Increasing your creative quotient with mindmapping

Creativity is indispensable aspect of our thinking mind. This is what makes the world go. Just think of all the creativity that led to numerous inventions. From a simple pair of scissors to space shuttle have been made possible only because of the wonderful and inherent skill - creativity. Creativity is bringing a new dimension to a concept, principle or perception.

Creativity is seen as a ‘right’ brained activity. Creative people have distinct common traits. They are risk takers, rebellious, absent-minded, humorous, extremely focused, preoccupied, determined, and so on.

Although creativity is an inherent trait, we scarcely exploit this innate ability in us. We can improve our creative skills by using ‘programmed thinking’ methods such as Attribute Listing, Morphological Analysis and Reframing Matrix, to find new solutions. These methods call for unique mixing of properties, components and elements and finding practical solutions for such combinations.

The other well-known method is using ‘lateral thinking’ methods as in Brainstorming, Random Input and Provocation. It is deliberately moving away from the usual thinking patterns to look for novel ways to perceiving things. Random Input is using concrete nouns from unrelated fields for connecting one thinking pattern to another. It can help to give you that push when you get stuck.

Provocation consciously uses illogical, crazy and wild ideas for generating ideas. Suspending judgment and criticism to give vent to ideas and concepts is the key element of lateral thinking. Working on all these different methods can help in opening up and triggering your latent creative skills.

But a simple and an effective technique that greatly facilitates the creative process is Mind mapping. Mind mapping is a highly useful tool for exploring all the different creative methods - Attribute Listing or Morphological Analysis or Re framing Matrix, etc. It uses non-linear text, which serves as an elementary tool for creativity, providing for association, brainstorming, listing and much more, all in one process.

The essence of Mind mapping is allowing a free flow of thoughts and associations, and this automatically stimulates creativity by bringing our subconscious thoughts to the fore. It delves into our dormant thoughts and brings them to the surface through use of associations and related links. It uses colors, pictures, dimensions, symbols, etc., which is the language of the unconscious mind.

Mindmapping is an easy way to enhance your creative abilities. Daily use of mindmapping under a variety of situations is sufficient to stimulate your creative thinking capabilities.