Thinking like a genius - Problem solving: creative solutions

Thinking like a genius

Problem solving: creative solutions

"Even if you're not a genius, you can use the same strategies as Aristotle and Einstein to harness the power of your creative mind and better manage your future."

The following strategies encourage you to think productively,
rather than reproductively, in order to arrive at solutions to problems. "These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history."

Nine approaches to creative problem solving:

1. Rethink! Look at problems in many different ways.
2. Visualize! Utilize diagrams and imagery to analyze your dilemma.
3. Produce! Genius is productive.
4. Combine! Make novel combinations...
5. Form! Form relationships.
6. Opposite! Think in opposites.
7. Metaphor/simile! Think metaphorically.
8. Failure! Learning from your mistakes is one example of using failure.
9. Patience! Don't confuse inspiration with ideas.

Exercise #2 illustrates how famous thinkers used these approches.
Exercise/blog #3 contains selected thoughts on thinking like a genius.

Exercise #1: illustrates applications of the nine approaches.

Text of exercise:
Nine approaches to creative problem solving:

1. Rethink!
   Look at problems in many different ways.
   Find new perspectives that no one else has taken.
   Solutions example: Finding a job or internship:
1. Ask friends or colleagues for potential leads
2. Over-sell yourself
   Send samples of your work or portfolio to anyone that might respond.
3. Check local resources like Craigslist or your school's job search
4. Broaden your target audience.
   What other fields could you specialize in?
2. Visualize!
   Utilize diagrams and imagery to analyze your dilemma.
1. How can you use pictures, images, graphs, etc. in your studies?
2. Visit guides on concept or mind maps, picturing vocabulary, flashcards, etc.
3. Write out one example of how you can use imagery, then print and post it in your study area.
3. Produce!
   Genius is productive.
1. Perhaps originality is not the key, but rather constant application of thought and tools to arrive a solutions.
2. Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
   W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet
3. Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience.
   George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788) French naturalist
4. Combine!
   Make novel combinations...
   Combine and recombine ideas, images, and thoughts into different combinations no matter how incongruent or unusual.
5. Form!
   Form relationships. Make connections between dissimilar subjects.
1. This doesn't always apply to objects: form relationships with people and ask them questions!
2. Get to know people in your field that can help you excel to the best of your ability.
3. Write down one person that you could get in contact with, why you think this person can help, and print/post it for reference!
6. Opposite!
   Think in opposites. Don't always stick with the obvious solutions.
   Get outside of your comfort zone.
1. “Opposites” bring two approaches to a situation but they do share a basic similarity.
   Example: “right” and “left” are both directions, but which is the right choice?
2. The Sesame Street Muppet Elmo teaches small children the concept of opposites!
7. Metaphor/simile!
   Think metaphorically.
1. Metaphors are connections that are unusual or not an ordinary way of thinking:
   A sea of troubles; the heart of a lion; raining cats and dogs.
2. Similes use "like" or "as" to illustrate
   The boy was as agile as a monkey. The miner's face was like coal.
   The task was as easy as ABC. Dry like a raisin in the sun.
8. Failure!
   Learning from your mistakes is one example of using failure.
1. As strange as it seems the human brain is failure machine: it generates models of reality, acts on them, and adjusts or creates new, successful models based on failures.
2. From Daniel Coyle’s the Talent Code on Adam Bryant’s weekly interview: “every single CEO shares the same nugget of wisdom: the crucial importance of mistakes, failures, and setbacks… mistakes create unique conditions of high-velocity learning that cannot be matched by more stable, “successful” situations.”
9. Patience!
   Don't confuse inspiration with ideas.
   Apply your ideas with patience for the reward they may deserve.

Thinking like a genius - Selected Thoughts

Thinking like a genius

Selected thoughts

As we grow older and wiser,
we learn to recognize our strengths and weaknesses, and accept them.  We work to align our lives with the gifts we were born with, and cultivate them.  This is a process of finding our place within the world.
As we recognize and organize our strengths,
we discover and expose ourselves as to who we truly are. Our discovered place in the world becomes the opportunity for the expression of our genius: our special set of gift(s) that we can contribute. It lies within all of us.
Some may say that they have little to contribute. 
However, if we contribute small things greatly, true to our purpose, we will exceed those people who do great things poorly.  For the small thing done greatly can be picked up, and magnified by another, and so by another.
True prophets and leaders want us to work towards
an honest recognition and admission of who we are, to see the beauty and strength in each of us, as well as for each of us to see and admit the beauty of others. With this honest perception of the self, the exercise of genius takes one to a higher spiritual plane.
By its nature, genius pushes against the boundaries
of culture, religion, society, environment.  Boundaries serve a purpose and should be honored for what they are:  a context that tests.
A nation or people or society is only as strong
as its individuals are empowered to rise to the level of their individual genius.  When prophets and leaders encourage us to follow them, they are asking us to hear their message and empower our lives. 
As social animals, our tendency is to institutionalize
the message and to build belief systems and rituals.  However, we need to be alert to when our spirituality, and genius, is limited by these constraints and that context.  It may be that what is built up after the prophet and leader is contrary to his or her message.
Genius recognizes that we must honestly recognize
and meet with humility, even confront, those conditions in which we are placed.  We set aside distracting influences and things of our youth since they are not true to who we are.  Should we succumb to weakness, that which we are not, we need to recognize the test for what it is:  either a miscalculation of our power, or an inappropriate response to our environment.  If we go astray, act contrary to our purpose (we are not perfect) we must learn the lesson provided. 
We hold steady, we join hands with those walking with us
on our spiritual paths, learning that the genius of others will also guide us.  Others will be there to lift us up.  With them, our full genius takes us to the place where we can overcome digressions and transgressions.  There is a super genius at work, that of we as people.
Don't restrict yourself to the standards!
Consider them standards and build on them.  Practice the basics, then don't be afraid to move away from the normal and think outside of the box, or the textbook!" (Colin.C.Saxton)
Read widely and deeply.
In addition to being a statesman, diplomat, author of the Declaration of Independence and President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson was a notable agriculturalist, horticulturist, architect, etymologist, mathematician, cryptographer, surveyor, author, lawyer, inventor, paleontologist, and founder of the University of Virginia. As a 16-year-old college student, he studied 15 hours a day. His insatiable curiosity and disciplined study of a broad range of academic and practical disciplines were the basis for his exceptional accomplishments. President John F. Kennedy welcomed 49 Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962, saying, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." (Gavin Ehringer)

Thinking like a genius - Famous Thinkers

Thinking like a genius

Famous thinkers

"Even if you're not a genius, you can use the same strategies as Aristotle and Einstein to harness the power of your creative mind and better manage your future."
Nine approaches to creative problem solving:

1. Rethink! Look at problems in many different ways.
2. Visualize! Utilize diagrams and imagery to analyze your dilemma.
3. Produce! Genius is productive.
4. Combine! Make novel combinations...
5. Form! Form relationships.
6. Opposite! Think in opposites.
7. Metaphor/simile! Think metaphorically.
8. Failure! Learning from your mistakes is one example of using failure.
9. Patience! Don't confuse inspiration with ideas.

Exercise #1: illustrates applications of the nine approaches.
Exercise/blog #3 contains random thoughts on thinking like a genius.
Exercise #2 illustrates how famous thinkers used these approches.
Exercise text:

1. Look at problems in many different ways.
   Find new perspectives that no one else has taken (or no one else has publicized!)
   Leonardo da Vinci believed that, to gain knowledge about the form of a problem, you begin by learning how to restructure it in many different ways. He felt that the first way he looked at a problem was too biased. Often, the problem itself is reconstructed and becomes a new one.
   
2. Visualize!
   When Einstein thought through a problem, he always found it necessary to formulate his subject in as many different ways as possible, including using diagrams. He visualized solutions, and believed that words and numbers as such did not play a significant role in his thinking process.
   
3. Produce!
   A distinguishing characteristic of genius is productivity.
   Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California at Davis found that the most respected scientists produced not only great works, but also many "bad" ones. They weren't afraid to fail, or to produce mediocre in order to arrive at excellence.
   
4. Make novel combinations.
   Combine, and recombine, ideas, images, and thoughts into different combinations no matter how incongruent or unusual.
   The Austrian monk Grego Mendel combined mathematics and biology
   to create a new science of heredity. The modern science of genetics is based upon his model.
   
5. Form relationships.
   Make connections between dissimilar subjects.
   Da Vinci forced a relationship between the sound of a bell and a stone hitting water. This enabled him to make the connection that sound travels in waves. Samuel Morse invented relay stations for telegraphic signals when observing relay stations for horses.
   
6. Think in opposites.
   Physicist Niels Bohr believed that if you held opposites together, then you suspend your thought, and your mind moves to a new level. His ability to imagine light as both a particle and a wave led to his conception of the principle of complementarity. Suspending thought (logic) may allow your mind to create a new form.
   
7. Think metaphorically.
   Aristotle considered metaphor a sign of genius, and believed that the individual who had the capacity to perceive resemblances between two separate areas of existence and link them together was a person of special gifts.
   
8. Prepare yourself for chance.
   Whenever we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something else. That is the first principle of creative accident. Failure can be productive only if we do not focus on it as an unproductive result. Instead: analyze the process, its components, and how you can change them, to arrive at other results. Do not ask the question "Why have I failed?", but rather "What have I done?"
   
9. Have patience
   Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) is recognized as one of the 19th century's greatest painters, and is often called the father of modern art, an avant garde bridge between the impressionists and the cubists. During his life he only had a few exhibitions though his influence on subsequent artists was great as an innovator with shape and form. His genius, however, was not evident until late in life. He was refused admission to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at age 22 and his first solo exhibition was at age 56. His genius was the product of many years' practice and experimental innovation.