How many times you had a spark – the beginning of an idea – and said to yourself, “this will never work”? How many times you looked at something, saw for a second a potential but then said: “This is not good enough”?
This approach kills Creativity!
Any creative act starts with exploration: with looking around and collecting raw material. Ideas can come from just about anywhere, and the best creative results are, in fact, built using a surprising combination of unrelated things from entirely different domains. But for that to happen, you should avoid being judgmental when exploring and discovering.
Divergent thinking is an essential step in the creative process. You should not censor yourself. Whether you are practicing in the seempli Creativity Gym or looking for ideas for a real-world challenge, you should collect many Insights even if, eventually, most of them will not contribute to the solution.
It is this variety of ideas that enables the creation of surprising connections in our mind. It makes our brains more flexible. The next step in solving a problem would have to be analyzing the ideas, refining them, and picking the best one.
Don’t try to make a shortcut and filter ideas “in real-time.” Capture any Insight that comes to mind. You might be surprised to realize some ideas you thought are ridiculous are actually a potential breakthrough.