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How to Improve Your C reative Thinking

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Summary

This article provides a detailed and actionable guide to the science of creativity and how to unlock it. It explains the two-part process of creativity, which consists of divergent thinking (generating candidate ideas) and convergent thinking (narrowing down to the most useful idea). It also discusses the components of creativity, including memory, which is a critical component, and how to build a good 'memory bank' full of materials for creation. The article also explains how our mental state has a large influence on our creativity, and suggests ways to stay focused on creative thought work. Finally, the article emphasizes the importance of doing creative work often, with intention, but not too much.

Q&As

What is creativity?
Creativity is the ability to produce an artifact or an idea that is both novel and useful given a particular social context.

How can we improve our creative thinking?
We can improve our creative thinking by building a good “memory bank” full of materials for creation, interacting with our materials, minding our mood, and paying attention.

What are the components of creative thinking?
The components of creative thinking include divergent thinking, convergent thinking, semantic memory structure, the default network, the control network, and the salience network.

What strategies can be used to build a 'memory bank' full of materials for creative thought?
Strategies that can be used to build a 'memory bank' full of materials for creative thought include reading voraciously, taking notes, making highlights, revisiting material when it's related to what you're currently thinking about, connecting new ideas to existing ones, and using tools and methods like Zettlekasten.

How can our mental state and attentional state affect our creativity?
Our mental state and attentional state can affect our creativity by influencing our ability to explore, retrieve, and experiment with connecting our memories in different ways. A positive affective mental state and a balance between staying focused and allowing for mind wandering can help foster creativity.

AI Comments

👍 This is a great article full of actionable advice and detailed research on how to improve our creative thinking skills.

👎 This article is too long and many of the concepts are too abstract to be easily understood.

AI Discussion

Me: It's about the science of creativity and how to unlock it. It talks about how our memory and mental state have a large influence on our creative thinking, and it explains the components of the creative thinking process and suggests ways we can use them to our advantage.

Friend: That's really interesting. It makes a lot of sense that our memory and mental state affect our creativity, and it's great to have some actionable steps to help us become more creative. It seems like having a good understanding of the creative process could be really useful for a lot of people.

Me: Absolutely. And it's not just useful for those who consider themselves "creatives," but for anyone who wants to be more creative and think more outside the box. It could help us come up with more innovative solutions to problems and also help us be more productive.

Action items

Read voraciously and engage deeply with a wide variety of content to build a richer memory bank for you to tap.
Take notes, make highlights, and revisit material when it’s related to what you’re currently thinking about.
Invest in your emotional well-being and find a balance between staying focused on your creative thought work and allowing yourself to mind wander.

Technical terms

Divergent Thinking: The ability to recall, associate, and combine a diverse set of information in novel ways to generate creative ideas.
Convergent Thinking: Takes into account goals and constraints to ensure that a given idea is useful.
Schemas: Existing memories that information is associated with when it moves from short-term to long-term storage.
Default Network: A network of brain regions that is activated during spontaneous, self-generated thought.
Control Network: Allows us to think flexibly, inhibit outside distractions, and pull from our memory.
Salience Network: Governs the switching between the default and control networks.
Semantic Memory Structure: How we relate language-based concepts.
fMRI: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a type of brain imaging technique.
Zettlekasten: A tool and method used to intentionally build connections between ideas.
Roam and Obsidian: Software tools used to record and make connections between ideas.
Mind Wandering: The ability to explore, retrieve, and experiment with connecting memories in different ways.
Positive Affective Mental State: A mental state that is happy and not anxious.
Attention Economy: The idea that modern technology keeps us hyper-focused and often stuck in the memory collection part of the creative thinking process.