How to Increase Your Creative Output
Not every problem can be solved logically.
Nor can every problem be solved creatively.
Thus, the person who has lateralized skills can adapt those skills to the various problems that present themselves in the workplace.
Further evidence of the need for lateralization is the fact that some problems that can be solved with more than one approach.
To illustrate: Assume there are eight government employees in a conference room.
Each one shakes hands just once with each of the other employees.
What is the total number of handshakes? The answer could be obtained mathematically, visually, or physically.
* But the problem-solver who has only a hammer on his or her metaphoric tool belt will either view all problems as nails or will fail to solve the non-nail types.
Develop both the scientific approach, popularized by Dr.
W.
Edwards Deming as the Plan-Do-Study-Act technique; and the creative approach, referenced by Mark Van Doren in his suggestion to "Bring ideas in and entertain them royally.
One of them may be the king.
" You need both convergent (imaginative) and divergent (linear) skills in dealing with emerging situations--"In the beginning, problems are easy to cure but hard to diagnose;" Machiavelli observed, "with the passage of time, they become easy to diagnose but hard to cure.
"--as well as with full-blown problems.
TO DEVELOP CREATIVE SKILLS 1.
Learn a new skill-set.
For example, take water-color lessons.
(Peter Drucker once told a wannabe executive who asked what he should do to enhance his managerial skills, "Learn to play the violin.
") 2.
Read biographies of different artists, 3.
Associate with creative people.
TO DEVELOP LOGICAL SKILLS 1.
Pay attention to time estimates.
For example, predict how long it will take to do a particular thing.
Then note how close you came to your estimate.
2.
Log the results of decisions you make based on intuition and those you make based on data.
3.
Learn more about finance.
The choice is yours but as you climb the success-ladder, lateralization will hasten your rise to the top.
*The answer is 28.
Nor can every problem be solved creatively.
Thus, the person who has lateralized skills can adapt those skills to the various problems that present themselves in the workplace.
Further evidence of the need for lateralization is the fact that some problems that can be solved with more than one approach.
To illustrate: Assume there are eight government employees in a conference room.
Each one shakes hands just once with each of the other employees.
What is the total number of handshakes? The answer could be obtained mathematically, visually, or physically.
* But the problem-solver who has only a hammer on his or her metaphoric tool belt will either view all problems as nails or will fail to solve the non-nail types.
Develop both the scientific approach, popularized by Dr.
W.
Edwards Deming as the Plan-Do-Study-Act technique; and the creative approach, referenced by Mark Van Doren in his suggestion to "Bring ideas in and entertain them royally.
One of them may be the king.
" You need both convergent (imaginative) and divergent (linear) skills in dealing with emerging situations--"In the beginning, problems are easy to cure but hard to diagnose;" Machiavelli observed, "with the passage of time, they become easy to diagnose but hard to cure.
"--as well as with full-blown problems.
TO DEVELOP CREATIVE SKILLS 1.
Learn a new skill-set.
For example, take water-color lessons.
(Peter Drucker once told a wannabe executive who asked what he should do to enhance his managerial skills, "Learn to play the violin.
") 2.
Read biographies of different artists, 3.
Associate with creative people.
TO DEVELOP LOGICAL SKILLS 1.
Pay attention to time estimates.
For example, predict how long it will take to do a particular thing.
Then note how close you came to your estimate.
2.
Log the results of decisions you make based on intuition and those you make based on data.
3.
Learn more about finance.
The choice is yours but as you climb the success-ladder, lateralization will hasten your rise to the top.
*The answer is 28.
