How To Become More Creative

In previous articles, we discussed what creativity is and covered whether creativity can be learned or not.
This article with cover the two ways of thinking that occurs in the brain. It is important to understand the two thinking mechanisms in order to see how creativity works and become more creative.

1. Why Are Adults Less Creative?

Before we dive in, I want to quickly recap the previous article.

The reason why most adults are less creative compared to kids is because with increasing age and experience we are getting more narrow-minded.

Over time, we learn what works in life and what doesn’t. As a result, we ask less “what if” -questions that leads down the path of creativity.

While with growing experience our analytical brain is getting really good at dismissing ideas and pointing out the things that can’t work, we totally forget to use the other side that helps to generate ideas.

Compared to adults, the greatest advantage that kids have is the lack of experience . They look at everything from a neutral perspective and therefore they are much more likely to ask “stupid” questions .

Adults don’t ask stupid questions. Even if they wanted to, they simply won’t.

Our society is constructed in a way that it discourages people from asking weird questions.

How many times did you find yourself holding back from asking questions at work or in public because you were afraid of what others think?

Fear and social status are very strong influencers of behavior.

2. Divergent & Convergent Thinking

The next thing we need to understand is how our brain is dividing the thinking process in two mechanisms: divergent thinking and convergent thinking.

In design, we call it the double-diamond process.

The double diamond process describes the process of exploring a challenge in multiple directions and then narrowing down possible solutions. You can visualize this as a two “diamond-shape”  process, hence the name.

1. This process starts off with divergent thinking. This phase is about generating ideas.
2. After the exploration phase, the best ideas are selected . Convergent thinking sets in.
3. Based on the selected ideas, many solutions are explored . Divergent thinking helps again to explore different directions.
4. Solutions are prioritized using convergent thinking.

3. Stop Driving With The Handbrake

Most people are good at convergent thinking – their brain is trained to judge and criticize ideas immediately.

Convergent thinking is necessary for evaluating ideas but counterproductive  when generating ideas. If divergent and convergent thinking happen at the same time , they will fight against each other.

It is like driving a car with an active handbrake .

Therefore, we must learn to delay the evaluation process until later after the idea generation phase is over. Only then can your mind wander freely and explore different directions and ideas.

How to defer convergent thinking?

The solution is simple, yet not easy .

You need to become aware of the moment when you begin to dismiss ideas quickly. Each time you catch yourself criticizing and dismissing ideas fast, you need to take a step back and ask yourself: “Wait, what if this idea could work?” or “What would it take to make this idea work?” .

The best way to retrain your brain is to ask follow-up questions that will open up your mind for new ideas.

This is a habit that takes time to build. You basically have to overwrite the way of thinking you’ve acquired over many years.

4. 3 Steps To Become More Creative

Now that you understand how your brain operates, I want to give you 3 Steps to become more creative. I believe it is important to have a holistic approach to achieve a more creative life:

Step 1 – Create a healthy lifestyle

The level of creativity is greatly influenced by the level of your well-being and happiness.

It is not hard to imagine that people who are constantly under stress and live an unhealthy lifestyle, cannot perform at the highest level.

Neither physically nor mentally .

Therefore it is necessary to adopt positive habits to create a strong foundation so that your creativity can flourish.

Here are the most important things you need to improve first, so that your mind can operate at the highest level:

Step 2 – Expanding Your Repertoire (Input)

Divergent thinking works best when you have a wide repertoire of knowledge and experiences to play with.

Creativity is about seeing hidden patterns and making sense of connections. By making connections between things that aren’t obviously related we are able to come up with new ideas.

To maximize creativity, it is important to become more open-minded and embrace new things:

Step 3 – Start Exploring & Experimenting (Output)

While the previous steps make up the foundation , this step is ultimately where you push the boundaries of your mind.

You cannot maximize your creativity if you are not taking action and engage yourself in hands-on exploration and experimentation.

Here are some ideas that will help you to become more creative:

5. Summary

The most important thing for creativity to flourish is a good foundation .

This starts from creating a healthy lifestyle to expanding your horizon on a daily basis.

If you start implementing the above mentioned basics, you inevitably become more creative.

There is no magic switch that turns on your creativity instantly. Creativity is a lifestyle and if you embrace it like that, then it becomes much more easy to implement other strategies further down the road.

The most important part is your identity switch to a creative person .

Once you start to believe that you are a creative person, you will perform actions almost on autopilot that supports your belief: you will start to ask more “what if” questions, question the status quo and to take more risks in what you do…

This is when you ultimately become more creative.