will get a lot of new sensations. Even if you don't like it at all, you can leave.
This exercise can be done on a day off. If you usually do everything slowly, try to speed up the pace by 2 times. If you can't even sit still for a minute, force yourself to do everything slowly. This requires a lot of concentration.
Coming up with new jokes and anecdotes is very entertaining and useful for the brain. This not only encourages mental activity, but also develops the ability to think creatively.
This is neurobiology-mental gymnastics, aerobics for the brain, aimed at improving mental activity. The term was coined by Lawrence Katz and Manning Rubin from the United States.
I think that you can develop creative thinking only through practice. And to do this, you need to solve some interesting problems that you can invent for yourself.
For example, you can go to https://www.artlebedev.ru/matrix/ and generate a combination of words. Then make a tic-tac-Toe about it, draw a comic strip, write a story, make a poster, pretend it's the name of the movie, and write a review, whatever. The main thing is to make the brain think, and not necessarily stop at the first idea, you can think further and come up with new ones.
The second option is to invent artificial restrictions for your daily work, come up with a challenge for yourself. For example, if you write texts, you can avoid using words with the same letter in the same sentence. If you are engaged in design, then make one option as correct as possible for the customer, and the second one using, for example, only black and white, or only the same font size. This option doesn't have to be shown to the customer, the main thing is to make your brain work. And even in the work of a taxi driver, you can invent such a challenge, for example, to greet each passenger in a new way, without repeating yourself. At first it will be easy, but after the banal “Good afternoon”, “Hello”, “Hello” you will have to think.
A challenge can also be a huge amount of work, for example, some designers make a “Poster every day” challenge throughout the year. It's hard, but it definitely develops creative thinking, because each poster must be unique. Musicians ZAMAI and Slava CPSU recorded an album for 101 tracks, this is also a kind of challenge.
By the way, we came up with a special book Wreck this journal, where you just need to perform some interesting tasks. I think you can use it as well.
There are various techniques, for example, some are described in Julia Cameron's book “The Artist's Way”. This is a 12-week exercise course. The course is not easy, mainly due to the need to repeat actions every day with not obvious results, but the book is definitely worth reading, as it gives an interesting look at the anatomy of the creative component in a person.
First, of course, I want to ask: what do you mean by “creative thinking”? Well, because the answers may be different:
## Ability to find a way out of a confusing situation
It happens that you are “walking in circles”in your head. Or another analogy: you can't get out of a “mental rut” – this is when you constantly stumble on your old decisions that you already thought about and threw out because they didn't suit you.
## tip:
Your thinking needs outside help.�
If you can gather a few friends, arrange a brainstorming session. Right here I have described the most common mistakes, please read them before you start.�
If you can't call anyone, use the focal object method.�
## The method of focal objects
For this method to work, you need to use it quickly and a lot. Draw your problem, object, or issue in the center of the sheet. Place three random objects at a great distance around the object (well, just offhand, for example: a TV, a book, a potato). Write 5 unique characteristics next to each item. Now take several of these properties at once and try to apply them to your problem or your central subject. Don't just say “some bullshit”, play this game for a while-try to explain these random properties of your object, try to give yourself up to the current and swim on. Which way do you want to think? (go there and swim)
## Ability to come up with cool stuff from scratch
Often, creative thinking refers to the absence of a whitelist problem, when a person can immediately come up with hundreds of ideas.�
This can be learned. How easy is it? – it depends on many things, and first of all on your personality type. If you are flexible and process-oriented rather than result-oriented — you will grasp the essence very quickly and enjoy coming up with ideas. If on the contrary-you are a conservative at heart and resist everything new — you will have a hard time.�
The fact is that creativity is very afraid of criticism. That is why in the classic version of brainstorming, the stage of generating ideas and the stage of evaluating them are separated in time. You probably have often encountered this — as soon as someone starts to fantasize, expresses the first idea, there will definitely be a neighbor who will say “oh, well, this won't work”. At this point, you no longer have any desire to invent.�
Therefore, it is very important to play along with each other at the stage of generating ideas. Imagine that you are playing ping-pong, and your task is to beat the serve-this means to complement the idea of your colleague or friend and bring it back. The friend, in turn, should supplement what you have added, and so on. You won't believe how far this game can take you! And the further you go, the more unique and high-quality your ideas will become.�
If you like to do everything alone, then here's what you need to know about the creative process in general: it always consists of two stages — analysis and synthesis. The reference point can be anything — a word, a problem, a task, an object, or a goal.�
Stage 1. Analysis-expansion of the information field. At this stage, you try to outline different concepts, ideas, and objects on your map. You can use mindmap applications, but I prefer to take a pack of post it and paste them on a large sheet of paper. There is an important rule here: one sticker = one idea. Well, that is, just take and write everything that comes to your mind. Don't limit yourself to anything.�
Stage 2. Synthesis-focusing. First, you need to sort out a little of the chaos that has turned out. For example, you can group stickers. You'll come up with the grouping principle as you go along. Take the first piece of paper that comes across and glue it to a new paper in the center. Take the second sticker and compare it with the first one — if they are somewhat similar and create a group, then stick it next to it, if not, make a new group. Etc.�
Sometimes grouping is enough. But you can go further and, for example, combine some ideas. Here you will understand exactly why it was necessary to write one idea on one sticker → they can be moved! This is an incredibly simple and powerful principle. You can add, subtract, and combine ideas — and this is the secret of creative thinking.�
To develop creative thinking, you need to develop the ability to become a child for a while, look at the world with wide-open eyes, play in it and laugh.�
And instead of criticism, use the de Bono hat method.
It is believed (and not without reason) that the right hemisphere is “responsible” for creative thinking. Therefore, the question can be reduced to the question of how to stimulate the work of the right hemisphere. If you're right-handed, try writing with your left hand as a right-brain exercise. In general, trying to do something with your left hand that you usually do with your right-this will force your right hemisphere to solve new tasks for it, which will lead to new connections between neurons and, possibly, improve blood circulation (in the right hemisphere). If you are left-handed, then try to write with your left hand – this way the right hemisphere will not be stimulated, but the left hemisphere, which is “responsible” for analytical thinking, will be stimulated. The development of analytical skills can, in principle, indirectly affect the creativity of thinking – because everything is interconnected. In general, you need to “pump” your brain: do something that you have not done before (try to say hello to someone with your left hands, and not with your right as usual – the sensations are very funny=)
I now watch a lot of design lessons, and I notice that almost every one of them starts with the item “looking for inspiration”. Indeed, it is very difficult to come up with something really new, you need to look outside in order to get more information, more material for work. Taking other people's work and copying it, drawing the same thing, but green is, of course, plagiarism and lack of creative thinking. But it is useful to watch what others are doing, learn techniques, and get ideas that can be turned upside down in your head. The method of looking not at other people's works, but at real things, objects, and interpreting them, simplifying them, highlighting the features that define this object, and trying to convey them, possibly hypertrophiing them, also works well. The association method also works well in order to express a thought in the design not directly, but through images associated with this thought. This allows you to make the design more original. Well, just looking at the work of professionals is very useful. This develops the taste, allows you to understand, at least, which works are impressive, look impressive and professional, and which are not. Often, beginners have a problem with self-esteem in that their work seems to them just a world masterpiece, although in fact, professionalism is still oh so far away. This does not mean that you should consider yourself incompetent, at any stage a person does what he can, and this is great. Just to make progress, you need to be able to see the difference, understand what professionalism is and what to strive for.