One question that frequently comes up when I do workshops or creative classes is to find some way to summarize everything in one brief list. Creativity does take time to develop and it's ongoing effort. More time you put into that effort towards that goal the better it will be. But a summary listing can still be helpful. So here's my top 10 list on being more creative. First, you need to believe in your own creativity. Everybody is creative to some extent. And, your belief in your own creativity is something that's pretty important. It's been well researched and believing you are creative actually helps you be more creative. This might be an honest reflection or evaluation of ones own creativity but also might be because confidence and belief is something that helps move people to be more forward in acting on their ideas. Creativity does rely a lot on motivation. Secondly, creativity and intelligence are dynamic and they can be increased. Most people think that what you're born with, what you get in the first place, is your fixed level of intelligence. Or that your intelligence stops developing when you get out of school. That's kind of unfortunate because in reality, neither intelligence or creativity is set. But increasing either one of them takes a lot of time and conscious effort, that's why we go to school. We need to put in that effort with any skill, but through effort creativity can be increased. Third, you should have an ongoing and broad exposure to other ideas and you should begin to tolerate the ambiguity of different directions. I'll need to get out more. We do need to experience different things that will help us come up with different ideas as well. It's pretty logical. If you change your environment you will change your experiences and your ideas. Meeting other people being exposed to a wide range of different ideas and different environments will help you mix and combine and improve your own thinking. The fourth point is that we also need to develop a habit of divergence. We need to do things that are different, that are more unusual, that are more challenging, and that are more interesting. Like my once Mae West once said, when caught between two evils, I usually try to choose the one that I've never done before. So good rule of thumb. So as an ongoing recommendation, try to do something different, all the time in your life. This is why the exercises are designed to encourage you to do things in a different way, like eat something differently, sleep something different. If you're always making unusual choices whether in what you do or what you eat or what you wear, you'll end up with a much more interesting life and be exposed to more experiences and this will lead to higher level of creativity. You'll continually reach different conclusions and you'll reach out for the new. This richness will aid in the development of new ideas, it's a habit we're trying to develop here in this course. Number to five redefine a rethought frame your problem challenge. One of things we know and design and other problem solving fields is how a problem is defined often gives direction to how it's solved. We often make assumptions about what the problem is but we need to redefine what the problem could be. One simple way is to develop more divergent ideas by changing the way a problem is described. Just like what we did with eating something different, you need to ask questions like, how you can describe it in a different way? At the same time, finding and defining a problem also opens up the way to new solutions. So, simply change the definition of any given problem you're faced with. Like eating something different could mean a different food or different place. Number six is we always need to develop multiple answers to any problem. It's like I said in the first lecture. As we seen through research that first answers is usually aren't the best and most unusual answers given for any challenge, they're just the most obvious and the ones we've done before. We stop there. And that choice avoids different directions and might be better or even transformative. So as I said, the only wrong answer in terms of creativity is one answer. Wherever challenged, we should also provide as many possible answers as possible. We need to develop at least ten ideas going beyond whatever is required and whatever is requested. Remember what Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling once said, the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. Number seven is that we need to expand the reach of your ideas by sharing and joining others. Having good ideas is one thing but getting those ideas accepted and put into use was an important part of the entire process. Within the field, this is considered innovation, the adoption and dissemination of new and useful ideas. Without this part, few ideas will have an impact, at the same time, this means we need to positively share ideas with others. Whether with individuals or even across organizations, or even to the public at large, you need to sell your ideas. Number seven is to seek challenges for your ideas and persist through obstacles and mistakes and failures. Having good ideas is one thing. But getting those ideas accepted and putting them to use is an important part of the entire process. We do need to be persistent in moving our ideas forward. Not every idea will be accepted by others and persisting with the ideas. Adopting and evolving the ideas will make them better. A good way to develop this persistence is to take on challenges where success is not guaranteed. We know that failure's part of creation. Some ideas would succeed, but many won't. Being ready for temporary setbacks is an important part of creative problem solving. We must recognize that we need to have courage to persist in ideas that are new and original when society often seeks the status quo. We also need to analyze our own thinking, that's number nine. It's important to think about how we think and how we develop ideas. We need the ability to truthfully evaluate our work and our ideas comparing them with others and with alternative solutions. We should ask questions about whether our thought processes went past our basic assumptions and the most obvious answers. And one other thing you should do, number ten, is to allow time and to purposely daydream. Things take time, and we should allow time for our ideas to develop and purposely build time into our schedule to develop new ideas. This means, starting early on projects and at the same time, setting aside specific thinking time to develop new ideas. I'd suggest putting it on your regular calendar, keep it sacrosanct and label it something important like research, so if anybody else looks and finds it, I'm doing research. Of course, we all need to find out what the best part of what we do well and concentrate our efforts in that direction. In most cases, those areas where we have a high level of skill correspond with loving the work, let's hope. While this doesn't necessarily connect with external rewards, this will lead to a more satisfying and creative life. These points were meant to summarize much of the work of the course. They're not meant to be exhaustive and probably they will evolve as time goes on. I know that's happened in terms of writing this video. And they're generally based on current research and personal experience. The concept that we can create our own creativity is what's driven these ideas.
