The ability to think outside the box can be second nature to some creatives, but how easy is it to train your brain. To think unfiltered, unboxed and unbiased is a skill the best creative thinkers hold, but with these few exercises you too could become the next great thinker in your team.
“You don’t think your way to creative work. You work your way to creative thinking.” – George Nelson
Think of any word and then rearrange the letters in alphabetical order, taking an ordinary word and seeing it in a different way to produce ideas that you wouldn’t have necessarily seen before.
e.g *Think Creative – aceehiiknrttv *Blackpool – abckloop
Try the yes or no game or limiting the words you can use by the letters they contain when talking about your ideas with someone else. This exercise makes you think carefully of your reply and choice of words whilst also searching for alternative answers quickly.
Think of a word then list relevant words, references, observations around that word to find links and form concepts. Searching for information and looking for connections is important in building up your creative thinking. Creating mind maps and mood boards help visualise your ideas as a collective.
Turn an object into something else by overlooking the original function to find other possibilities or purposes for it.
Draw 30 circles and turn each one into something recognisable apply a time restriction, perhaps try it multiple times with different time constraints applied and compare results. Setting timed deadlines will create a pressure to think fast and draw the first thing that comes to mind as these can be most obscure and unusual.
Previously we set the challenge of connecting 9 dots with 4 straight lines without lifting your pen from the paper, you can find the challenge in our blog post Thinking outside the box! or on our social media accounts with the solution.
These creative warm ups allow your thoughts to be responsive whilst attaining a deeper understanding surrounding your concepts. Richard W. Paul, a leading expert on critical thinking theory and author of critical thinking says, “Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking while you’re thinking in order to make your thinking better.” Approach your ideas and concepts with the same open and playful manner to these challenges.
Take a walk on the creative side with more blog posts from Think!Creative and find out How to spark your creativity or look back at 7 Great Creative Thinkers in history for inspiration.
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