Picture credit - Flickr
Day 13 - Creative Thinking Skill
What is Creative Thinking Skill?
Creative thinking is the ability to look at things differently, and find new ways of solving problems
How to improve Creative Thinking Skill?
Set a goal to become a go-to person by mastering the art and science of Creative Thinking.
Follow the LAST model to build your personal brand as a Guru of Creative Thinking.
- Learn - Invest time in learning different models/ techniques of Creative Thinking
- Apply -
- Identify a model suitable to you
- Create a template to document the flow of the process
- Find opportunities to use the selected method/ template
- Maintain record/ process flow of every Creative Thinking exercise you did
- Maintain notes of your thoughts/ insights/ failures/ challenges…. to be used for sharing/ training others
- Share - Share the insights captured in step 2 above in a planned manner (social media posts, blogs, videos, study notes…)
- Train - Generate opportunities to train your peers and team members so that, over time, your organization benefits from your efforts
My learning for the day
Source - The morphological matrix
Author - René de Ruijter
Fritz Zwicky (1898-1974), a Swiss Astronomer coined the concept “Morphological analysis” for his astronomical studies. His concept was extended for creative thinking by researchers such as Tom Ritchey, Dr. Scott Isaksen etc.
Creativity is all about quantity. There is always a better idea and the more ideas you generate, the bigger are the chances of stumbling upon something brilliant.
Morphological Matrix is one such technique that allows you to generate a huge number of possible ideas in mere minutes.
It is a three step process -
Step 1. Pick attributes - Put key attributes that play a role in your challenge as column heads
Step 2. List possible components per attribute beneath each attribute
Step 3. Combine components from each column, randomly
Here’s an example -
Imagine you want to create a new tv format for a big production agency
Step 1. Pick attributes - ‘target audience’, ‘type of show’ and ‘theme’
Step 2. List components per attribute (as below)
Step 3. Combine components from each column, randomly
E.g. If you pick numbers 1, 2 and 10 (children, quiz, politics), you could create a quiz programme for children, aiming to make kids more interested in politics
If you pick numbers 2, 8 and 1 (the elderly, puppet show, history), you could create puppet show of historical events (the elderley love to be in the past)
If you pick numbers 8, 1 and 6 (sports lovers, game show, science fiction), you could create a programme where famous athletes pretend to be abducted by aliens and have to compete with each other in silly games.
Making random combinations enables you to quickly generate original ideas. After generating many different ideas all you have to do is pick the most interesting ones to elaborate, sharpen and execute.
Try this out.
Purpose of this document
I took a 66 day challenge to study Life Skills last year (10 April 2019). To my astonishment, I succeeded in studying for 66 days one skill a day.
My objectives of learning these skills were - To strengthen my mind to face life’s challenges with ease, To use these skills in my worklife for a better performance, To use these skills in my personal life for enriching my relationships, To open new possibilities to surprise myself.
This is my next 66 day challenge (from 10 April 2020) - To share my Life Skills learning with my social media friends.
I pray that my toil helps you in your success journey.
What are Life Skills?
UNICEF defines Life skills as - psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. They are loosely grouped into three broad categories of skills
- cognitive skills for analyzing and using information,
- personal skills for developing personal agency and managing oneself,
- inter-personal skills for communicating and interacting effectively with others.
Which LifeSkills are covered?
The World Health Organisation identified these basic areas of life skills that are relevant across cultures:
- Decision-making
- Problem-solving
- Creative thinking
- Critical thinking
- Communication
- Interpersonal skills
- Self-awareness
- Empathy
- Coping with emotions
- Coping with stress.
Some trivia
‘Life skills’ was never part of the school curriculum. WHO/ UNESCO mandated academia to teach these skills in all schools across the globe in 1993.
Different countries educate their children in these skills with different objectives
- Zimbabwe and Thailand - prevention of HIV/AIDS
- Mexico - prevention of adolescent pregnancy
- United Kingdom - child abuse prevention
- USA - prevention of substance abuse and violence
- South Africa and Colombia - positive socialization of children.
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