Top 7 Problems in Creative Thinking

I recently started reading several blogs and e-books related with creative thinking. As my job requires a lot of brainstorming and creative solutions, I tried to boost my imagination and get around several useful tips on the topic.
As always I started with creative thinking Don’ts, blocks and barriers.
First I tried to find an answer to the question what exactly is thinking block?
The simplest answer I could get is that this is a situation where all of a sudden you just cannot come up with a decent answer or solution to a problem, because your mind goes blank. And the harder you try the more confused you get. Creativity depends a lot on how our brain works. It all rests on which hemisphere of the brain is more engaged while thinking. Experiments showed that the left hemisphere of our brain is responsible for logical thinking, while the right one is for creative and lateral thinking.
I will try to use both sides of my brain equally while writing this article. Here are several situations that caught my mind:

1.There is always another solution!
Someone once said it would be stupid to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. That is why, when thinking, analyzing, making a decision or brainstorming, you should always look for another opportunity. Creative thinking is not an exam in which all questions have one correct answer. View things from a different perspective or maybe consult with your colleague or friend, because third party opinion is always welcome.

2.Black and White perspective!
Because of some current situation, comments of others or personal factors at the moment, people have the tendency to switch their attitude from highly positive to highly negative in just several minutes. This attitude change can misguide you and give different course of thinking and action. It’s far healthier to stay neutral and not let emotions influence. Because things are rarely as good or as bad as you think they are.

3.Combine play and work!
The biggest ideas and innovations are born through play and pooling of different perspectives, not thinking and working in isolation. Studies show that a child’s mind has greater number of connections, because children do not limit their world view. When you think and play like a child, accepting everything without judgment, than you can let your imagination free and use full mind capacity. Creative thinker does not make a difference between work and play.

4.Think of details, but always remember the big picture!
Not seeing the forest from the trees is one common creative block. Usually when trying to organize ideas and actions around specific goal we start with the big picture and then go into details. While striving to do things the best possible way, we spend energy and creativity on inconsequential things, at the end losing ourselves in a dead end. Of course to make things easier you can make to list or visual map of every detail using software like DropMind.

5.Mistakes happen!
Nobody likes them, nobody likes to admit them. But mistakes are part of our everyday work and they are a driver for improvement. Creative thinking is not about being wrong or right. It is about exploring new ways and opportunities, finding new challenges. As Albert Einstein said: “Person who never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

6.Other do it also syndrome!
This exists to a different degree in all of us. Even if we hate to admit it, other people’s actions do heavily influence ours. There’s always pressure to adopt the behaviors of the groups we’re in and fear of looking dumb. But creativity is not about standardized rules and regulations. If your idea is, in fact, original, it may stand alone because, well, it is different. For instance, the Dyson vacuum cleaner was the first to use a cyclonic action to separate dust from air, meaning that a bag or a filter was no longer required. This truly was an innovation in home vacuum products.

7.Denying your creativity!
If your start point is an assumption that you cannot do something because you are not creative enough, than you probably have another creative block. “Thinking outside the box” is true only if our mind creates that imaginary box. Creative thinking skills are as much about attitude and self-confidence as about talent. Creativity is often less ordered, structured and predictable. Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. George Bernard Shaw 