Productivity Arata! If you want to increase the chances of success in the activities you do, then you need to use your creative potential. With creativity, you can develop better ways to achieve results. In this video, creative thinking will be the tool to accelerate our performance.
1. Pay attention to automatic blindness.
What would you say about the following suggestions?
– Cut taxes in half
– End the use of cash and use only digital currency
– Colonize Mars
See, to be creative we should beware of the automatic blindness that is triggered when we want to dismiss an idea immediately.
When you are faced with any new concept and feel the urge to immediately reject an idea without thinking twice, or you laugh at its absurdity, these are forms of automatic blindness.
In automatic blindness, I have a preconceived notion that something will not work. I haven’t spent a moment on creative reasoning about the details or the possibilities.
Whenever we say “This idea is stupid” or “This is impossible” we are closing the doors of creativity because of automatic blindness. That knee-jerk decision will influence our future conclusions: our brains will be in active search mode for arguments that support why these ideas are impossible or inadequate.
2. Creativity is not just artistic creation.
Some people think that creativity is only necessary for someone who is an artist, painter, musician, or software developer. That’s not the case.
I can have the most bureaucratic job in the world and still develop my creativity to negotiate a raise, for example. Or I can use creativity to achieve my financial freedom. Creativity is necessary to improve relationships and communication with people with whom we interact, finding solutions that please everyone.
Creativity can be used to achieve better results with less effort.
That’s why creativity is part of today’s episode of the Productivity Arata series.
Creative thinking is the ability to find better ways to do what we do.
3. Learn to develop possible scenarios.
I will not bring up the “believe you can do it” attitude, which is very naive and very superficial. There will be times when you have a creative vision that is simply not practical or workable. It may be that the idea is bad or is, indeed, impossible.
On the one hand, we do not want to encourage magical thinking that anything is possible, so we just ask for the Universe. This would be an illusion without a rational foundation. However, it is also an illusion to think that things are impossible without rational analysis. We do not want to close the door immediately as if we were suffering from automatic blindness.
Therefore, our creative process will be in imagined scenarios. I will first think, “How could I achieve this result?” This kind of thinking helps me to get rid of the automatic blindness that automatically concludes that it is impossible.
When I suffer from automatic blindness I don’t even try to examine the possibilities.
It is only when I perform the scenario-building exercise that my creative mind is activated to identify paths that might be used.
Where there is a will, there is a way.
When I come across an idea and immediately say it is impossible, I am overwhelmed by automatic blindness. When I ask, “How can this be accomplished? Let’s think more about it…”I’m activating my creativity.
4. Always search for ways to improve.
To be more creative, never assume that things should always remain the same, that everything is already optimized. On the contrary: always look at processes with new eyes; try to make changes and measure what results you get.
For example: If you have a store, reorganise the products on the shelves and notice the customers’ reaction. If you sell more, it is a sign that your creativity has been positive. Think about what draws customers to your store. What can you do differently to promote the store? Maybe some themed event? Maybe a loyalty program? Remember the Kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement, and your creativity will help you.
Creative thinking appears only when you overcome automatic blindness. You need to learn how to set new goals. To learn how to develop intelligent goals I invite you to take the Better New Year course using this link here.