I stumbled on a website by Chris Berthelsen called Patterns of Creativity in Japan during some recent research. Today I share three of the ideas that are part of the collection.
Tag: creative
5 Essential Mental Models for Boosting Your Creativity
Hello there! Welcome to the Dialogic Learning Weekly. It’s Friday, February 20. I’m Tom, writing to you from Melbourne, Australia. Thanks for spending part of your day with me. Reach out with comments, questions and feedback at tom@dialogiclearning.com or on Twitter at @tombarrett. If someone forwarded you this email, subscribe to get the Dialogic Learning Weekly sent straight to your inbox.
In our last issue, we explored the notion of innate creative thinking. Today, we look at mental models associated with ideas, creativity, and originality.
- Divergent Thinking
- Convergent Thinking
- The Innovation Jolt Model
- The Creative Habit Model
- The Creative Process Model
Regardless of the model, we use to understand creativity, at its heart is a desire and an intention to be creative. Our focus will be: how we can create the right intention to be more creative.
Divergent Thinking
Divergent thinking involves exploring lots of possible solutions to a problem. At the same time, convergent thinking looks for the correct answer to a specific problem.
Culturally, we are trained to think in ‘right or wrong’ terms and that the only way to be creative is to come up with new ‘right’ answers. When we feel like this, it is impossible to be genuinely innovative.
I often describe Divergent Thinking as a mode when we generate lots of different options. It is an expansive and open mode of thinking.
Convergent Thinking
We narrow down the options in convergent thinking, finding a smaller selection of possibilities.
Convergent thinking is often described as a more analytical and closed mode. Usually, this is done by filtering or voting on collections of ideas or datasets.
When we think in convergent thinking mode, we are not open to new ideas because we attempt to make decisions.
Example questions to encourage convergent thinking:
- Which five ideas have the most potential?
- Which of the questions sums up your current challenge?
- Put a sticker on the three words that resonate with you the most?
- Of all the places we could start, what feels like the most appropriate?
Sometimes there can be a clash of people thinking in opposite modes. Which explains much of the conflict and idea squashing that can happen. This is a dynamic to look out for and facilitate with care.
The Innovation Jolt Model
The analogy is that the moment you get a great idea is like getting hit with a large jolt of electricity — your mind becomes excited and can’t wait to get started.
When looking for ideas, this is the feeling you want, so if it doesn’t happen right away, don’t worry. Keep asking questions until the jolt happens.
The more you can get in touch with your feelings of excitement about an idea, the closer you are to being creative.
The Creative Habit Model
According to this model, creativity is a habit that requires dedication and effort. This means while great ideas may come naturally to some people, they can also be developed by anybody who knows how to practice regularly.
By practising our creative thinking every day, we gradually retrain our brains to think in new ways, increasing our ability for originality and increasing the number of ideas we can develop.
A simple exercise you can use every day is to ask "What if…" and to follow with any question you feel inspired to ask. Some examples:
> What if I didn't have to work?
> What if we didn't have to travel?
> What if the students chose when to learn?
> What if we could harness energy from the wind?
> What if we create an app that makes it easy for people to water their gardens?
The Creative Process Model
This model suggests that creativity isn’t only about understanding when and how to be creative and learning the correct type of thinking for a given situation.
Thinking of creativity and idea generation as a process also helps us manage and understand what we are doing and where we want to go.
We need to learn how to apply different types of thinking to different situations.
Your Talking Points
- How can you use these models to bring out greater creativity in yourself and other people you communicate with?
- What specific practices can you do daily to increase creativity in your life/work/studies, etc.?
🕳🐇 Down the Rabbit Hole
Complement this issue with my Atomic Essays: Solution Siren Call, Walt Disney Creative Strategy, Feedback is Oxygen For Your Ideas, Willful Blindness, Counter Wooden Headedness.
Thanks for taking a moment to join me this week — drop me an email at tom@dialogiclearning.com to connect and say hi. Or you can connect with me on Twitter > @tombarrett
5 Methods For Creatives To Overcome The Crippling Blocks To Original Ideas
Did you know that you judge ideas more harshly when you feel uncertain?
In this article, we explore some of the crippling blocks to creativity and five methods to overcome them.
What gets in your way?
Your fear of making mistakes or taking a risk is one of the most common emotional blocks to your creativity.
James L. Adams, the author of Conceptual Blockbusting, also lists “an inability to tolerate ambiguity and the overriding desire for order” as a block.
You can jump down this rabbit hole if you like 🐇 6 Emotional Barriers to Generating Ideas and How to Overcome Them
Here’s @JimAdamsSU again
You must usually wallow in misleading and ill-fitting data, hazy and difficult-to-test concepts, opinions, values, and other such untidy quantities.
When it comes to problem-solving, your ability to tolerate ambiguity is vital. This emergent idea space is where you make unexpected insights and new connections.
If you’re in a truly new space, you won’t always know the answer. Your team won’t either. You’re going to venture into the unknown together. Curiosity is a great way to lead that charge.
Negative Bias Towards Creative Ideas
Your inability to tolerate ambiguity also means you don’t appreciate a new idea when you see one.
A 2011 study by Jennifer Mueller whilst at the University of Pennsylvania, points to an underlying negative bias towards new ideas when we feel uncertainty.
Our results show that regardless of how open minded people are, when they feel motivated to reduce uncertainty either because they have an immediate goal of reducing uncertainty, or feel uncertain generally, this may bring negative associations with creativity to mind which result in lower evaluations of a creative idea.
When you attempt to reduce uncertainty, you are less receptive to promising ideas.
This negative bias compounds in scenarios that need your creativity. These scenarios are often periods of change or transition, which bring more ambiguity.
Phew, let’s rest here a while. How about some Calvin + Hobbes inspiration on getting in the creative mood?
Do some of these blocks resonate?
🔴 Fear of making mistakes
🔴 Inability to tolerate ambiguity
Let’s have a look at some methods to help overcome these challenges.
Five methods for overcoming common blocks to creative work.
1 ⟶ Write a Catastrophic Expectations Report
Keep it all in perspective by writing a report on the worst-case scenario. What is the worst that could happen? Analyse the details.
swap your analytical capability for your fear of failure — a good trade
2 ⟶ Create with others
Team up with trusted colleagues to create and share your ideas. Fears and uncertainty almost always reduce (or at least, fade) in a collective.
3 ⟶ Trust a process
Do you have a clear method to follow? We tend to tolerate more ambiguity when we know there are discrete phases. It is not going to be ambiguous forever.
4 ⟶ Activate feedback loops
The sooner you can jump into the iterative process of sharing, the sooner you increase your tolerance for ambiguity. Identify a trusted feedback buddy and talk about your ideas.
5 ⟶ Review Your Success Swipefile
Anchor your creative work in past success. Swipe through previous ideas, projects and periods of creativity that illustrate how you can overcome any fear or uncertainty. Bookmark those moments, note how you can reprise what worked.
Quick recap
⟶ You judge ideas more harshly when you feel uncertain
⟶ Fear of making mistakes is a common block to creativity
⚡️Write a Catastrophic Expectations Report
⚡️Create with others
⚡️Trust a process
⚡️Activate feedback loops
⚡️Review Your Success Swipefile
One final thought. This beautiful description from author @danijshapiro makes me smile, as it captures the challenge of doing, crafting and shipping creative work.
#antifragile
Avoiding Masterchef style feedback
Her eyes widened and her mouth fell agape. I suspect the ticking clock suddenly stood still and the taste buds, that had become her all-powerful ally, dried up as fast as an unwatched pan of pasta. Her idea had been derailed.
Wherever I look I see processes of critique and feedback. It is unquestionably an integral process for learners. However, it is also a process that binds and carries the progress of many other professions and creative endeavours, as well as almost everything else in between.
That is why when watching the TV show Masterchef, the amateur cooking competition, the impact of feedback was all too present and obvious.
Masterchef style feedback refers to providing feedback at a point when it is creatively inappropriate as well as emotionally challenging to hear.
Now if you have never seen Masterchef let me share the scenario. The contestant I describe had begun a challenge in which they were in a small group of other contestants but cooking independently. They were given a time limit, like 30 minutes, to cook a particular style of dish or create something unique.
I recognise that the pace of the creative process (generating original ideas for a dish) on show here is very high along with the intensity of the environment, time, expectation and competition. This can be a block to creativity.
In this intensity, the contestants are immediately generating ideas as they hear the challenge ahead of them, even before the basket wielding supermarket sweep for ingredients begins. They are all drawing upon a history of cooking, a long line of experience using the ingredients they have and a range of ideas and principles of cooking that have been tried and tested before.
The action usually commences with everyone rushing off to a pantry filled with a plethora of fresh ingredients and cupboard essentials. The ideas for their dish begin to swirl as they are confronted by the swathe of stock laden shelves in the pantry. There are those that pluck what they need, the decision made and those that are still developing something, waiting for inspiration to strike, lost momentarily in the various types of vinegar on offer.
With baskets crammed the cooks rush to their workbenches and stovetops to begin cooking. Stakes are high (fill in your own pun) as they compete with each other, the clock, their own nerves and the judgement of professional chefs and food critics. Suffice it to say that emotionally the environment is highly charged for those involved.
And then comes the first moment of feedback.
Who knows really how much time has passed due to the editing process for television. However typically a trio of judges saunters across to a contestant to try and learn what dish is being made and observe the progress towards that goal. Comments both positive and negative are typically shared with the contestant at this point. This is a moment when really contestants are implementing their idea for the dish, they have committed to it and are pushing on. Feedback which is anything but affirmation is derailing.
So every now and then you see idea derailment in the eyes of the contestant. The widened eyes of an inner struggle to assimilate the expert advice with their emotional and technical commitment to an idea. “How can I possibly change my dish now?!” The contestant has invested in their idea and fast-tracked to implementing it. They are no longer making major decisions about what to do but are now amongst the intricacies of making it happen. Their mindset is no longer in a divergent state but is now one of convergence towards a more and more fixed goal.
It is this style of feedback which I think we have to seek to avoid. After all the cooking on Masterchef, however much a show for TV is still a microcosm of a creative process. This is similar in so many ways to when we ask the learners in our classes to create something, think high stakes, time, judgement.
To avoid Masterchef feedback or idea derailment we simply have to provide more feedback earlier on in the creative process.
In the case of Masterchef the time in the pantry, as the contestants jostle for ideas, inspiration and ingredients, would have been a good time to speak with people to offer ideas and feedback. Sometimes on a show, you see those stranded in the pantry getting a pep talk from a judge as they share and develop ideas together. That early feedback and dialogue are much more developmental and appropriate than derailing ideas already on their way.
In the classroom, we might build in earlier check-ins with learners as they begin the process of generating ideas for their writing, painting, modelling etc. The longer you leave that early check in the more committed to their ideas students will become and there is a higher chance of idea derailment if you offer critique. Plan for feedback to occur early and frequently to catch our young thinkers whilst their mindset is still divergent and open to ideas.
What Makes People Creative?
When you start to explore the literature around the definition of creativity, or what it means to be creative, the lists and references go on and on. In this post I wanted to share a few key characteristics of what we might deam a creative approach or disposition. In my last post I shared the idea of developing a creative council in the classroom to learn about key role models and why they were/are so influential in their fields. With a better sense of the characteristics of creative people we can form better perspectives on our own work and speak more confidently about what makes up ‘being creative”.
What makes people creative?
- Tenacity – grit, determination, resilience, call it what you like but some people don’t allow bumps in the road get in the way of the journey.
- Courage – it is not just bumps in the road but sometimes the traffic is against you. Creative people are often risk takers and go against the common paradigm.
- Inventiveness – to be able to explore new connections and combinations, to continually push what is possible.
- Leadership – some people are moths others are flames.
- Impact – some individuals either through their established position or their authority have had greater impact in their fields than others.
- Vision – not just being able to project what is ahead in a field of study or development or art, but to bring that horizon closer much quicker than others.
- Passion – an unquenchable fuel.
I am not saying that this is an exhaustive list in fact I would welcome your additions and amendments. The complexity of defining these characteristics means that many individuals would display some of these dispositions more strongly than others. Some were natural leaders whereas others showed greater courage as they worked alone. We each show these tendencies in different measure, making up the unique definitions of creative people and what creativity is.
Thomas Edison’s Creative Approach
I really enjoyed this piece by Wouter Boon who outlines the characteristics of Thomas Edison that contributed to his creative success:
Persistence / Conviction / Associations / Productivity / Trial and Error / Combinations / Imagination / Relaxation / Diligence / Collaboration / Knowledge and Skill / Value / Luck / Entrepreneurship / Curiosity
And this from the Centre of Excellence in teaching in Learning at Iowa University expands on some of these ideas when they suggest the following characteristics that researchers look at when measuring creative aptitude:
- Fluency (number of ideas generated)
- Originality and imagination (unusual, unique, novel ideas)
- Elaboration (ability to explain ideas in detail)
- Flexibility, curiosity, resistance to closure (ability to generate multiple solutions)
- Complexity (detail and implications of ideas; recognition of patterns, similarities and differences)
- Risk taking (willingness to be wrong and to admit it)
Creative Flow
One of my favourite concepts in the study of creativity and the creative process is that of Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In Creativity – Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention he suggests the following characteristics of the creative personality:
- Creative individuals have a great deal of energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest.
- Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time.
- Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.
- Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy ant one end, and rooted sense of reality at the other.
- Creative people seem to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum between extroversion and introversion.
- Creative individuals are also remarkable humble and proud at the same time.
- Creative individuals to a certain extent escape rigid gender role stereotyping and have a tendency toward androgyny.
- Generally, creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent.
- Most creative persons are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.
- The openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to suffering pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment.
Take your pick from all of those. One thing that you quickly realise is that even defining characteristic of creative people becomes divergent. However simply beginning conversations around the common themes or elements would be a great discussion with your colleagues or class. Take another look at my creative shortlist at the top and let me know what you think.