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Thinking outside the box
Think like a genius
"Even if you're not a genius, you can
use the same strategies as Aristotle and Einstein to harness the power of
your creative mind and better manage your future."
The following 8 strategies encourage you to think productively, rather
than reproductively, in order to arrive at solutions to problems.
"These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses
in science, art, and industry throughout history."
Michalko, Michael, Thinking Like a Genius: Eight strategies
used by the super creative, from Aristotle and Leonardo to Einstein and
Edison (June 15, 1999)
- look at problems in different ways
and find new perspectives that no-one else has taken (or no-one else has
publicised!) Leonardo da Vinci believed that, to gain knowledge about
the form of a problem, you begin by learning how to restructure it in
many different ways. He felt that the first way he looked at a problem
was too biased. Often, the problem itself is reconstructed and becomes
a new one.
- visualize! When Einstein thought
through a problem, he always found it necessary to formulate his subject
in as many different ways as possible, including using diagrams. He visualized
solutions, and believed that words and numbers as such did not play a
significant role in his thinking process.
- don't be afraid: Produce! A distinguishing
characteristic of genius is productivity. Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents.
He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas.
In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Dean Keith Simonton
of the University of California at Davis found that the most respected
scientists produced not only great works, but also many "bad"
ones. They weren't afraid to fail, or to produce mediocre results in order
to arrive at excellence.
- combine: make novel combinations.
Combine, and recombine, ideas, images and thoughts into different combinations
no matter how incongruent or unusual. The laws of heredity on which the
modern science of genetics is based came from the Austrian monk Grego
Mendel, who combined mathematics and biology to create a new science.
- look for relationships: make connections
between dissimilar subjects. Da Vinci forced a relationship between the
sound of a bell and a stone hitting water. This enabled him to make the
connection that sound travels in waves. Samuel Morse invented relay stations
for telegraphic signals when observing relay stations for horses.
- think in opposites: Physicist Niels
Bohr believed that if you held opposites together, then you suspend your
thought, and your mind moves to a new level. His ability to imagine light
as both a particle and a wave led to his conception of the principle of
complementarity. Suspending thought (logic) may allow your mind to create
a new form.
- think metaphorically: Aristotle
considered metaphor a sign of genius, and believed that the individual
who had the capacity to perceive resemblances between two separate areas
of existence and link them together was a person of special gifts.
- prepare yourself for chance. Whenever
we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something else. That
is the first principle of creative accident. Failure can be productive
only if we do not focus on it as an unproductive result. Instead: analyze
the process, its components, and how you can change them, to arrive at
other results. Do not ask the question "Why have I failed?",
but rather "What have I done?"
