1% of people use this powerful tool to move ahead in life — Creativity
Creativity is intelligence having fun.
- Albert Einstein
What is creativity? Why is it required? Is it that important?
We all have had random thoughts such as above when we had heard the term creativity for the first time.
Creativity
A complex and multifaceted phenomenon of human behaviour.Early humans and philosophers have conceptualized that this word “Creativity” is more of a mystical characteristics resulting due to divine intervention.
How can we characterize creative people?
Creative people are those who tend to think in a different manner and are very much open to new ideas and point of view. They always question “Why not?”.
Exploring ideas for their own self to achieve horizon, a marked sense of humour, tolerance for ambiguity and strong self-motivation and confidence in the work they do are some common traits of a highly creative person.
Thinking Creatively
Creative thinking is a process in which individuals analyse different spectrums and come up with original,unusual,productive and applicable solutions to real-time problems.The emphasis in creative thinking may be ‘new’ in humans.Here we have two kinds of productive ability-
Convergent-Bring together varied things
Divergent-Not guided by rules and conventions rather generating new solutions to a problem, which is a particularly important aspect.
Different stages of Creative thinking-
- Preparation-In this phase,the thinker articulates a problem and collects information in the form of facts,materials considered necessary for finding contemporary solutions. This initiative requires a huge time be it days,weeks,months or even years to complete. Failing to solve the problem, the thinker turns away in the beginning stage.
- Incubation-During this phase some of the ideas that were interfering with the solutions will tend to fade.The concealed activity and thinking regarding the problem is also absent here. But the unconscious thought process is mostly at work during this period of time.This is known as Wallas Incubation theory.The theory says that this process has both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ attributes. The positive attribute being lots of involuntary and unconscious mental events whereas the negative attribute being drifting away from the problem statement while still thinking about finding solution.
- Illumination-After this phase,the creative ideas occur ingeniously and out of spontaneity. The consequent developments being having clear image of uncertain things which seemed more obscure in the initial phase.This trigger of solutions immediately is similar to what we know as “Eureka” effect.
- Verification-Though the solution is developed in illumination phase, it is utmost necessary to verify if the solution(s) are correct or not. Hence, if the solution is not satisfactory the thinker will go through the creative process from the beginning and if it meets through the requirements it would still undergo the whole process with minor modification to solution(s).
