You’re sitting at your desk. Pencil in hand. A stack of blank, lined sheets of paper lay in front of you. Highlighters and post-it notes in close reach. You stare down at the first piece of paper, waiting for the lightbulb to turn on. But your mind goes blank the harder you look at that sheet of paper and no new idea magically pops into your brain.
Generating any creative idea is often a challenging process. Although we tend to believe that ideas simply appear in our minds out-of-the-blue, innovative thoughts are usually the result of hard work. Here are a few helpful tips to stimulate creative thinking.
One of the most classic methods of forming new ideas is to combine existing concepts. Allowing your “personal thoughts to weirdly collide” is a vital step in the creative process according to Adam Braun, Founder and CEO of Pencils of Promise. When your brain associates two new and different thoughts together, additional neural pathways are formed, making it easier for your brain to find new ways of examining a problem.Combining existing ideas also trains your brain to look for unique connections in the future. Mind mapping is a helpful tool when developing ideas by association. The web of thoughts you form as you build upon a single concept allows you to discover new connections.
Additionally, avoiding a single mental set, or a framework of thinking, is another useful technique to incorporate when brainstorming. “Breaking through thought patterns” according to Mind Tools is the best way to formulate new ideas. Often times, we get stuck in the same perspective, preventing us from viewing a problem from a different angle. Walter Driver, Co-Founder and CEO of Scopley, recommends “getting outside your comfort zones,” and to “take the experiences you have and then go find somewhere no one like yourself has been.” Naturally, new situations engender new perspectives. Other ways to reach a different way of thinking include rewording a problem, thinking in reverse, or playing the “If I were” game.
Allowing your mind to wander can also lead to innovative ideas. In a 2009 study, a group of American and Canadian researchers found that the brain may enter a unique mental state that enables more creative thinking when you allow yourself to daydream. According to the researchers, this perfect creative state is generated most commonly when the individual is unaware that he or she is daydreaming. Taking breaks when working on a mentally challenging task to set aside time for your mind to relax, and perhaps drift away in thought, can inspire new ideas.
Next time you find yourself staring blankly at a sheet of paper, try one of these methods and see where your creative mind leads you.
