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When he went through the "how do I become smart" section, I was expecting these to be creative techniques, as these are the ones I frequently use in the day. Inversion: Flipping the problem on it's head. You want to fill up a water bottle as quickly as you can? What about emptying it as fast as possible? The second one may be easier to solve, and gives you additional insight into the problem you want to solve. Avoidance: This is more general, but don't look up what you want to find on the internet. Look for something more specific, or don't look it up at all. I forget exactly what it was, but one time I wanted to find something easily online, but I didn't want to get the answer right away (waiting to get an answer invests more of your neurons to the answer). I searched for the harder things first. Also, looking things up will show you the way that other people solved the problem, not the way that you solved the problem. It taints the waters when you look online for something you're trying to be creative about. Compound Interest: The pathways you make between ideas today will be useful tomorrow. The training exercises you subject your brain to today will pay off tomorrow. I like to imagine a river whenever I think about the 'flow' of ideas in my brain. The river is always flowing, but some days it moves more of the bottom of the river. Sometimes, you'll uncover something cool, sometimes not. Rediscovering the bottom constrains you to similar thoughts, just going a little bit deeper. You likely won't get new ideas from the bottom of the river. You need your flow to branch out, to expand and see where it goes. Use some of your brain flow to bifuricate your brain flow and find something new. Maybe it will bring you back to your main river, or maybe you'll find something new. Tipping Points: When thinking of something new, blowing the problem up to infinity, or extremely large (or maximum), or extremely small (or minumum) can put an instant perspective on what needs to happen and whether or not a solution is even possible. Lollapaloozas: The creative slide. I call this mental momentum - when you start having good ideas, you continue having them (until you run out of steam). They may not truly be good, but the more ideas you have in a set amount of time, the more power they having in breaking down the barriers that are preventing your thoughts from going further. |