There is an opinion that a creative person sits and waits for an idea to strike him. In comics, in such cases, a lamp falls on the hero's head. In reality, most people who have great ideas will tell you that it is hard work. They read, they study, they analyze, they check and recheck, they sweat, they curse, they worry, and sometimes they give up. Major discoveries in science or medicine can take years, decades, even generations. An unusual, unexpected, new idea doesn't come easily.
Sure, everyone may have an idea or two, but in fact, as Osterman, editor of Adweek, noted, many of them are either impractical or outside the scope of your product strategy. This is especially true for ideas that arise on their own. Ideas appear by chance, but with a systematic approach, which is shown in rice. 13-4, they can be obtained in an organized manner.
Despite differences in terms, various descriptions of the creative process are generally similar to each other. The creative process is usually described as a series of sequential steps. In 1926, the English sociologist Graham Walls first gave names to these steps in the creative process. He called them this: preparation, incubation, insight and testing 9 .
A more detailed description of the creative process is offered by Alex Osborne, former head of the agency BBDO, who founded the Foundation for Creative Education in New York State, which has its own workshops and magazine:
1. Orientation - defining the problem.
2. Preparation - gathering relevant information.
3. Analysis - classification of the collected material.
4. Formation of ideas - collecting different options for ideas.
5. Incubation - waiting, during which insight comes.
6. Synthesis - development of a solution.
7. Evaluation - consideration of the ideas received 10.
Although the steps and names are slightly different, all creative strategies share a few key points. Researchers have found that ideas come after a person becomes immersed in a problem and gets worked up to the point where he or she wants to quit. Preparation and analysis are the main period of the most difficult work, when you read, research and learn everything about the problem.
Then comes ideation time, where you play with the material, turning the problem on its head and looking at it from different perspectives. This is also the period when ideas are born. Most creative people use a physical way of generating ideas - sketching something on paper, walking, running, riding the elevator up and down, going to the cinema or eating certain foods. This is a very personal technique that is used to create the desired mood. The goal of this stage is to collect the maximum number of ideas. The more ideas collected, the better the final concept will be."
The process of analyzing, comparing different ideas and associations is tedious for most people. You may hit a blank wall and give up. This is what James Webb Young calls "brain slog." But it is necessary.
Incubation - the most interesting part of the process. During this time, your conscious mind rests, allowing your subconscious mind to solve the problem. In other words, when you get upset or angry because someone doesn't like you
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Ideas come, do something that will allow you to forget about the problem, and then the subconscious will start working.
Insight- an unexpected moment when an idea comes. Usually an idea appears at the most unexpected time: not when you are sitting at your desk, straining your brain, but, for example, late in the evening just before going to bed or in the morning when you wake up. At the most unexpected moment, the pieces come together and the solution becomes obvious.
One of the most important is the review or evaluation stage, where you go back to the beginning and look at your great idea objectively. Is everything really that great? It's clear? Does your idea fit the strategy? Most people who work on the creative side of Lama Rivers admit that many of their best ideas simply didn't work. The ideas might be great, but they didn't solve the problem or achieve a certain goal. Text writers also admit that sometimes ideas that seemed great didn't bother them the next day or a week later.
Grade involves making the decision to continue working, which every creative person must do. Craig Weatherup, company president Pepsi, explained: “You have to have a clear vision of your target... and you have to have the nerve to pull the trigger.” At the agency BBDO they say: "In Pepsi a lot are rejected. For every commercial we go to a client with, there are probably 9 commercials they turn down.”
Formation of an idea
Formation refers to the process of obtaining an original idea. Idea formation occurs during the development of a new product and its name, positioning, strategic planning, cost reduction, modernization and when developing big ideas in advertising. William Miller, company president Global Creativity in Austin, Texas, says that all creative people working in advertising can be divided into 4 groups, each of which uses one of four innovative styles:
in Style imagination: those who imagine the end result and work towards what they want to create. in Style modifications: those who prefer to move forward step by step explore the problem and build on the knowledge they have already acquired. in Style experiment: those who experiment, test, answer questions about the product or target market, about Style research: those who strive to explore the unknown and love adventure. 12 Brainstorming is an idea generation technique developed in the early 1950s. Alex Osborne from the agency BBDO. This technique uses associative thinking in the creative group. Osborne gathered a group of 6-10 people at the agency and asked them to submit their ideas. The idea of one can stimulate another, and the combined power of group associations generates many more ideas than the members of the group can produce individually. The secret to brainstorming is to stay positive. The rule is that the assessment must be postponed. Negative thoughts can disrupt the informal atmosphere that is necessary to obtain a new idea.
Other type divergent thinking uses analogies and metaphors as in advertising Wrigley (Fig. 13.2). Young's definition of an idea is also based on the ability to see new patterns or relationships. When you think by analogy, you are saying that one thing is similar to another thing that has nothing to do with it. William D. D. Gordon, a researcher in the field of creative thinking, found that new ideas were often expressed through analogies. He developed a program called Synectics, which taught people to solve problems using analogies 13.
When characterizing creativity, one part of the researchers focuses on the result obtained, the other on the process of obtaining it.
Many scientists have tried to understand the conditions for the birth of a new one and the sequence of events that occur during this process. T. Ribot highlighted three phases in the process of generating a new solution:
- accumulation of facts or experience;
- gestation (or hatching) of a future project or image;
- the birth of a new one.
The process of ripening seems to be the least clear, since it occurs mainly unconsciously. “When this hidden work is sufficiently completed, the idea of a solution appears suddenly, as a result of deliberate mental effort or with some mental remark, as if lifting the curtain behind which the image of the proposed solution was hidden.”
Scientists themselves often talk about such a sequence in their memoirs. One of the most famous memories of the birth of the hypothesis was left by A. Poincaré, a French mathematician who discovered the properties of automorphic functions. Having begun work on equations that he could not solve, he interrupted it and went on a geological expedition. It was there, when he was as distracted as possible from the previous task and had practically forgotten about it, that a decision came to him: “When we arrived at Coutances, we boarded an omnibus to go somewhere else. And the moment I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me, without any visible preparation of thought, that the transformations that I used in the definition of automorphic functions are identical to the transformations of non-Euclidean geometry.” Poincare was a researcher, and therefore tried to understand how a new solution arose in him. He proposed the existence of a special entity - the “subconscious self”, which unconsciously mixes the mental atoms of the mind - ideas. When an interesting combination is formed that meets the task and aesthetic requirements, it enters consciousness. There are modern followers of this idea who assume the presence of an unconscious mechanism that is responsible for the formation of random recombinations of ideas and their selective reproduction.
Another equally famous scientist of the 19th century, Hermann Helmholtz, suggested that changing activities when it is impossible to immediately solve a complex problem frees a person from fatigue, which provokes a solution. This hypothesis is now called the fatigue disappearance hypothesis.
There is also a theory that the unconscious decision is provided by spreading long-term activation in the associative verbal network. This leads to the unification of distant pieces of knowledge. According to R. Woodworth, during a break in mental activity, incorrect associations that block the solution are weakened, which allows you to look at the problem anew. From this idea arose the selective forgetting hypothesis, according to which the weakening of irrelevant information occurs in working memory when attention shifts from the problem, while long-term memory accumulates more relevant information.
Louis Pasteur, drawing on his experience, argued that “chance favors the prepared brain.” Modern views that develop this idea see the role of a break in work in the fact that people who think about a problem for a long time, distracted from it, accept new information from the environment, which activates existing information that is critical for the solution, but was not previously available for awareness .
The suddenness of the idea is noted by many. Often it comes at an unusual time and in an unusual place: L. Beethoven and Charles Darwin, according to their own testimonies, the necessary thought came in a carriage, R. Descartes - in bed, Archimedes - in the bath. F. Schiller called the state that arises in the process of creativity “the surprise of the soul.” I. Brodsky said in his Nobel lecture:
“The poet is the means of existence of language... When starting a poem, the poet, as a rule, does not know how it will end, and sometimes he turns out to be very surprised by what happened, because it often turns out to be better than he expected.”
Of the triad of sequential events, an external observer and the creator himself can only trace the collection of data and the birth of an idea. The internal process of generating new knowledge remains beyond the reach of both the observer and the one in whom it arises. This inaccessibility is enshrined in the language, for which talent is always “God’s gift,” since even many scientists, musicians and artists themselves did not doubt the otherworldly origin of their own ideas. It is known that R. Descartes, when the thought of analytical geometry came to his mind, fell to his knees and began to thank God for the insight sent down to him. Composer I. Haydn, when he came up with a melody symbolizing the birth of light in “The Creation of the World,” exclaimed: “This is not from me, this is from above!”
Due to the peculiarities of the functioning of the psyche, a person is aware of the final result of the thought process, but is not able to understand the path that led to it. This is a complex and lengthy process: “When a point requiring rationalization, change, the introduction of something new is found, noticed, realized and, as it were, lodged in the mind of the inventor, a peculiar process of drawing to this point and absorbing into it a variety of observations and all kinds of knowledge that comes to his mind: all these observations and facts are, as it were, measured against a central point and correlated with the task that dominates the inventor’s thoughts, and many sometimes the most unexpected comparisons arise in his head.”
Having summarized numerous self-reports of creative people, G. Wallace increased the number of stages of creativity to four. The sequence he proposes is: preparation, including the formulation of the problem and initial attempts to solve it, incubation (maturation of the idea, distraction from the problem and switch to another subject), insight (sudden understanding of the solution) and testing the effectiveness of this solution. If the decision turns out to be incorrect, a new stage of incubation begins, or the person begins preparation again, collecting the missing information. The need for this last stage was also emphasized by A. N. Leontiev.
G. Altshuller tried, on the one hand, to detail each of these stages, on the other hand, to make them more universal, suitable for inventive creativity. His classification does not so much describe the creative process as it is an attempt to take control of the creative process itself. He outlined the following stages.
- The analytical stage at which the choice of a problem occurs, the discovery of its main link, the identification of a decisive contradiction that does not allow solving the problem in the usual way, and the fixation of the immediate cause of the contradiction.
- Operational stage. It examines typical solution methods in nature and technology, and searches for new solution methods through changes within the system under study, in the environment external to it and in adjacent systems.
- The synthetic stage includes the introduction of functionally determined changes to the system or methods of using the system, testing the applicability of the principle to solving other technical problems, and evaluating the invention made.
This classification implies the desire to take control of the primarily elusive stage - the unconscious solution to the problem - as the longest and least predictable and to rationalize the entire sequence of the creative solution. This classification is part of the TRIZ theory of rational invention, which is successfully used in engineering practice.
However, this is the only theory that ignores the unconscious side of creativity. Most other researchers focus their attention on the maturation stage, one of the mechanisms of which is considered to be intuition (Latin intueri - to look closely, carefully) - knowledge that a person has who is not aware of how he acquired this knowledge. Intuition allows you to see the problem situation as a whole, from different sides, taking into account all the contradictions. At the same time, it is obvious that the use of the word “intuition” in this context is just the replacement of one incomprehensible mechanism (ripening of an idea, insight) with another (intuition), also still inexplicable.
The maturation of an idea, based on unconscious processes, often occurs in a dream (D.I. Mendeleev saw his famous periodic table in bed -) or in another altered state of consciousness. For example, a huge number of wonderful works of art were born during the period of falling in love, which, of course, changes the state of consciousness of the creator.
W. Köhler calls insight an insight (this is another option for replacing one term with another), K. Bühler calls it an “aha experience,” but a change in terminology does not lift the veil of the mystery of the birth of a new one. A. V. Brushlinsky showed that insight can be prolonged, since a thought arises instantly, but is formulated over a period of time. He called this birth of thought non-instant insight.
In their memoirs, creators place greater emphasis on sudden insight as the most emotional moment in their lives. An independent observer simultaneously notes a lot of logical work in the creative process (which is recorded in TRIZ). This external contradiction can easily be explained by the fact that logical thinking eludes self-observation (emotional events seem to take the longest to us), while internal work is inaccessible to external observation. The psychological problem of describing this phenomenon is due to the fact that many people fall into a period of incubation, but not everyone is given the opportunity to experience insight. Why is the unconscious of some people able to unite disparate pieces of information into a single whole, while in others it is not capable of such a daring creative impulse?
According to K. Duncker, in the process of insight, a restructuring of thinking occurs, which leads to a change in the search area for a solution. This restructuring is due to the fact that in the task something is seen as an obstacle, and something as a means of solving it, some elements of the task may appear as unchangeable, others as malleable, elements are seen either as separate or connected.
When going through different options for solving a problem, a person does not consistently consider all possible solutions, as a computer does, since many multi-step problems in this case could not be solved at all due to the large amount of time required. Taking this into account, G. Simon introduced the concept of heuristics, that is, a method of searching for options that is more likely to lead to a solution. In this case, the search paths are selected not randomly, but based on human experience. And the uniqueness of this experience, the ability to see details that elude the average eye, allows us to find the most likely steps leading to the result. In this case, the sequence of steps proposed by G. Altshuller’s theory is a rationalization of the heuristic mechanism.
When describing the mechanism of artistic creativity, they rely more on the concept of “catharsis” (that is, purification, Greek), proposed by Z. Freud. Many theorists believe that it is response that is the basis of the aesthetic response. To become an object of creativity, something must touch the artist, emotionally excite him either through the beauty of its external form or the incomprehensibility of its content. Then the artist will capture his own vision of a piece of the world on canvas, and the inventor will reproduce it in the formula. According to L. S. Vygotsky, the artist’s catharsis is the disembodiment of content with the help of art, when in the process of creation the artist solves his own internal problem, using the form of creativity for this.
Thus, all researchers agree that creativity is a process that, like fireworks, is illuminated by a sudden decision. But just as the holiday is preceded by everyday life, so this moment is always preceded by long, intense inner work hidden from view.
Creative activity
The culmination of mental activity is the process of creativity, when a person, in the presence of obstacles to satisfying his needs or driven by a flight of fantasy, comes to unusual solutions and results.
The process of creativity is associated with a person’s ability, based on acquired knowledge, to form a new question or problem, i.e. a special, previously unheard-of functional system. In this case, the expected result is formed. During creative mental activity, a person evaluates the situation. At the same time, he restores all previously acquired knowledge, separates the understandable from the incomprehensible, compares knowledge to cognition and formulates a hypothetical acceptor of the result of actions, which is verified by practical activity.
English creative process). Many brilliant people have reported that their discoveries are the result of the fact that the solution “somehow” appears in their minds and that all they have to do is write down what they “heard” or “saw.” Similar circumstances accompanied, for example, the birth of the idea of the Periodic Table of Elements by D.I. Mendeleev and by him. chemist A. Kekule cyclic formula of the benzene ring. The mystery of the act of “insight” has long been associated with the presence of an external, sometimes divine source of creative inspiration.
Using self-observation data from famous scientists (for example, G. Helmholtz and A. Poincaré), Amer. psychologist Graham Wallace (1926) developed a scheme of 4 stages of T.P. According to this scheme, in the course of solving complex problems, people first go through the 1st stage of a long and labor-intensive analysis of the problem, accumulation and processing of information, and attempts to consciously solve the problem. As a rule, this phase ends in vain and the person retreats, “forgetting” about the problem for days and weeks. At this time, the 2nd stage of T. p. develops - maturation (incubation). It is characterized by a lack of visible progress in solving the problem. Then comes the 3rd stage - illumination (insight), followed by the 4th stage - checking the correctness of the decision. See also Productive thinking (stages).
At the maturation stage, the active work of the subconscious seems to be important. According to self-observation, a person, outwardly forgetting about the task, occupies his consciousness and attention with other things. Nevertheless, after some time, the “creative” task spontaneously emerges in the mind, and it often turns out that if not the solution, then at least the understanding of the problem has been advanced. Thus, one gets the impression of unconsciously occurring decision processes. However, an important prerequisite for the productive work of the subconscious is the 1st stage - persistent conscious attempts to solve the problem.
Analysis of introspection shows that the process of “insight” is often not a one-time flash, but is distributed over time. Through a persistent, conscious decision process, elements of understanding and progress in the right direction emerge. Thus, the condition of the so-called "Epiphany" usually comes from hard work. Conscious efforts seem to activate and “spin up” the powerful, but rather inertial machine of unconscious creativity. The same facts that sometimes a solution occurs during periods of rest, idleness, in the morning after sleep or during breakfast, perhaps only indicate that these periods usually take a lot of time from a person.
In studies of the interhemispheric organization of mental processes, it has been suggested that the frontal lobes of the right and left hemispheres make different contributions to the implementation of individual phases of mental processes. The phases of maturation and insight, according to this hypothesis, are associated with the work of the frontal lobe of the right hemisphere, the phase of primary accumulation of information and critical consideration of creative products - with the work of the frontal lobe of the left (dominant) hemisphere.
The ability to create (creativity) is not strongly correlated with intellectual ability, although outstanding creative individuals undoubtedly have a very high IQ. From view theory of semantic networks, the fundamental difference between intellectual and creative activity, apparently, lies in the focus on solving different types of problems: understanding meaning and generating new meaning. The correlation between these types of activities is obvious, although there are examples of their independent existence. Creativity often manifests itself with external intellectual “inhibition,” but more often the presence of good intellectual abilities without developed creativity is noted.
One of the options for interpreting the terms “understand” and “generate” could be associated with the next reasoning. The term “understand” implies the ability to track the progress of other people’s reasoning, i.e., a person’s ability, during learning, to form new connections between familiar concepts and new concepts themselves. The word "form" in this context is used in the sense of "form according to instructions." A “person who understands” must constantly follow the external bearer of these connections and concepts, for example, following a teacher, a book, etc. He must also have precise recipes for his step-by-step mental actions.
“A creative person,” on the contrary, has the ability to generate concepts that are not externally determined by anything, the ability to draw conclusions that are unexpected for most people, that do not follow directly from anywhere and are considered as some kind of “leaps” of thinking (conscious or unconscious), breaks in the usual, standard logic of reasoning. In this regard, we note that a well-structured knowledge area is usually represented by a semantic network, the nodes of which are not located close to each other; rather, they create fanciful ones from the viewpoint. topologies and fundamentally non-compact structures. Dr. In other words, we can assume that if a certain established system of facts and theoretical positions eventually takes on the form of a compact section of a network, then after a certain creative act is completed, some unexpected, strange and, therefore, remote (in the original space) nodes of knowledge are included in this network. In terms of understanding the mechanisms of technological communication, an analogy between the structure of a semantic network and the structure of a neural ensemble is appropriate.
When comparing the acts of “generation” and “understanding,” a certain paradox emerges. A characteristic feature of an “understanding person” is the ability to assimilate a certain system of knowledge, that is, to form in oneself a copy of the connections between concepts created earlier by a “creative person.” This work of copying a section of the semantic network is not a purely mechanical act and requires the implementation of a number of complex preliminary operations of formation: initial concepts, lists of attributes (properties) of these concepts, a new system of priorities among attributes, etc. Thus, the difference between understanding and creativity is, at best, the difference between the original and the copy! In fact, this is the difference between the act of creating an original, which for an external observer appears like a miracle, and the act of conscientious, labor-intensive, but devoid of any secret copying.
The effectiveness of technology in terms of semantic network mechanisms may be associated with a combination of several factors (abilities).
1. The ability to quickly and, most importantly, constantly search through many options for connections between existing concepts (network nodes). It should be taken into account that in this model, each network node is a set or list of attributes that describe a given concept, and the implementation of a complete search requires, generally speaking, a catastrophically growing amount of time and memory. In this regard, the way out of the enumeration problem is associated with the presence of abilities that determine the possibility of forming “truncated”, incomplete, and selective enumeration procedures. Several types of traces are important in this regard. abilities.
2. The ability to form an open, in the sense of a constantly generated (supplemented and changeable), list of attributes of a property. Phenomena or concepts. Obviously, the lists of attributes and their priorities should vary depending on the task and domain. This ability is important due to the fact that the characteristics of the phenomena being studied are sets of initial parameters used to enumerate combinations.
3. The ability to form a successful system of priorities among the connection options being prepared for enumeration. The mechanism of this process, in particular, may be is associated with the establishment of pairs of well-combined attributes, where the pair includes one attribute from each concept included in the relationship. At the same time, priority systems should change depending on the problem being solved (subject area).
4. The ability to form new concepts (nodes). This procedure can be considered as a cyclic (iterative) process of forming a method for constructing deductive and/or inductive reasoning based on existing facts and concepts, i.e., relying on previously formed sections of the network and connections between them.
Within the framework of such a model, both individual differences in creativity and differences in creative success among the same people in different subject areas become clear. Indeed, suppose that on the k.-l. At the stage of reasoning, a certain person has developed a “successful” system of priorities for options for enumerating features (or other elements of reasoning). As a result, this person in this situation will manifest himself as a creative person. However, in the case of reasoning in another subject area, the same subject will use another, differently organized knowledge base, which has developed, for example, as a result of a less successful learning process (bad teacher, unsuccessful textbook) or as a result of lack of interest in this area knowledge. As a result, he will not prove himself as a creative person. (V. M. Krol.)
What is creativity and what stages does it consist of, what is creativity and what abilities does it include, what are the problems and results of creativity and what are the consequences of creative activity
Used in the creative process imagination to combine existing knowledge and ideas to obtain a new, unique result.
The result obtained allows decide specific problem and reach set goal. Therefore, such a result has additional significance that is absent from the results of practical activities, essentially creating copies.
Being creative, a person cheats both the environment and yourself. He has new opportunities that allow him to have an even more beneficial impact and develop even more.
Creativity is necessary in any subject area, in any profession. All areas have unresolved problems and enormous potential for development.
To support the creative process, a person must have good physical state. You cannot eat junk food, alcohol, smoke, etc. And play sports as much as possible. This allows you to provide the intellect with the necessary nutrients and limit it from harmful effects.
He studies creativity heuristic. Its main task is to build models that describe the process of original problem solving.
The following are currently known heuristic models:
- blind search: based on trial and error;
- labyrinthine: the problem is presented as a labyrinth, and its solution is moving through the labyrinth to find a way out;
- structural-semantic: the problem is presented as a system that has a certain structure and semantic connections between its elements.
In the process of creative activity, sometimes there is a need to carry out algorithmic, clear calculations. In this case, you need to use the help of developed computing systems that allow you to carry out these calculations. A person needs to engage in creative, heuristic thinking.
In everyday life, creativity manifests itself as savvy- the ability to boldly, non-trivially and wittily find a way out of a hopeless, sometimes critical situation, using extremely limited and unspecialized means and.
Creativity allows you to be more sensitive to problems, lack or inconsistency of knowledge. This allows you to determine the direction in which it is necessary to develop in order to be able to solve known problems and achieve certain goals.
Because the main component responsible for generating original ideas is imagination, then to develop creativity you can use training to develop imagination.
Creative abilities
Creativity consists of a set of abilities. They allow you to clearly understand how creativity manifests itself and what is needed to develop it.
These abilities include:
Fluency is the ability to generate a large number of ideas per unit of time. Allows you to quickly find many ways to solve a problem and determine the most suitable one.
Originality- this is the ability to generate new, non-standard, extraordinary ideas that differ from the known or obvious. The better this ability is developed, the faster the psychological inertia that limits thinking to standard patterns and convinces of the unreality and uselessness of original ideas is overcome.
Flexibility is the ability to use different methods to generate original ideas and quickly switch between methods and ideas.
Openness- this is the ability, when solving a problem, to perceive new information from the outside for a long time, rather than using existing experience and not adhering to standard stereotypes.
Susceptibility- this is the ability to find contradictions, unusual details, and uncertainty in an ordinary situation. Allows you to find the unusual in the ordinary, the simple in the complex.
Imagery- this is the ability to generate ideas in the form of single, integral mental images.
Abstractness is the ability to generate general, complex ideas based on specific, simple elements. Allows you to generalize and build a unified representation of a problem based on simple, unrelated knowledge and ideas.
Detail is the ability to detail a problem until each element is understood. Allows you to break a problem into parts, analyze them until the essence of the problem, its smallest elements, becomes clear.
Verbality- this is the process of breaking a single, figurative idea into separate words and highlighting the essential parts. Allows you to clarify the structure of the problem and the connections between its elements and exchange this information with others to jointly solve the problem.
Stress resistance is the ability to act and generate ideas in a new, unusual, previously unknown environment.
Identifying these abilities in yourself and their conscious development can significantly increase the originality and usefulness of the ideas generated. This helps to increase success and speed up the process of realizing your purpose.
The creative process and its stages
Creativity has a certain creative process, repeated each time a unique result is obtained.
The essence of creativity is to use personal talent and imagination to solve problems, achieve goals and realize purpose. The result of the creative process is a new, unique element that improves its creator or the environment and provides new possibilities.
The creative process consists of the following stages:
1. Preparation
A problem is formulated and the intention to solve it arises. Consciousness is filled with knowledge from all available sources (memory, books, magazines, Internet...). Hypotheses and assumptions are put forward. In a short period of time, an attempt is made to solve the problem based on the existing capabilities of consciousness.
2. Processing
If the opportunities are not enough, then a temporary distraction is performed to another problem or matter. At this time, the solution to the problem is processed from consciousness to the subconscious. Subconscious processes begin to take place, invisible to humans and automatically generating new ideas until an acceptable solution to the problem is obtained.
3. Inspiration
After generating an idea that may possibly solve a problem, it is transferred from the subconscious to the conscious - inspiration appears. Usually this happens completely unexpectedly for consciousness and in completely random situations.
4. Evaluation
Having received an idea, the consciousness evaluates it for the possibility of using it to solve a problem. To do this, it analyzes and compares the idea with personal experience and determines whether it can be implemented under current environmental conditions.
5. Implementation
If no contradictions are found, then a decision is made to implement the idea. An implementation plan is formed and actual actions are carried out. The result is a tool, method or technology that solves the original problem.
6. Check
After implementing the idea and applying the result obtained, it is checked whether the problem is solved or not. Proof or refutation of the put forward hypotheses and assumptions is carried out. If the problem is not resolved, the process starts over. If the problem is solved, then the next problem is solved.
Subconscious stage of the creative process
A special place in the creative process occupies processing stage Problems. Its peculiarity is that the solution to the problem is carried out absolutely unnoticed by a person with his special ability - subconscious.
Laziness and weak will. They also prevent you from starting the creative process and overcoming psychological inertia. To overcome them you need to train self-discipline.
Lack of prioritization. In the process of creative thinking, a large number of ideas are generated that need to be implemented. Some are very important and useful for solving the problem. They need to be implemented first. Others are less important and need to be put off until later, put in a queue. But most people don't define the importance of ideas - their priority. And they try to implement simpler, but less useful ideas. To overcome this obstacle, you need to learn to prioritize ideas, goals and activities.
Congestion of consciousness. After filling the mind with all possible knowledge that can help solve the problem, it needs to be allowed to rest and relax. But very often this is not done and consciousness begins to be used to solve other problems. Increased mental congestion reduces the rate of idea generation. To overcome this obstacle, you need to consciously take breaks to speed up the creative process.
Conformism. Accepting other people's opinions and experiences without criticism or analysis. This personality trait is characterized by agreement with everything that is in the environment, without assessing whether it is right or wrong, whether it is optimal or whether it can be improved. To overcome this obstacle, you need to develop critical thinking; you need to approach everything new with the questions “why, why, for what …”.
Impatience. A person wants to find a solution to a problem immediately. But this requires a large amount of source material (knowledge, ideas) and a high level of intellectual development. But when a solution is not found in a short period of time, then the person simply stops working on this problem and switches to another, easier one. To overcome this obstacle, you need to train self-discipline, and especially perseverance.
Rigidity. Firmness and steadfastness in the means used to make decisions and achieve goals. Limits a person from using new means that may be more effective and reliable. To overcome this obstacle, you need to develop flexibility of thinking, learn about the emergence of new tools and apply them to solve problems and achieve goals.
Removing all these obstacles is guaranteed to increase the efficiency and success of creative activity. This in turn will speed up the process of realizing your purpose.
Types of creative output
As a result of creative activity, a new system is created or an existing system is improved. Based on their usefulness, these results are classified into the following types.
Opening
Discovery of a previously unknown law, system, feature or connection, confirmed experimentally. Has a revolutionary effect on the development of the system and changes existing goals and paradigms.
Invention
A means to solve a specific problem and achieve certain goals. It also allows you to perform certain actions more efficiently than using existing means, and has a fundamentally new structure.
Rationalization proposal
Improving the effectiveness of existing means of achieving goals without significantly changing their structure.
Regardless of the type of result, creativity creates new knowledge, allowing you to solve similar problems and achieve similar goals in other areas. New results are also obtained ideas for creativity to solve new problems and achieve new goals.
Consequences of performing creative activities
Putting creativity into practice can improve risk causing harm. This happens because there is not enough experience using new, untested ideas and tools to solve a particular problem or achieve a goal. But with experience and the development of creativity, an understanding will come of which original ideas are useful and which are harmful.
With the development of creativity appears faith the fact that any, even the most absurd and unrealistic idea, will help achieve a certain goal. This belief is one of the motives pushing for the implementation of revolutionary ideas and the creation of new, huge systems that solve global problems. As Henry Ford said: " You can believe that you can. You may believe that you cannot. In both cases you are right".
Many successful people claim that 30-50% success Their projects and companies are brought precisely by creative, original ideas generated by themselves or specially hired professionals with well-developed creativity. They also note a vicious circle - creativity gives new successes, and they, in turn, are a source of creativity and inspiration. This suggests that man and creativity are a single whole that cannot exist without each other.
Therefore, constantly devote personal time to creativity development and your creative abilities. This will always have a beneficial effect on success. Do not stop engaging in creative activity, because it is the main means in realizing your destiny.
Theoretical part
What is the creative process?
The creative process is the process of transforming information into new ideas and putting the ideas found into practice.
Creativity is a skill that anyone can learn. The main barrier to overcome is lack of self-confidence. If it seems to you that you won’t succeed, it’s only because you’ve never done it, or, after making one attempt, you gave up and didn’t finish it.
In fact, often you just need to start and don’t give up. The creative process itself will give you strength, energy and inspiration. The more you create, the more you will want to continue what you started. Feeling a surge of creative energy, you will begin to create for days on end without feeling tired.
Another barrier to creativity - fear of possible failure. At first glance, any new idea seems scary and unattainable. However, we can overcome any fear, like any other obstacles. Most often, any of your fears and obstacles are fictitious, existing only in your imagination. Therefore, even if you are not ready for something new right now, just start, take a few simple steps towards the goal and you will see that there really are no barriers. There is only fear, which goes away as soon as you start doing something.
The creative process is accompanied:
Pleasure
With joy
With inspiration
Increasing strength and energy
Losing sense of time
This fact can explain such an interesting pattern that creative people get sick less often and live longer. And most importantly, they are much more successful at work and much happier than most people around them.
7 stages of the creative process
The creative process consists of 7 stages:
1. problem statement
2. collection and analysis of information
3. inspiration
4. search for a solution
5. incubation
6. insight
7. incarnation
The well-known story about Archimedes, who made a discovery in the bathroom, can clearly show all the stages of the creative process.
So, King Hiero II commissioned the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes to determine whether his crown was made of pure gold, or whether the jeweler mixed a little silver into it [problem statement! ]. The specific gravity of gold was known, but the difficulty was in accurately determining the volume of the crown, since it had an irregular shape. Archimedes understood that density is equal to mass divided by volume. He could weigh the crown, but could not determine its volume [collection and analysis of information! ]. Then he began to think about how to calculate the required volume [inspiration! ]. After spending several days thinking [searching for a solution! ], he put the problem aside for a while and decided to relax by taking a bath [incubation! ]. Having immersed himself in water, he was surprised to discover that the volume of water displaced by his body was equal to the volume of the body and the volume of the crown could be calculated simply by immersing it in a vat of water [insight! ]! This discovery caused him such delight that he ran naked into the street shouting “Eureka!” (that is, “Found!”) and ran to the palace, where, in front of the king, he lowered the crown into the water and determined the volume of the displaced liquid [embodiment! ]. It turned out that the jeweler had diluted the gold with silver.
Creative vein
The creative vein is a combination of familiar elements and ideas in an unusual way, generating new properties of an object or new ideas. You don’t have to invent something fundamentally new; it’s enough to find and combine two objects or two ideas together and get the result you need. For example, by combining an angry cat and a mop, you can get a cat who chases dogs with a mop (a similar idea may appeal to writers, artists or cartoonists), and by combining hobbies and work, you can build a profitable business.
The creative vein allows you to generate thousands of new ideas a day, among which there are sure to be breakthrough ones that bring big profits.
Self-test questions
What is the creative process?
What barriers prevent you from being creative?
Why do creative people get sick less often and live longer?
What are the stages of the creative process?
What is a creative vein?
Practical part
Exercise 1. 10 magic words
We take any subject and come up with the 10 most suitable definitions for it. And then vice versa - the 10 most inappropriate ones. And then 10 adjectives that characterize it as clearly as possible. And then 10 adjectives that characterize anything but the chosen subject. Then we look for 10 new uses for the item.
Exercise 2. Connecting the unconnected
Try combining and finding new ideas from the following combinations:
|
child + diet |
girl + wrench |
ship + rubber |
beaver + tank |
|
dog + wheel |
beard + crab |
office + motor boat |
conversation + waste |
|
education + happiness |
gold + lighthouse |
oar + smoke |
light + tobacco |
|
summer + cartoon |
dacha + sailor |
sky + soot |
cave + book |
|
freedom + caramel |
spoon + paperclip |
carriage + cotton wool |
straw + iron rod |
|
river + engine |
key + match |
hero + mop |
road + spiral |
Once you get the hang of the exercise, it will be very easy to generate new ideas just by combining what is in front of you. This a real creative vein that could turn you into gold .
You can sign up for individual training, get more exercises and a detailed explanation of each point of the theoretical part, as well as get a personal consultation by contacting the author. For those who practice yoga according to the program of the author's closed yoga school "Insight", all services are free, for others - by agreement.
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