Short Cut to Creativity

April 17, 2009 — Written for the Windsor Leadership Trust Website by Derek Arden

Creativity can be defined as, “having the ability to create, by stimulating the imagination.” — Collins English Dictionary

There are many techniques that can be used to assist creativity — for example, brainstorming, mindstorming, mindmappimg (to name just a few).

These techniques all stimulate the right side of the brain and then feed the ideas back into the left side to enable a proper evaluation. The right side of the brain is most influential in coming up with creative ideas and solutions.

The brain is divided into 2 parts, the left side and the right side. It is joined by the corpus callosum — some 200 miles of neurological connections that makes some of the key connections in our brain. It was only 25 years ago that Dr Richard Sperry, a British neuro-surgeon, discovered some of the intricacies of the separate sides of the brain when he was working with people with epileptic difficulties.

Some of the greatest brains in the world, including Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison, all had the ability to be both very focused on left and right brain. Da Vinci, for example, was both a great mathematician and a great artist. He drew pictures of helicopters that took another 450 years to come to fruition. Edison knew that a technique to access the right brain, at a deeper sub-conscious level, meant you had to go into a calm meditative state where the brainwaves slow down to around 10-14 per second. This is called alpha state, which also happens when we are just going to sleep or just waking up. Edison used to sit in a chair holding a stone, do deep breathing exercises and meditate. The stone allowed him not to fall asleep as if he did the stone would fall to the ground.

There are many creative techniques, which will stimulate the right side of the brain. Some of these techniques are:

1. Brainstorming.

There are some simple rules to follow:

• There should be a scribe who should write the question to be brainstormed clearly so everybody can see.
• All the ideas, the more wacky the better, should be written on flip charts, post its, white cards that should be positioned so everyone can see them. They can be moved around to form connections.
• There must be no criticism or comments on any of the ideas; people must be encouraged to say whatever comes into their head.
• The ambiance must be friendly; there must be no interruptions.
• At the end of the pre-allocated time, the ideas can then and only then looked at and either brainstormed further, put in order and evaluated.

2. Mind storming.

• Place the question you want answering at the top of an A4 piece of paper.
• Then write down all the ideas that come into your mind, however wacky.
• Keep going until you have 20 answers. It gets very difficult at around 12 but you must not give up.
• Then take the ideas and place them in order.

3. Journal.

• Write a question you want answering in a book, on a piece of paper and carry it around with you, place it by the side of your bed.
• You relax and wait for the answer to come to you. It doesn’t matter if it takes days or weeks.

4. Mind mapping.

• Take a piece of A3 or A4 paper and turn it landscape.
• Write the idea that you want answers to in the centre — you take branches out on the heading and then the sub headings come off of the main branches.
• Draw pictures wherever possible and you always use different colours for the various branches.
• This is a fantastic way to come up with the structure of a report, book or talk that you are going to do. The same principle is used for a spider diagram but by using colours and pictures it is more effective because it accesses the right brain more effectively.

Finally, I want to encourage you to use all your ability to be creative. These techniques work best when you are at your best. It is difficult to get access to the right brain when you are tired, stressed or overloaded. This is why sometimes people wake up in the middle of the night with an answer to a problem or an idea comes to them in the shower as they are waking up. Write the solution down as soon as you can, because it can be difficult to remember these inspirational ideas, minutes later.

Therefore to ensure you are creative, take breaks from your work every 55 minutes. Go out and get some fresh air, look at the trees, listen to the birds, smell the flowers, taste some natural fruit. Drink water rather than caffeine.

To conclude, use the techniques I have mentioned above. Always carry a notebook with you to write down those ideas when they unexpectedly come to you. The greatest brains that I mention above always did, so model the experts. If it worked for them, it will work for you.

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