Creativity is a skill

Mozart and Van Gogh were, and scientists who discover amazing stuff are. Creative people, people who think outside the box. They can come up with solutions others never think about. Some people are envious of this and want to think up creative solutions too. Is that a problem? No, it isn’t, because fortunately everyone can learn to be creative and can learn think outside of the box. You can train your brain to look at things differently just by stimulating it.

Most people are efficient observers. During the day our brain is attacked by all sorts of information. Things that are important to us, are saved for later use and irrelevant static disappears into the background. That’s why we can, for instance, have a normal conversation at a loud party. If we want, we can still understand the person we are having a chat with, because the loud noise and music is filtered into the background by our brain. (hmm…. So when you can’t make out what the other one is saying you are either deaf or not interested?! ;))

The downside of this quite useful filter is that it limits our ability to think up smart and clever solutions. But like I said earlier, you can change this; you can learn to think outside of the box. So enough of this, time for some assignments (that is, if you are interested of course)

Assignment 1: Cutting the cake

Here is a cake and it needs to be cut into 8 equal pieces. That doesn’t sound to difficult now, does it? There is only one problem, you may only take the knife and cut 3 times

Assignment 2: Quick drawing.

Here are 16 squares. Change these squares into objects. You have 3 minutes to do this. Be creative and try to make a diverse range of objects. And you don’t have to be precise and neat, you are not creating a piece of art.

Assignment 3: The glass is full or empty

Here are 6 glasses, 3 full and 3 empty. You can move 1 glass to make it 1 empty, 1 full, 1 empty, 1 full, 1 empty and 1 full.

Assignment 4: Associate.

Start with any given word and associate. For example start with water. You could get a chain like this one: water – drinking – coke – America – Bush – Iraq – war – peace – Christmas – candle – flame – fire etc. Now during the next minute, make your own chain starting with mushroom. And, how many did you get?
Now do it again and try to increase your outcome by 50%, start with the word violin or diamond.

Okay enough assignments for now….. go and be creative :) On a later date I’ll post the solutions and/or more information.