Creativity

Taped at the 2014 Las Vegas Controllers Conference - Nov. 2014

I just stumbled upon (stumbleupon.com) a great website www.mindmeister.com. This site allows free (also subscription) on-line and collaborative mindmap creation. Following is their public map of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

If you haven't tried stumble upon, I highly recommend it.

There is a new website http://www.wordle.net/ that creates "word clouds" based on the information that you provide. The image accompanying this entry was generated based on words from the Myers Briggs Profiles. This can be a fun tool to summarize information, to help generate new ideas, and to break away from Linear thinking. Enjoy!

Thorsten Consciousness Tool

If you have followed my posts in the past, you know that I am interested in creativity and methods to increase the creative thought process. I made an interesting html page which is based on the Twitter post search feature and entitled it the "Thorsten Consciousness Tool". The concept is fairly simple. If you watch a series of discussions that were of interest to you, the following will happen: very quickly you will see an article, a concept, or a link that will further advance your understanding of the topic. Will there be garbage? Of course - it wouldn't be the internet without it. I have used this technique on a regular basis and am constantly expanding my knowledge of the particular subjects that appeal to me. Check it out - I think you will find it useful Thorsten Consciousness Tool

Copyright 2010 - Jim Lindell

In a previous entry, I described how all value originates from the dream phase (day dreams as opposed to sleep dreams). Many people have trouble dreaming up new ideas because they don’t believe that they are imaginative or creative. Typically, these individuals are self limiting due to personal beliefs, paradigms, policies, opinions, fears, biases, etc.

If you are feeling unimaginative try this approach – list out all of the limiting beliefs at the beginning of the process. Then ask the following question. If this belief was not true, the consequence would be: ________________. For example a belief would be that a car can only travel 500 miles on a tankful of gas. If this belief was not true, the car could drive an unlimited amount of miles regardless of the tank capacity. What would the car look like? There should be several images in your brain at this moment. Some silly, some realistic such as: a solar powered car, an electric car without battery limitations, a self powered car, a spring powered car, etc. You get the idea – by challenging beliefs, it is possible to instantly increase your imagination.

©2009 – Jim Lindell

Occasionally, you will hear people exclaim, “I am not very creative”, or “I wish I could be more creative”. Everyone was born with a strong capacity to be creative. What has happened to many individuals is that their creativity has been squashed or driven under. This began from the earliest age as the first thing that many of us learned was “NO!” School is the next step in stripping away our creativity as we learned to color in the lines and associate a specific color for items (such as a “red” rose). If you have never heard Harry Chapin’s song “Flowers”, it is very powerful and it shows how we can hurt the creativity in young people. The lyrics can be found at: http://www.harrychapin.com/music/flowers.shtml

The good news is we can reclaim our creativity. For those who have difficulty being creative, I have used the following technique with very good success. When a person says that they are not very creative, I simply agree with them. I then ask who they know that is extremely creative. The person will typically respond with the name of an associate or friend. I then ask them, what do you think that creative person would come up with as a new idea. Guess what happens? Most of the time the uncreative person comes up with a new idea that they believe their creative friend would suggest.

This technique also works for people that are afraid of public speaking. I ask them to think of someone who is a great speaker that they know. I then ask them to pretend that they are that other individual and have them speak as the other person would. Guess what? In more cases than not, the frightened person takes on a different persona and delivers a public presentation.

© 2009 – Jim Lindell

If you want to increase your creativity, try out the process known as mind-mapping. A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. It allows the user to attack a topic without resorting to linear thinking techniques.

In its' simplest form, mind-mapping begins with a blank sheet of paper. In the center of the page is written the main idea or concept. Additional thoughts related to the topic are listed around the page at random. This allows the user to "free think". When the user feels that there are no more thoughts, he links (by drawing a line) any thoughts which appear to be of a similar or related nature. It is helpful to use colored pens or markers to make the connectivity stand out. When all items have been linked, the mind map yields topics or themes that must be addressed to adequately outline or define the original main topic.

Consider the following mind map for establishing a new commercial web site:


Some themes that pop out of the mind map are:
1. Blue - Investigate affiliate marketing and linking to other sites
2. Purple - Legal structure and tax implications need to be addressed
3. Light Blue - Who is going to develop the site?
4. Red - What are we going to sell on the site?
5. Light Orange - Can the site include multimedia?
6. Orange - can the site be accessed globally?
7. Green - Should we pass on development and consider already established tools (i.e. E-Bay)

Very quickly, I have identified main areas that need to be addressed if I want to establish a commercial web site. Certainly, there would be more items to consider. We could also use secondary mind-maps to further process any of the main themes above.

If you are interested in tools to help automate the process, I recommend visiting
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
This page will also make available an open source software package (FreeMind) that will automate the mind mapping process.

Copyright 2009 - Jim Lindell