Strategies for Creative Thinking

Research on characteristics of creative people has identified attitudes, dispositions and skills that facilitate creative thinking, translating into practical strategies. The first is to become more aware and sensitive to feelings, sights, sounds and textures, spotting problems, missing information, anomalies, gaps and deficiencies, and noticing contradictions and incompleteness that others may not — cultivated through wider reading, exposure to varied information, and developing the habit of asking questions and pondering the mysteries of situations and objects.

The second is to generate as many ideas, responses or suggestions as possible on a given task, increasing the flow of thoughts, and deliberately looking for multiple angles to increase flexibility — for example, thinking of alternative furniture arrangements to generate space, different ways of conversing with people, or looking for costs and benefits of a course of study or career, or ways of dealing with an angry friend. …