Developing Creative Thinking

Creative thinking is an ability of an individual to provide ideas and thoughts that are not something the average people would think of. Creative thinking can be defined as thinking outside the box, which means thinking beyond the normal boundary.
There are many techniques for creative thinking, it is usually something people have to develop as it is not usually a second nature. When a person develops their creative thinking abilities, they will find they can come up with ideas quickly. They will likely begin with the not-so-obvious answers to questions instead of jumping right in with the obvious solutions. Individual like that is a great contributor to a problem-solving situation.
The thought process of a creative thinker generally goes through the following four steps...
Step 1: Analysis
It starts by looking over the situation. It involves finding out the who, what, where, when and how of the situation. When analysis is complete, you should be able to completely explain the situation including any obvious problems or issues.
Step 2: Brainstorming
This is the true area of creative thinking. Once the situation is fully understood, a brainstorming process is spawned. Brainstorming can take on many forms. You can write things down, talk things out or even conduct experiments. Since brainstorming is free flowing, you should write them down so no good ideas are lost.
Step 3: Break It Down
Once ideas and possibilities are collected, you can start to link together related ideas and weed out those that are not relevant. Eventually, you will end up with ideas that seem to be the best solutions.
Step 4: Review
The final step involves reviewing several related ideas and come up with a final one or two ideas that seem to stand out and be the best ideas.
Being a creative thinker involves being able to think without a lot of structure, these four steps are the basics of any thinking process. They can help to organize your though processes. Of course these four steps need to be nurtured and developed over time until they become your second nature. That's how you develop your creative thinking ability. Hope you find this article useful.