Thinking

 Looking at old problems in new ways

If you carry on with the old familiar method, you may become more and more tangled in a hapless situation and be unable to solve the problem. This is why it is up to us to find new and creative paths. The flash of inspiration comes to an individual while he or she is having shower, having breakfast, walking, in the evening’s traffic jam, in the bus or during a concert.
 

The word ‘Eureka’ – a Greek work meaning ‘I have found it’ – was made famous by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes (c. 287-212Bc). He was said to have uttered it when he made the discovery the Archimedes principle: discovers have used ‘Eureka’ to signal those life-changing, flashes of inspiration.

Physicist Isaac Newton (1642-1727) formulated the famous law of gravity after seeing an apple fall from a tree. The Nobel prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) found that he came up with his best ideas while shaving, and the French mathematician Jules Henri Poincar’e (1854-1912) had a flash of inspiration for the solution of a mathematical problem while getting on a bus.

The German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) described the feeling as a ‘wonderful clarity’ which seized him when he discovered the laws of planetary motion.
 

Thoughts are free – but also fleeting

Incidentally, it is a good idea to put down your thoughts in writing, for 90 percent of all good ideas got lost for ever if they are not immediately jotted down.Sometimes, ideas or inspirations are only fragments of a whole, which first have to be polished and supplemented with additional pieces.

The long and winding road

Intuitions can make themselves known in two different ways. One of these is when a solution spears out of nowhere: suddenly, a doctor can detect the actual cause of a disease, or parents can recognise what is troubling their child. But an inspiration can also come gradually; its outline slowly becoming clearer – just like a plant, an idea slowly takes on form and shape. ‘A piece just seems to materialise, like a vision it becomes more and more clear.
 

Against routine

One of the most important prerequisites for creative work is to suspend automatic behaviour and monotonous functions. The routine that says: ‘this is the way we have always done it and it works’ is the death of inspiration.

How can we break through thought barriers?

Association technique – which is a stringing together of ideas all relating to the original object – lies an important key to the secret of the ‘Eureka’ effect.

Creative brainstorming

One of the most effective methods of creative thinking is brainstorming. This technique was developed in 1984 bye Alex Osborne, who defined four rules:

1. Everything can be said since nothing will be evaluated.

2. The more ideas expresses, the better, as in the old Chinese proverb: ‘to catch many fish you should cast many lines’.

3. No idea is too exotic, too bizarre or too trivial.

4. Any combinations, deviations and improvements on the ideas presented are desirable.
    

Thinking in all directions

 New solutions are generally found whenever your thinking can tackle new ideas without any obstacles. Not only concentration, but concentrated openness – using your senses and brain at the same time – will yield the best results. Psychologists use the term ‘divergent thinking’ to describe this search for associations.
 

Fun with brain-teasers

It may not seem to make sense at first, but if you cannot solve a certain problem, sleep on it, and interrupt your usual train of thought. Sleep is when your body rests, and rest gives your creative inspiration time to take shape in your bead. Often, you will wake up after a restless night and the solution that you had painstakingly searched for the previous day will be there, waiting.