Creative person: Albert Einstein

Here, I would like to share how another creative person generates his ideas. That person is Albert Einstein. (Again, these are what I learned from the very first Soft Skills programme I attended: Thinking Out-of-the-box.)

1. Possibility Thinking

Basically, this means that you should give yourself permission to think creatively. To give yourself permission to think creatively, you must give yourself the opportunity to do so. This means that you should always set aside some time every day to deliberately think innovative. You must be willing to sacrifice some of your time and believe that it is possible for you to benefit from solely thinking creatively during that time.

2. Einstein Time

For Albert Einstein, the subject of Quantum Physics demanded more of his time than any other subjects. Thus, you too should budget your time devoted to thinking creatively based on how demanding the particularly subject is. The amount of time spent thinking on a particular area of interest also depends on your own needs and situation. The point is, it is important to allocate time wisely to maximise the results.

3. Going Beyond the Known

You must always be prepared to explore what is creatively possible by going way beyond the boundaries of what you know. Einstein himself often asked questions and looked at things in ways that are very unique and different from others. He developed a technique to help him think differently, known as the thought experiment.

4. Thought Experiment

A thought experiment is an experiment that you do in your head alone. It is an experiment that you either do not or cannot carry out in reality. The main purpose of the thought experiment is to help you understand some aspect of the universe that you lived in. For example, Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity when he imagined how it would be like to ride on a beam of light. This was not something he could do in real life, but by using thought experiment, his creative thinking was stimulated to allow him to understand how light and time functioned.

5. Thinking in Pictures

Einstein himself once said that he thought in a stream of pictures. Visuals are more effective than words in the field of creative thinking. You should always try to think in pictures by setting up a thought experiment in your head and seeing how it goes. The technique of visualisation can be enhanced simply by practice and is a technique well worth learning. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

6. Hard and Soft Thinking
 
When thinking creatively, you could try Einstein's method of using hard thinking, followed by soft thinking. Hard thinking happens when you set aside time to fully explore a problem. During the period of hard thinking, you would be working hard to cover everything you knew and conduct thought experiments in order to solve the problem at hand. However, you should follow up hard thinking with soft thinking. Soft thinking involves consciously setting aside the problem, and redirecting you attention to something else that you enjoy instead. Einstein found that when he was doing something he enjoyed, his unconscious mind would continue thinking about the problem at hand and come up with a surprising insight or solution at a time when he least expected it. You should try your best to use the power of your unconscious mind.