The Lazy Way To Creative Thinking

Be a bit Taoist when you are presented with a creative challenge. Pause, wait and allow the message of the challenge to be fully absorbed. You need to listen fully and with attention, allowing the challenge to take shape before you. You need to yield to it. Don't be in a rush to get your thinking cap on, to shout out your great answers so that you can impress others and show off that you are the creative "ideas person" in the group.

Creative thinking occurs on many levels and while your instant impressions are often extremely valuable and may hold the thread of an answer, most of us miss them. Those fleeting insights are just that... fleeting, gone within a moment, and then what follows immediately afterwards is... the obvious, the trite, the unimaginative.

No, you want to be a bit lazy. Relax into your ideas. Let your deeper mental processes go to work on the challenge while you go quiet and restful. Ruminate like a big rusty colored cat sitting on the fence in the sunshine, paws tucked under.

Be the sounding board for other members of your brainstorming group. Listen. Let them express their ideas fully. Be wary of "pretending to listen" while actually going over your own ideas in your head.

Be infinite -- absorbant -- quiet -- still -- reflective.

You can do something completely unrelated -- or even take a nap -- and then when you've given it some time, some lazy spacey time in which the creative challenge just gets to exist and "float" in your awareness, then you can get focussed and allow your ideas to formulate and be harvested into your idea journal.

This is the lazy way to creative thinking.

Wily

Creative Thinking Techniques: What's Funny About This?

Jokes, humor, wisecracks, gags -- these are all expressions of the creative mind because inevitably they leap from one pattern of thought to another through an unexpected creative leap.

You can use humor and BEING FUNNY as a crowbar to your genius vault. Having a laugh will prise open the big old door that traps your creative spark and you can then freely apply your creative thinking to more "serious" tasks.

Here's your primary 'mindset' for finding humor in all situations:

>>>>> WHAT'S FUNNY ABOUT THIS? <<<<<<

This question can help set up your mind's search and find capability so that it can see the funny side in any situation. Somehow focussing on laughter and having fun, spotting what is funny, bypasses the serious requirements and demands of being creative.

Creative thinking should be fun. Have fun with your creative thinking. Be playful -- playfulness is a state of being open and flexible -- it let's a lot more new ideas in.

Hang out with funny people. Brainstorm with others who have a good sense of humor and encourgae them to express that humor and use it freely in the brainstorm session. If you are rolling with laughter in your chair, you are going to come up with some great ideas -- as well as the ones that make you giggle to your bones.

Many of the best ideas are born with tears of mirth streaming down the faces of the those doing the brainstorming.

See also: Chicken-in-the-traffic techniques to unleash wit and humor! Wisecrack your way to enhanced intelligence and happiness!

Brains Accelerate Into Creativity As We Sleep

The Best Reason Ever to Sleep In

Need an idea? Go to sleep. Our brains go into creative overdrive as we snooze.

The most creative people in the world may be those lazy folks who sleep late and frequently indulge in mid-afternoon naps. Bed--not the office or school--is the most fertile breeding ground for new ideas, reports the BBC News Online of new research from East of England Development Agency.

The researchers found that fully 33 percent of the people they polled said they get their best ideas in bed, while only 11 percent have their top ideas at work. The trick to generating the flow of creativity is to relax and get a break from everyday pressures.

Psychology professor Richard Wiseman told the BBC News Online, "In our dreams we produce unusual combinations of ideas that can seem surreal, but every once in a while result in an amazingly creative solution to an important problem."

The most exciting news from this research is how easy it is for us to think up great ideas, but if bosses want that creative energy directed at work, they need to change how we work.

"Ideas can come to people at any time and in any place, but to fully reap the rewards of a creative mind, people's brains need to be primed for a new way of thinking," Wiseman advised the BBC.

Short of installing beds in the office, what can be done to boost creativity during the workday?

Decorate the office with flowers and plants.

Designate a room on the west side of the building as a "creativity" room. Using the principles of feng shui, the west symbolizes creativity and new ideas.

Stock the "creativity" room with food and drinks, which offer a great way to get people to relax and stimulate ideas.

Paint the office walls white, cream, or silvery gray.

So for the good of your company or your school work, sleep in. And take a nap in the afternoon!

See also: Sleep to Succeed! Sleep and dream your way to brilliant ideas!