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Saturday, June 19, 2021

Thinking Tips To Get Different Creative Ideas

Thinking Tips To Get Different Creative Ideas
Thinking Tips To Get Different Creative Ideas

Thinking Tips To Get Different Creative Ideas. To be original doesn't have to be first, but to be different and better.

This time I will discuss the book entitled Originals by Adam Grant. This book discusses how a person can be himself and be able to change the world.

Progress in the world comes from a handful of people who dare to think differently. Adam called them the Originals. He explains how each of us can think original and enhance our ability to innovate for greater impact. In his book, Adam wrote many stories of creative people solving seemingly impossible problems.

Thinking Tips To Get Different Creative Ideas, Which You Can Try

I've summed it up into three highlights from the book entitled Originals by Adam Grant:

First, Quantity or Quality


People who have original ideas are not special people, they are just like you and me. They are not born with extraordinary talent. But there are characters that make them different.

Examples like this. Which one do you choose? Quantity or quality? Usually people will say quality is better than quantity. However, in many cases the discovery of a brilliant idea is very rare like the story of the discovery of Isaac Newton who discovered the concept of gravity from an apple that fell from a tree and hit his head.

Therefore, Adam emphasized that quantity and quality are equally important. This is also supported by research from psychologist Dean Simonton which emphasizes that highly creative people are not the type of people who have better ideas. However, they generate more ideas than the average majority.

A large number of ideas results in a higher probability of producing some brilliant work. Adam cited the story of Pablo Picasso.

Picasso is an artist who is famous for some of his world-famous works. However, not many know that Picasso's works include 2,800 ceramics, 1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, and more than 12,000 drawings.

This very large number resulted in some of Picasso's works worldwide. Interestingly, geniuses do not know which of their works can go worldwide.

For example, Beethoven disagrees with music experts by 33% whenever they decide which Beethoven's works are best and worst. Therefore, if we focus on a few quality ideas, then our chances of failure will be even greater.

I suggest that you produce as much innovative work as possible and as a result will increase your chances of success. However, it must be emphasized here that every work produced should not be arbitrary, but indeed the work that has been made is as good as possible.

Second, you can't create creative ideas alone


One of the main challenges in creativity, is not the lack of fresh ideas, but how we can choose the right ideas and get support to make them happen.

Therefore, you cannot be alone, you need a coalition. Adam explains there are two types of coalition you can do:

First, work with people who share the same tactics, but not necessarily with like-minded people. It is the art of conveying ideas that incorporate them into conversation to avoid horizontal animosity.

This is a form of prejudice that usually arises in a group. Despite having the same understanding, they also have a fairly high level of hostility.

Adam cited the example of Meredith Perry when she introduced the idea of ​​a wireless charging device. When presenting her ideas to physics professors and engineers, few agreed with her ideas.

Meredith then looked for a different approach. She said she wanted to build transducers, devices that convert one form of energy into another, rather than talking about devices that transmit energy wirelessly.

This time the idea immediately received huge support, as it sounded more down to earth than the wireless technology of the time. Finally, Meredith was able to establish her own company called uBeam which produces innovative wireless charging solutions.

Second, cooperating with the enemy is better than with those who are still hesitating. Of course it is true that friends are the best partners and enemies are the worst partners.

However, when building a coalition, it's better to try to win the support of your enemy than the people who hesitate or are referred to by Adam as frenemies. This type of person is still undecided between supporting or rejecting you. This is a very stressful situation because you will always be guessing whether this person is still supporting you or not.

Adam cited the story of Lucy Stone, the first American woman who chose to keep her last name secret after marriage. She was also the first Massachusetts woman to receive a higher education.

Since 1853, Lucy worked for 15 years with well-known women activists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. However, in 1869, Lucy parted ways with Susan and Elizabeth. This separation later resulted in a bad relationship, they became rival associations and published opposite newspapers.

As it turned out, the source of their division was African-American suffrage. Susan and Elizabeth felt that prioritizing the suffrage of black men over white women was not in line with what they were fighting for. Understandably, all this time Lucy, Susan, and Elizabeth have always tried to promote equality between men and women.

Furthermore, Susan and Elizabeth feel that Lucy's support for black men is a form of betrayal of the struggle for women's equality.

This incident made the three of them continue to disagree until the end of their lives. From this story, Adam emphasizes that we must know who our partners are, because they do not show consistency like our enemies do. If we are not careful, the partner who is very close to us, can turn into a strong enemy in the future.

Third, procrastination produces creativity


There is an interesting thing about procrastination. Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity. However, procrastination can be a source of creativity. This is what Adam calls strategic procrastination, the activity of strategically delaying work.

In one study, students who delayed submitting their proposals were 28% more creative. Not only that, the speech of Martin Luther King Jr. 1963's famous "I Have a Dream" was written the night before, although he had started collecting speeches months earlier.

Thinking Tips To Get Different Creative Ideas
Thinking Tips To Get Different Creative Ideas

Interestingly, the very impressive line of sentences including this dream angle is an improvisation from one of the audiences who asked them to tell their dreams when delivering a speech. Martin can do all of these things, because he has a lot of material without having to quickly commit to one corner.

The key is that we give pause in working on an idea. When a job is not finished, it is still active in our minds. Leave ideas there while you explore other alternatives. This way, you won't decide on a particular idea too quickly and leave room for alternative ideas to emerge.


Adam describes what Martin did as an example of the Zeigarnik Effect initiated by the Russian psychologist of the same name. The Zeigarnik effect relates to our minds being open to new ideas after completing a task or even giving up on the task.

World Originals uses a procrastination strategy to produce great work. An example goes like this: not many know that Leonardo Da Vinci was an extraordinary procrastinator. He began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503 but later focused on other work. Leonardo did not complete the Mona Lisa until 16 years later.

Some people regard this as luck. But on the other hand, historian William Pannapacker argues otherwise, in a period of 16 years, Leonardo experimented with optical illusions and new techniques in painting. This is what makes Mona Lisa's work born with different ideas and perspectives.

Thinking Tips To Get Different Creative Ideas
Thinking Tips To Get Different Creative Ideas

That's my writing about Thinking Tips To Get Different Creative Ideas, People who succeed in realizing dreams or big ideas, are not only people who have bright ideas, but are able to get support from others to realize their ideas.

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