What is Creative Thinking?

What exactly does Creative Thinking mean? For me, whenever I hear the word Creativity, I immediately associate it with Arts, Music, and Inventions. However, creative thinking is not limited to profession, industry or people. 

According to Business Dictionary, Creative thinking is “A way of looking at problems or situations from a fresh perspective that suggests unorthodox solutions (which may look unsettling at first).”

To keep it simple, it means looking at a problem and thinking of good solutions to solve it. Creative thinking helps people to see the world differently from others. Viewing life and everyday objects from a different perspective. Creative thinkers can connect the dots and link various ideas and memories together even though they might not even relate.

For example, a creative artist would have thought of creating an art piece based on watching an action movie. Although these two aspects do not have any correlation, a creative person would instantly link these two ideas together, showing that creativity has no limits.

I am definitely not the best creative thinker out there, but I believe that I am a creative thinker and would love to share some of the things that I do myself to improve and expand my creative thinking. So here are just some things which I do every week to help build on my creative thinking skills:

1. Viewing a LOT of Social Media Content

There is a saying “You are what you eat” I believe that this applies to the type of content that we consume daily as well. Therefore, I always follow brands & accounts that inspire me in my creative thinking. Whenever I see a creative post or a giveaway, I would bookmark it and revisit these posts whenever I need ideas. This helps me to create a database of creative post and ideas which I can revisit anytime.

So consume as much content as you can every day. Be it on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest. But ensure that these contents are not mindless types of content and that you actually go through the process of thinking how these creative posts are being thought of and not scroll pass through these posts.

2. Reading Manga/Comics

In my opinion, Mangas and Comics are the best ways to improve thinking out of the box. However, reading good mangas & comics are also a crucial part of improving your creative thinking! I love reading mangas and the way I read it is for the story plot as well as the art/drawing of the comic.

Why I believe these are the best medium to improve creativity? Well, all these manga artists are creative people as well. For them to come up with a story AND drawings/art of it, portraying what they want to tell in just pictures is an incredible form of creativity. Therefore, I have always admired these artists in the way they create & produce these pieces as it takes much of their time and effort churning out content for many years.

How does this help in my creative thinking? Well, some of the plots and ideas in these manga’s could be applied in solving problems as these story plots are generally based on real-life situations from the artist.

3. Watching Musicals, Plays & Comedy

These various art forms are also part of the creative industry. The artists in these industries have put in a lot of time and effort in honing their craft and are experts in their artform. Every play I watch, every musical I listen to and every standup comedy I hear always makes me wonder how they came up with the script and what goes through their thought process when thinking of such ideas.

All these scripts are definitely not thought of in a minute but through personal experiences or talking to friends and family. So, I’ve always enjoyed watching these forms of arts and understanding their thought process in how the story was created.

4. Videos on Youtube

Lastly, yes videos on Youtube are one of the ways which I believe has helped with my creative thinking. As the number of videos on Youtube uploaded a day has grown, the amount of content on Youtube has grown dramatically. All you need to do is to find a channel or a content creator that you feel you could learn a lot from their creative process and try to replicate it.

There are many creative content creators out there, you just have to find a niche or industry which you are interested in!

Books are also a very good source of improving your creative thinking as it helps to question why certain parts of the book were written in a certain way and the books also act as an avenue for writers to share their experiences on their creative thinking process.

Conclusion

In conclusion, all these tips that helped in improving my creative thinking may not work for you as we all have different ways we think and view the world. Some of these may work, but some may not. So find what is best for you and stick to it!

At the end of the day, creative thinking is about creating a collection of knowledge and experiences in our lives. This is to increase the dots in our brains so that we can connect more dots to be a more creative thinker.

Do let me know in the comments below what are the things that you do to help in your creative thinking skills or if these skills that I listed helped you in your creative thinking!