Royane Real

By Harry Hoover

Introductory comments

By Royane Real

Author of     “How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative”   

Should you try to become a more creative person?  Only you can really answer this question.  Increased creativity isn’t required for everyone, and perhaps you are one of those people who doesn’t really need to learn how to become more creative than you already are.

You may find that you are perfectly happy living a life that is orderly and structured, with no surprises.  Your psychological nature may be completely suited to living in this manner.  In that case, you can leave increased creativity to other people.

Don’t feel bad if you decide that being more creative is not really something that you’re interested in trying.  The world has a need for many different types of people.  You have valuable gifts to contribute even if you decide that creativity is not for you.

However, if you do feel an inner need to be more creative, but you don’t know where to start, there are many techniques available that can help you realize your desires, and stimulate your ability to come up with creative ideas.

To people who are naturally creative, such techniques come very naturally.  However, even the most creative person can learn to increase their creativity by using additional creativity boosting techniques.

The following article by Harry Hoover will give you more ideas to enhance your ability to come up with more creative ways of thinking.

“How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative”  http://www.lulu.com/real

( These introductory comments which appear above are written by Royane Real who is the author of the book  “How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative”  Download it today and lyou will learn more ways to get the maximum use of your brainpower. It’s available at  http://www.lulu.com/real  )

Feature article

Pump Up Your Brain

By Harry Hoover

According to Nobel prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling, the best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.  Unfortunately, school teaches us to find the right answer, when actually there is usually more than one right answer for a problem.

When an adult is challenged to come up ideas, he or she typically generates three to six possible solutions. The average child generates 60. We need to be more child-like in our approach to ideas. Let's try some exercises to help us generate ideas or to look at things from a different - and perhaps, childlike - perspective.

Change the question  

Sometimes just by changing a word or two in a question, you can come up with radically different ideas. Centuries ago a plague spread across Europe which was almost always fatal.

In one town, a person thought to be dead was buried alive. Townspeople wanted to make sure this didn't happen again. One group proposed putting food and water in every casket and an air hole up to the surface. Their question: "What if we bury someone alive?"

Another group suggested placing a 12-inch spike in the coffin lid and aligning it with the victim's heart. Their question: "how do we make sure everyone we bury is dead?"

Ignore The Rules

Now, I'm not suggesting that you should break laws. Rather, I am saying you need to look for approaches that fall outside the norm.

Ancient prophecy said that whoever could untie the Gordian Knot would be king of Asia . Everyone, including Alexander the Great, failed when they tried to unravel it. Frustrated, Alexander took out his sword and sliced the knot in half. Mission accomplished.

Reframing The Problem

You can look at problems from different perspectives using what is called the Reframing Matrix.

Take a piece of paper and write down your question in the middle of the paper. Draw a grid around it.  In one grid you might ask, "How would a doctor approach this problem?" In another, "How would an engineer solve this?"

Group Think

Brainstorming in a group often does not work because people are afraid of speaking their ideas out loud.

This is a way around that fear. Assemble a group. Write down three ideas on a piece of paper and pass it to the person on your right. That person reads the ideas and adds three more ideas triggered by the previous ideas. This continues until it gets back to the beginning.

Random Input

A random piece of information often can take your problem-solving process into hyperdrive.  Once you have your question or problem clearly stated, open up a dictionary or a thesaurus to any page and select a word.  Now, think about how this random item applies to your problem. There is some connection and your job is to find it.

OK, now you have some new tools to pump up your brain.  Do some heavy lifting.

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