Idea 80: The creative thinking process
The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.
Albert Einstein, German physicist
Creative thinking can be seen as having four phases:
| Preparation | The hard work. You have to collect and sort the relevant information, analyze the problem as thoroughly as you can, and explore possible solutions. |
| Incubation | This is the depth mind phase. Sitting on eggs until the young birds of ideas emerge is a metaphor for the depth mind’s work. We all have a purposive and helpful depth mind; we differ as to the use we make of it. Mental work – analyzing, synthesizing and valuing – continues on the problem in your subconscious mind. The parts of the problem separate and new combinations occur. These may involve other ingredients stored away in your memory. |
| Insight | The ‘Eureka’ moment. A new idea emerges into your conscious mind, either gradually or suddenly, like a fish flashing out of the water. These moments often occur when you are not thinking about the problem but are in a relaxed frame of mind. |
| Validation | This is where your valuing faculty comes into play. A new idea, insight, intuition, hunch or solution needs to be thoroughly tested. This is especially so if it is to form the basis for action of any kind. |
Although it is useful for you to have this framework in mind, remember that the actual mental process is a lot more untidy than this list suggests.
Remind yourself
Think of the phases as being four notes on a piano that can be played in different sequences or combined in complex chords.