“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch a little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.” – David Lynch
When it comes to creativity, you’ve only been getting half the story. Dozens of authors tell you that you need to cultivate a creative mindset. What they aren’t telling you is that a creative mindset alone isn’t going to transform you into a genius. Your brain needs help.
You see, the brain is powerful, but it’s also incredibly habitual. Unless you’re whacked in the side of the head by new stimuli, you will tend to follow the same well-worn thinking paths you’ve always followed. Also, if you’re like most people, you’ll tend to stop brainstorming the minute you uncover the first “right answer” to your creative challenge. Why is that a problem? Because this type of early, promising idea tends to be of relatively low value.
It’s like fishing in the same shallow waters you’ve always visited, to use David Lynch’s analogy. You’ll catch mainly small fish. In fact, you may discover that your favorite location is all fished out.
How to leap out of your creative rut
To generate higher value ideas and solutions, you need to get your brain thinking in fresh directions. You need to think divergently and laterally, considering many different possibilities and perspectives. To catch the big fish, you must go deep, into new, untapped waters.
How do you do this? One powerful way is to use brainstorming m tools that are designed to provide your habitual brain with better questions, new perspectives and fresh stimuli.
Brainstorming tools jump-start your mind to think in new directions. They can include everything from a list of thought-provoking questions or a “swipe file” of successful marketing techniques to hand-held brainstorming tools and idea-generation software that walks you through exercises designed to help you generate fresh, new ideas. As part of my fascination with personal creativity and how it can drive your success, I have used and evaluated many types of creativity tools.
Here are three of the best brainstorming tools:
KnowBrainer: If you are looking for a creativity tool that is powerful, portable, and low tech, then you ought to check out the KnowBrainer. This tool does an excellent job of leveraging the mind’s capabilities of association to a major advantage. Developer Gerald Haman has spent years amassing and assessing key words and questions that are the most effective at generating ideas, and he has incorporated them (along with evocative images and quotes) into this colorful, fun-to-use flip card deck. It contains sections that are designed to help you to clearly define your challenge and investigate your needs, create ideas, evaluate them using a number of criteria, and put them into action.
Whack Pack: Roger von Oech, author of the best-selling creativity books A Whack on the Side of the Head and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, has sold the companion Whack Pack brainstorming card deck for years. The front or “face” side of each card displays the title of the brainstorming exercise and a whimsical illustration. On the back side of the card, the exercise is explained in detail, and you are given tips and questions that you can use to put it to work.
ThinkPak: The Thinkpak consists of 56 high-quality cards. Of those 47, are idea stimulator cards. Each card has a colorful back, emblazoned with a symbol that corresponds to the type of SCAMPER questions it contains. For example, the modify/magnify cards are colored pink, and contain a square with a small triangle in it, plus an arrow pointing to a second square with a much larger triangle within it. The back side of each card contains a list of questions related to that part of SCAMPER.
How can you benefit from brainstorming tools?
Ideas are the currency of the new economy. More importantly, they are the “fuel” that will power your new venture. Brainstorming tools can help you to think better and faster, helping you to generate and evaluate more opportunities and possibilities than you could have generated on your own.
In the same way that a catalyst is added to a chemical reaction to speed it up, brainstorming tools stimulate your brain to think more productively and creatively, and to push your thinking beyond the “low-hanging fruit” – the obvious ideas that probably have limited value – to generate truly unique, valuable solutions.
Do you really need tools to help you dream up new profit-building ideas? Absolutely! Like any other type of tool used by mankind, brainstorming tools and software help you to extend your brain’s natural abilities in some powerful ways.
More importantly, they help you to side-step years of conditioning, which may lead you to believe that you’re not creative. For most of us, a combination of schooling, followed by the conformity of the typical job environment, has driven most of the creativity out of us. As adults, we tend to think in well-worn ruts, because it seems to work fine for most situations. To make matters worse, many jobs rarely challenge us to think. In addition, neutral-colored cubicle farms, restrictive corporate policies and good old office politics don’t encourage creative thinking, either.
To paraphrase Albert Einstein’s famous quote, your current level of thinking isn’t enough to help you to solve the problems you’ve created for yourself. You need to elevate your thinking to new levels. Brainstorming tools can help.
Why not give them a try today?