2021 Definitive Guide to Creative Thinking
- Introduction
- Part 1: Perceiving Reality
- Part 2: Developing Your Unique Vision
- Part 3: Influencing Reality
Tenet 2: Life is a Laboratory
Experimentation breeds new ideas. When you find yourself at a dead end, try something new. Remember, creativity is an algorithm. If you actively employ the algorithm by way of scientific method, you can find new and interesting ideas. This is an extension of the constant pursuit of your curiosity- it is a means by which you can actively exploit and understand the subjects of your curiosity.
Let your Life be your Laboratory.
What does one do in a laboratory? They run experiments. What does one keep in their lab? The proper equipment with which to run the experiments that they need to run. So, what does it mean to make your life a lab and why would I want to do such a thing?
What I mean is simple to understand. In an extension of the curious life, one must play an active role in experimentation. It is not enough to simply feel curious. You must be willing to act upon that curiosity. Even more, you must act on that curiosity in an intentional manner. Be thoughtful and plan out how you will obtain some certain truth.
This may seem vague. When things are vague, they are often not user-friendly. To be more specific, you should very literally engage yourself in experimentation. Whatever field you are in. to be even more clear, for non-scientists, how does one run an experiment? Let us adapt a version of the scientific method for our purposes. We can come up with a cute name for it. The Curiosity method or creative method.
- Identify the problem
- Formulate a hypothesis
- Test the hypothesis
- Examine the results -> does it satisfy your creative vision?
- Repeat as needed
As an engineer, I seem to have developed a stark problem/solution model of the world and indeed, creative thinking. It may seem harsh to think of everything as a problem to be solved when you’re a hammer, everything is a nail, isn’t that right? Nonetheless I think that on a granular level, as creative minds, we set out to ‘solve’ these collections of miniscule problems (related to details, tenet 7) that result in a collective solution to that which did not exist, but we the creator, deemed in necessary to exist. The problem/solution model holds and is useful. So naturally, the first step to experimentation is to identify your subject, the problem at hand. No matter how minute. In very real terms, this problem may not be a problem at all. Or it may be, but with negligible impact. Sometimes, the problem is merely an emotional impact. Typically, you run an experiment successfully by changing one variable at a time. So we take a single problem at a time. Then, we develop a hypothesis about that problem. What is it that will get this problem closer to the solution, we ask ourselves. This process is not always as numerical or scientific as we would like it to be.
Sometimes, a guess is as good as anything, and certainly a guess is better than doing nothing at all. Rely on your intuition and allow yourself to come to conclusions you may not otherwise get to.