One of the best creative problem-solving techniques

It’s because our brains recognize this morning pattern in our thinking, store it, and pull it out when it is necessary-every morning. This pattern doesn’t work for creative work, though.

It means when we face a new problem, the routine way of thinking works only for unimaginative ideas. We cannot quickly develop any creative strategy for our thinking. In this case, it’s crucial to be able to transition into the creative thinking mode and unleash our full creative potential.

And one of the best activities to unlock creativity and find the solution for a problem is brainstorming.

This intuitive approach allows producing a large number of ideas and leaves evaluation for later. What’s important, that the production and assessment of ideas are two separate phases in the problem-solving process.

The reason for suppressing evaluation is that the efficient production of ideas requires a mental state that is not discouraged by criticism, and all the internal filters are just gone. If not criticized, a silly idea can become a Eureka.

Brainstorming is usually applied to generate new, creative, and unique ideas, which may be very difficult to come up with.

Most often thought of as a team technique, you can still do solo brainstorming too.

Several studies have shown that individual brainstorming produces more and often better ideas than group brainstorming.

Mostly, that’s because people pay so much attention to other people’s ideas.

As a result, they cannot generate their own or can forget about their passing thoughts while they wait for their turn to shout out their idea. Basically, their creative thinking is “blocked.”

Hence, don’t hesitate to brainstorm by yourself 🧠

There are a bunch of techniques you can try for that.

Despite that, here is my fast and straightforward approach on how to boost your creative thinking by brainstorming by yourself:

It’s free brainwriting:

1. Sit down for 15 minutes, and write down all of your ideas as a solution to your problem that comes to your mind.

2. Then have a look at that list of ideas and start with idea evaluation.

3. Next, logically rate ideas from the best to the worst one.

4. Pick your top 3 ideas.

5. If it’s possible, then get constructive feedback from others, in your opinion, on your best three. Ask which idea is a “winner.”

6. Depending on the “winner” choice, go for it!

When you have gone through these steps and finally have the solution to your challenge, you may feel as though the work is done.

You can also combine the solo brainwriting with team brainstorming. Once the facilitator has explained the challenge in front of the team members, give everybody 15 mins to perform step 1 from brainwriting, and then collect all the ideas and discuss them in the group.

Give this brainstorming technique a try, and see the difference it will provide the next time you are exploring solutions and improving creative thinking.

Please continue to keep up the creativity, iterate on the idea, and direct it toward constantly improving your solution. Have fun!