7 Essential Tips to Help You Develop Divergent Thinking & Become a More Creative Individual
By: Colton Tanner Casados-Medve
Tags: Growth, Creativity, Personal Development, Self Improvement, Advice

Divergent Thinking. Radio Ren.

If there’s one key to success in today’s world, it’s creativity.

Society values creative individuals, and for good reason. Creativity lets us generate new solutions to old problems, and tackle new problems with confidence when they turn up.

And new problems always turn up.

Unfortunately, not too many of us were taught how to “exercise” our creativity as we were growing up.

Our education system focuses on convergent thinking — being able to produce the correct answer within a particular mental framework, such as when answering multiple-choice questions.

The opposite — or rather complement — to convergent thinking is divergent thinking, which, unfortunately, is grossly underdeveloped in most individuals (myself included).

To become more creative, we need to practice both convergent and divergent thinking. If the two are out of balance, we end up stifling our creativity.

I’ve focused on divergent thinking in this piece because, well, that’s what most of us are lacking. If we can correct that weakness, the other areas of our life will reap the benefits.

So what is divergent thinking?

Let’s take a look at the Merriam-Webster definition.

Divergent Thinking. Merriam-Webster. Background Image: Rohit Tandon on Unsplash.

Put another way, divergent thinking is when we give ourselves permission to simply have ideas in a more freeform, non-linear, spontaneous manner while not worrying so much about whether those ideas have merit.

The usefulness of divergent thinking is that it allows us to come up with a lot of “out of the box” ideas — the kind that allows us to approach old problems in new ways.

If we want to make up for the thinking deficit we inherited from society and become more creative, we have to provide ourselves plenty of opportunities to practice divergent thinking — which thankfully, we all can do.

I’ve compiled seven tips that can help us do this.

Three of them I’ve taken from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention, and the other four are commonly circulated, tried and true techniques that help the brain reach its full potential for forming ideas.

So without further delay, let’s get to’em.

Let Your Ideas Spill Out, Even if They’re Terrible

This one is a no brainer.

It’s easier to pull out a good idea if you have 1,000 to choose from.

The fact that 999 of those ideas sucked doesn’t matter so long as the process gave you at least one good idea to work with.

It’s much difficult — if not impossible — to have a good idea if you’re not having any ideas at all.

We can be critical regarding which ideas have the potential for follow-through only if we’ve formed the habit of having ideas in the first place.

But I won’t leave you with just abstract advice. I’ll give you a relevant example of how I’ve applied this to my own writing process.

I often go through books I’ve read that have significantly impacted me, reading all the bits I’ve highlighted (and I’ve highlighted a lot…).

As I’m doing so, I have my Medium draft page open, and I create a new draft for every idea that resonates with my own experience or that I think would be helpful to share with others.

Sometimes, I’ll combine several of the ideas into a list piece (such as this one).

The point is to generate as many blog post ideas as I can, even if I know that I’ll only end up using a tiny percentage of them.

Currently, I have over 100 drafts sitting in hibernation, with relevant quotes and page numbers from the books where I got the ideas from.

This helps me do two things:

I can practice writing headlines and subtitles in bulk. I can improve my headline writing skill much quicker if I write 100 of them a week or a month than if I only ever write one a day. I can immediately tell which drafts are worth being turned into a blog post later. Getting all the ideas drafted allows me to take some time away from them. When I go back to scan over them, it’s much easier for me to see a headline and think, “That has potential,” or “That’s a post that I would personally click on.” In a way, this helps me practice my convergent thinking and refine my critical eye, but I had to let my divergent thinking take place first.

Your gig may not be writing, and maybe this is jumping a little ahead, but do your best to come up with as many ideas as possible.

Just remember: while divergently thinking, ditch the judgment.

At first go for quantity; later you will be critical and edit for quality. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

You can decide which ideas you have are bad or good later.

When in the process of generating ideas, however, you need to give yourself permission to be as wild as you can possibly be.

How else could you possibly discover the hidden gems buried within you?

This is what having a flexible mind is all about.

If your mind is too rigid, it won’t have any ideas at all.

That would be like trying to get better at dancing while not giving your body permission to move any of its limbs.

If your mind is too open, maybe you aren’t as critical as you should be.

Flexibility — being able to go between these two poles — however, is how we become more creative.

Catch Yourself When You’re Producing Redundant Ideas

While it’s important to have a lot of ideas, it’s equally important to make sure you aren’t having the same idea over and over again, or at the very least that you aren’t expressing the same idea in exactly the same way, like some sort of scripted program.

Quantity is important, but try to avoid redundancy. Variety in conversation, in the selection of music, in a menu, is generally appreciated. It pays off to learn how to alternate topics of conversation, types of restaurants, kinds of shows, ways of dressing. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

This is another reason I choose to bulk write my drafts these days.

When I scan over them, I can easily notice when I’ve generated a ton of redundant ideas. This helps me be more selective when I actually do choose something to write for that day.

I always ask myself, “Have I already said it?” and if so, “Will saying it again, only better, be worth it for myself and others?”

Sometimes we can’t avoid saying the same thing over and over again.

Good advice, after all, needs repeating.

History’s greatest thinkers were people who simply figured out a way to zero in on their perspective — their truth — and make it accessible to others.

But if we are going to repeat ourselves, we should think of how to express it differently, or more skillfully than we did before.

Try to Be Original, But Don’t Stress It Too Much

This relates a lot to the first two points but deserves it’s own section because “doing your best” is really all you can do.

What everyone dreams of is being original, of having ideas no one has ever had before, and of being paid to put one’s original ideas into action.

Originality is one of the hallmarks of creative thinking. It is more difficult to learn how to think in creative ways than to be fluent and flexible. It requires cultivating a taste for quality that is not necessary for the other two. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

In the beginning, simply producing ideas is more important than worrying about whether or not they are original.

But if originality is the goal, we should always try to produce ideas that are out of the ordinary.

And here’s the thing.

We don’t need to necessarily come up with “new” ideas in order to be original, we just have to find out ways of expressing old ideas in new ways.

One exercise involves taking a random paragraph from the paper each day and seeing if you can find unique, more memorable ways of expressing the same ideas. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

After all, that’s what a lot of Medium writers are doing. They are sharing tips and advice that helped them, but they are constantly looking for ways to make it relevant again or apply it to other domains of life.

As a writer, I don’t think about how to say something no one has ever said before.

I question if that’s even possible — there’s a pretty good argument that it isn’t.

Even if I write about my authentic fears and insecurities, they aren’t necessarily things no one else has ever felt.

What I can do, however, is develop my own style, become more entertaining to read, and really hone my ability to communicate good ideas effectively so as to help the greatest number of people that I can.

If I can do that with my time on Earth, then I’ll consider it a life well-lived.

Brainstorm… and Then Brainstorm Some More

Okay, so we know that we need to produce more ideas, avoid redundancy, and do our best to be “original.”

Now what?

We need some practical techniques that can help get our brains into the habit of thinking divergently — and make no mistake, it is a habit.

Brainstorming is one of the best methods for becoming better divergent thinkers and exercising our creative “muscles.”

Bulk writing my drafts is a form of brainstorming. It helps me pull all the ideas I find relevant out of the texts I’ve read so that I can easily find something to write about each day.

But there are other ways of brainstorming, such as (and I’m skipping ahead again) keeping a journal where you jot down every idea you have.

You can even invent your own methods of brainstorming — maybe you take all your paintbrushes and see what patterns they make when brushed against the canvas in various ways, without really caring about producing a “quality” painting.

The important takeaway is to keep developing the habit of letting your brain generate a consistent stream of ideas, worrying about the quality of those ideas later.

Write Your Ideas Down in a Journal, or Kiss Them Goodbye

I’ve already spoiled the show on this one, but it’s important to restate that we can’t trust ourselves to remember ideas.

If we don’t write them down, chances are, we’ll lose them.

I had a bad habit of never writing ideas down as I had them, and who knows how many great blog post ideas I’ve lost that way.

Don’t make the same mistake.

There are no excuses in today’s world. Keep a journal on your desk, near your bedside, or anywhere else ideas seem to come to you.

If you’re in the shower and you have a good idea, repeat it to yourself to keep it in your short-term memory, then write it down when you’re finished cleaning up.

If you’re on the go and all you have is your phone, well… there’s this handy app on most phones called “Memo” or “Notepad” or something of that nature, where you can quickly take notes.

If you’re a musician trying to come up with lyrics, and you randomly sing a line that sounds good to you one day, record it on your phone so that you don’t forget how you sang it later.

Remember, the more you generate ideas, the easier it becomes, and the more you can be critically selective later.

The point is to first be generating ideas.

Unblock Your Stream of Consciousness

There’s a time for writing, there’s a time for editing.

Perhaps this one is more relevant to writers, but since writing is also a major form of professional communication (e-mails and the like), it’s relevant to other fields as well.

When I write the first draft of a blog post, I stream-of-consciousness it.

It’s a sloppy mess half the time, sure, but that’s the point.

I’m getting all the ideas out.

Every sentence expresses an idea. Not all of my sentences are good.

In the beginning, I published these sloppy messes, which got me this far, but now I’m ready to slow down and actually refine them.

I’ve learned to make peace with both my inner critic and the wild creative that just wants to splash “word paint” down on the page and see what happens, and I value both of these “two beings.”

When you’re getting the gist of the post down, however, it’s more important to simply produce an uninterrupted train of thought, even if you’ll end up deleting or rewriting huge portions when you revisit it.

Divergent thinking is the same thing as unblocking your stream of consciousness, letting it flow — the more you get into the habit of doing that, the easier it will be for you to have ideas.

Create a Map of Your Own Mind

This one is for the visual people.

But even words are images, so “word people” can benefit from this too.

It can be helpful to create visual aids to organize the ideas that you’ve brainstormed, placing “central” ideas at the center and spin-off ideas branching out.

I’m thinking of doing something like this to help organize all the thinkers that have influenced me so that I can better understand their perspectives, key takeaways, and how they relate to one another.

I hope this will help me internalize their knowledge and keep my mind organized as I go about exploring new points-of-view, comparing and contrasting them with what I’ve already learned.

This involves a bit of convergent thinking, as it’s more on the organizational end.

But like with all things in life, things are rarely ever cut and dry.

Organizing can be considered a creative process too, especially if it helps you form connections between all the different ideas and perspectives you’ve been exploring at random.

Plus, who doesn’t want to feel like their mind isn’t becoming more organized as time goes on?

Just Remember…

Divergent thinking is a habit that we solidify by repeatedly doing it.

Even if we suck at first, we can become better at having ideas.

Persistence is key.

Don’t give up.

Instead, create the opportunities to practice divergent thinking in your life by considering the seven tips that I’ve provided.

Don’t be discouraged if 99% of your ideas are bad.

You’re looking for the 1% that you can work with, and you’ll get better at spotting it as time goes on.