Living involves solving (or, at least, try to solve) a series of daily problems that never cease, of greater or lesser importance depending on the circumstances, luck and personality of each person.
Most problems can be solved routinely imitating the solutions that have been instilled in us or that we see applied by the society around us, or in a different and personal way, seeking originality, trying to find a better alternative.
All problems, by definition, have at least one solution; since if a situation lacks a solution, it stops being a problem and becomes a tragedy, misfortune or bad fortune. Some mathematical problems (exact and pure sciences) present unique solutions; Some mental or philosophical problems present two opposing solutions (they are “to be or not to be” type dilemmas, for example).
But The most common problems of human life (impure sciences and practical philosophy) present a variety of options for dealing with them although not all of them are easy to see if the gaze with which we approach them is not accompanied by the creative spirit.
The routines of creative people
Does this mean that we should reject by all means the routines that life offers us? Not at all. Routines have an unfair bad reputation It only means that in the face of any routine solution we must question whether we are capable of optimizing it or finding a better routine, based on other methods and other concepts.
The great progress made by humanity has consisted and will continue to consist, precisely, in convert solutions that until then were incapable of being solved systematically into efficient routines or that involved inefficient routines. Converting an appendicitis or cesarean section operation into a simple surgical routine was a great progress. Changing the routine of going to wash clothes in the river for domestic washing machines, being able to talk on the phone with any inhabitant of the planet at the touch of a finger have become fortunate routines of our time. Millions of successful routine solutions make up our current well-being.
As the great philosopher and mathematician said Alfred North Whitehead: “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations that can be performed without having to think about how to do them.” Creating a routine to solve a problem where there was none is one of the greatest possible greatnesses of creativity: antibiotics to cure infections; Internet to expand knowledge are paradigmatic examples.
Avoiding Alzheimer’s, defeating cancer, avoiding enormous economic inequalities or reversing climate change are four of the many pending challenges that we currently face.
Tips to be more creative
The first step of the creative is to detect a problem where the rest of humanity does not see it or does not dare to face it. Without making the mistake of confusing creative nonconformism with systematic discontent, the rebel without a cause, the ineffective complainer. The second step is to define and conveniently limit the scope and scope of the problem The third will be to look for solutions that exist in other countries or environments different from our usual one. The Internet and its search engines are, at this point, of invaluable help.
If we find what we were looking for, we will replace the routine of our peers with the one we learned online. We will be innovative and we may have followers and create trends. Otherwise, we will enter the fourth stage of the process: creative reflection, the active search for alternatives. It is the phase in which we must resort to our right hemisphere, our intuition, our unconscious, our sensory stimuli, our dreams, our open and uninhibited mental associations. And at this point is when the texts that teach us to trust our sensory stimuli, avoid creative blocks of any kind and use strategies, techniques and mental methods to help produce the essential inspiration are useful to our brain. It has rained a lot since Alex F. Osborn He invented his famous “brainstorming” in 1957 and the contributions of many authors have been great in aiding creativity.
Being creative does not lie in seeing what no one else has seen or doing what no one else was capable of doing (these would be, in any case, two superpowers of comic book superheroes). Being creative is “thinking what no one had thought of, associating elements that no one had associated before.”
All the great steps of progress have been born from an imaginative mind that has freely associated things that until then no one had dared to put together. Being creative is not about seeing what no one has seen before or having a magical power to transform ideas into realities. Being creative consists of seeing the same thing that everyone else sees, but thinking things about it that no one had ever thought about before, making a new association brought by the imagination. With the help of the right mental strategies.
You may be interested in: “The 14 keys to enhance creativity”
Slow but persistent progress
Everyone knew since prehistoric times that a hollowed-out log could sail like a nutshell; and they broke their arms rowing to move it. Everyone had observed that the wind can push the leaf of a plant and carry it great distances. But It took centuries until someone imagined a leaf tied to the shell of a nut with a vertical stick It is very possible that 3,500 years ago it was an Egyptian boy who said to his parents: “I want to test whether the wind blowing a palm leaf can push a shell over the Nile,” and his parents would say: “ What a nice idea! We will help you prove it.”
The invention of sailing was the main technology of maritime transportation until the invention of steam at the end of the 19th century. All the great world empires relied on it to trade and impose their military dominance. But it was humanly impossible for the Egyptian child we have imagined to foresee the true dimension of his creation. Well – we must not doubt it – also in our time, a child could open the key to the mental concept that we need for our technological progress from the evolved objects that surround us.
Changing paradigm
It is in our best interest to be perceptive, attentive to the creativity of our most brilliant minds: children and good creatives The blackness and immensity of the unresolved or poorly resolved problems that stalk us forces us to resort, without a doubt, to it.
If we may use a pun: We must acquire the routine of looking at all the problems that surround us in a creative way. To build routines that systematically and stablely solve the problems of humanity that we are not solving adequately.
