Tag Archives: creativity

critical vs. creative thinking?

This article suggests we need less critical thinking and more creative thinking. This may be true if we are interpreting the word “critical” the way it is often used in everyday speech, to mean oppositional, argumentative, closed minded, cynical. But I don’t think that is the intended meaning of critical thinking at all. Critical thinking is about using the powerful analytical tools of reason, logic, induction, provided by fields such as science, engineering, economics, even philosophy. You need analytical tools to decide which options are better than others for solving a given problem or achieving a given goal. But before you can apply the analytical tools, you need creativity to come up with a wide range of possible ways to achieve the desired outcome, ranging from dumb to brilliant. Then you use the analytical tools to separate the dumb from the brilliant. Without creativity, that needle-in-a-haystack brilliant idea will never be in the mix.

To solve tomorrow’s complex problems, we can’t be forcing today’s kids to make a false choice between creative and critical thinking. They have to learn how to combine both, every day. Einstein didn’t make that choice, he was an avid violinist and even credited music as inspiration for his theories. Sherlock Holmes was also an avid violinist. Only he wasn’t real, he was a fictional character, the product of a creative mind, who engaged in highly logical inductive reasoning, in lateral, non-traditional, and very creative ways. It takes some creativity to wrap your head around that one.

Holmes’s Brain

Sherlock Holmes knew that science and problem solving are about logic and reason, supported by facts. Creativity is the opposite of all that, right? Not so fast, according to an article and book by Maria Konnikova. Facts play a role, and Holmes had a large but carefully organized “attic” of the ones that he felt were most useful. To solve problems, you need a lot of information in your head, and access to a lot more, because you never know in advance which facts are going to combine in which way to produce an answer. The process of putting those facts together is not always cold, organized, and logical. In fact, you can’t force it. Holmes was willing to sit and contemplate as long as it took, distract his mind with music and recreational drugs, and let his mind access the facts in the background and bring him the solutions.

 

online productivity and creativity apps

This article from Civicly lists useful online apps for planners – actually, I think they are useful for anybody whose job involves trying to solve problems with a little creative latitude. I especially like the free tools for infographics – it looks like you can pick a template and customize it for your data.

walking and creativity

This article in the New Yorker talks about how walking stimulates thinking and creativity.

Because we don’t have to devote much conscious effort to the act of walking, our attention is free to wander—to overlay the world before us with a parade of images from the mind’s theatre. This is precisely the kind of mental state that studies have linked to innovative ideas and strokes of insight. Earlier this year, Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz of Stanford published what is likely the first set of studies that directly measure the way walking changes creativity in the moment. They got the idea for the studies while on a walk.

It goes on to talk about differences between walking in natural and park-like settings vs. city streets. But is it too much to ask for safe, park-like city streets where people can stroll and think and interact? Does this sound crazy? No, it just means picking some streets and getting all or most car traffic off them, which can be done if people live near where they work and shop. Then you drastically slow down the remaining motorized traffic, if any, plant lots of trees and provide occasional places to sit. Make those public investments, and complementary private investments will pop up. Even from a cynical economic perspective, the cost-benefit is there, I sincerely believe. And the more subtle effects that cost-benefit analysis will miss – a more creative, innovative, less-stressed society – will follow, I sincerely believe. These are really the fundamentals, I am pretty sure. Maybe we can unleash a new wave of creative problem solving. Let’s stop thinking cynically about how we can make cities a little less bad, and start thinking about how we can unleash their potential.