A Mind Like Spaghetti

Sometimes creativity doesn’t work because you have a mind like Spaghetti.  Let me explain.

Unless you use creativity techniques or have some method for controlling the way you think, your thoughts are not normally organised.  You tend to think in a number of different ways, which often clash with each other and don’t fit together.  Some of the different ways you think are:

·       Creatively – coming up with new and different ideas.

·       Critically – looking for problems and flaws in ideas.

·       Emotionally – considering how it will feel to do something, regardless of logic.

·       Logically – thinking through the outcomes in order.

·       Realistically – considering how you are going to get things done.

When considering a problem or issue we could use any one of the above from moment to moment.  Have you ever been in a meeting that meanders through the issues, with people having different ideas and arguments for certain courses of action?  One person suggests an idea, another shoots it down.  That’s spaghetti thinking in action.

You can overcome this by assigning a certain part of each meeting to a certain type of thinking.  Anyone who thinks in a different way is then told to stop (and note the point for later to bring up in the section where it’s appropriate).  For example, you begin a session being creative.  The time is for new ideas and new takes on the issue.  If someone says something won’t work or brings up a problem, they are told that is critical thinking and needs to be addressed later.  You then move on to getting more ideas!  It takes real discipline to stay with one type of thinking for the allotted time.  Once the session on creativity is over, you might move on to critical thinking, for example.

This is the basis of Edward de Bono’s six thinking hats where he has set out the main ways of thinking for you to use with his method.  It is very useful and saves a huge amount of time in meetings (based on my practical experience), because everyone is on the same page and accomplishes what is needed, without fighting over their ideas or accusing people of being negative.

So, would you like to be able to think in a considered way, with each type of thinking covered sequentially – like uncooked spaghetti, all uniformly laid out in its package?  Or, would you rather be like a bowl full of cooked spaghetti, randomly ordered and all over the place?  Think about how you think and put it to good use.