Wednesday, November 3, 2010

A FEW SIMPLE WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR THINKING

When you are looking for new ideas or you need to solve a problem, do you think on paper?  This post will show you a few easy to use tools, which can help you become more creative and a successful problem solver.
1. The fist tool, we can use for thinking on paper, is a simple spider diagram. We can use this as a way to generate ideas. Start off with a key word or short phase in the middle of the page. This key word or short phase is something that's linked to a project we are working on. Once the key word is written down, we can spider off it, with new ideas. This also shows us instantly, how our though process is working. Because these ideas are all on paper in front of us, we don't need to remember them and can use our mind 100% to create.  The spider tool is like the mind mapping technique. Together with making list, they help breakdown our thought patterns and make it easier for us to accoplish one big task at a time. This is great when you are brainstorming and organizing your thoughts. 
2. Ask the question – get the answer is the approach. We can start off by writing the problem down at the top of the page, as if it were a question.Once we turn the problem statement into a question statement, next step is that we can simply write down as many possible answers as we can.
How, what, when, where, who.. whatever the appropriate beginning to the sentence as it will drive you to an answer simply by giving the direction.  
3. Another favourite technique to generate inspiration is to let our subconscious do the work. State the problem to yourself either on paper or in conversation, to focus your mind, discuss it briefly, then deliberately stop. After that work on something else. Usually by the time you need to get back to it, you have several options bubbling away in your mind.
4. We can also use post-it notes with large pieces of paper: one idea or question per post-it; then if another idea flows from one of them, we can write a subsequent post-it which we put near the first one. In this way we can get our thoughts fleshed out.


Pen and paper is great if your topics don’t overflow a page. A portable white board allows you to view the diagram from a distance – this can be a powerful perspective. Software is great if you have a large diagram or want to use a non-handwritten diagram in a document.
These are just a few simple techniques that anyone can use easily to improve thinking and solve problem.

No comments:

Post a Comment