It’s day three and Salvador Dali still hasn’t slept. This was a common occurrence in the artist’s life as he regularly went without sleep in order to induce paranoia. A state in which he felt he did his best work. Dali gave it a fancy term: “the paranoiac-critical method”. I’m more drawn towards “sleep-deprivation”. It’s an extreme attempt to achieve the MegaSkill behind creativity. I’m seven books in, on a journey to read every book in the creativity and innovation section of Powells and already one MegaSkill is emerging that is under-utilized, under-discussed and certainly never taught. One skill to rule them all. It unlocks creative problem solving, thinking out of the box, having more light bulb moments and it’s this:
Escape your existing thought patterns.
Humans love classifications. When we look at a hanger, we see clothes off the floor. And move on.
According to neurologist John Kounios, this is exactly how our brains are supposed to function. In order to “reduce our mental workload”, we need to accept things, classify them and…move on.
Now imagine staying in a hotel where the curtains don’t close properly. The morning beam of light finds your face like a NASA laser. This would also be a great use of a hanger.
(You’re welcome.)
Using a hanger in this way requires ditching all our preconceived ideas about hangers. Rather than being hanger definitive, you are now hanger flexible. This mental gymnastics is the key to creativity.
Here’s why.
Creativity is the skill of coming up with original ideas that solve a problem. The way to get original with your thinking is to think of something, or use something, in a new way. All of the following real world innovations subvert how we think about the subject. They bend our classifications.
Using termite mounds to teach us how to self-cool a building.
Using plants to generate electricity.
Using inoperative subway cars as a reef at the bottom of a river.
Using Burning Man as a blueprint for the city of the future.
Suddenly, the creativity tropes make sense.
Once you are aware of this skill all the weird, sometimes unhelpful tropes around creativity make more sense.
The “how many uses for this brick” creativity test? Not just psychologists having fun, but a way to gauge the adaptability of your thinking.
The way mistakes dominate the discussion of creativity? You are literally forced out of your mental models by doing some wrong, by having an accident.
Necessity is the mother of invention? If you’ve ever scanned your car for a vomit receptacle, you’ve experienced first hand how urgency can bend your mental definitions of that object previously known as “hat”.
So if you don’t have time to read 22 creativity books, or even 7, or even this…
Want to get good at ideas? Find new ways to think.
Source: Wikipedia