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The Creativity Post | How Geniuses Think
Intelligence is not genius
Genius is not about having an extraordinarily high IQ, or even about being smart. It is not about finishing Mensa exercises in record time or mastering fourteen languages at the age of seven.
Geniuses think productively, not reproductively. They ask "How many different ways can I look at it?" not "What have I been taught by someone else on how to solve this?"
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Key Ideas
Intelligence is not genius
Genius is not about having an extraordinarily high IQ, or even about being smart. It is not about finishing Mensa exercises in record time or mastering fourteen languages at the age of seven.
Geniuses think productively, not reproductively. They ask "How many different ways can I look at it?" not "What have I been taught by someone else on how to solve this?"
Geniuses and problem solving
Leonardo da Vinci believed you begin by learning how to restructure the problem by looking at it from many different angles.
In order to creatively solve a problem, the thinker should not use the usual approach that is based on past experience. Geniuses use several different perspectives to solve an existing problem and thereby also identify new ones.
Making your thoughts visible
Galileo revolutionized science by making his idea visible with diagrams, maps, and drawings. Einstein believed that words and numbers as they are spoken did not play a significant role in his thinking process.
Geniuses seem to develop a skill to display information in visual and spatial forms, rather than only mathematical or verbal lines.
Geniuses produce
One characteristic that stands out in geniuses is immense productivity. Thomas Edison held 1,903 patents. Bach wrote a cantata every week, regardless of sickness. Mozart produced over 600 pieces of music. Einstein published 249 papers.
Out of the vast quantity of work came quality.
Unique combinations
Geniuses form more novel combinations than talented people. They continually combine and recombine ideas, images, and thoughts into different combinations.
Connect the unconnected
Geniuses force relationships that enables them to see things to which others are blind.
Leonardo da Vinci forced the relationship between the sound of a bell and a stone hitting water, to make the connection that sound travels in waves.
Thinking in opposites
Geniuses can tolerate contradictory ideas, between opposites or two incompatible subjects. Mixing opposites creates the conditions to discover a new relationship or a new point of view.
Thinking metaphorically
Aristotle believed that the person who could see resemblances between two separate areas of existence and link them was a genius.
If unlike things are really alike in some ways, perhaps, they are so in others. Underwater construction was made possible by noticing how shipworms tunnel into timber by first constructing tubes.
Einstein used the analogies of everyday occurrences to explain abstract principles.
Creative accidents
Whenever we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something else.
Instead of asking why we failed to do what we intended, the creative accident asks 'what have we done?' This produces a creative insight of the highest order.
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Creativity is complex
It means producing something novel or original, evaluating, solving problems, whether on paper, on stage, in a laboratory or even in the shower.
Knowing how to think
Geniuses know “how” to think, instead of “what” to think.
People who are more creative can simultaneously engage brain networks that don’t typically work together.
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Creative genius and madness
There are many so-called mad geniuses in history. Suicide victims include Vincent Van Gogh or Ernest Hemingway. Creative geniuses who have succumbed to alcoholism or other addictions are legio...
Cognitive disinhibition
The creative genius tends to pay attention to things that normally should be ignored or filtered out.
People with schizophrenia are bombarded with hallucinations and delusions that should also be filtered out. However, creative genius differs from them in that the genius can separate bizarre fantasies from realistic possibilities.
Normal and abnormal
Many geniuses walk the line between the normal and the abnormal. The many impulses and ideas they perceive are a fountain of creativity. However, rational thought does impose a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the world.
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The 5 Step Creative Process
- Gather new material directly related to your task as well as learning general material by becoming fascinated with a wide range of concepts.
- Thoroughly work over the materials in your mind. Examine what you have learned by looking at the facts from different angles and experimenting with fitting various ideas together.
- Step away from the problem. Next, you put the problem completely out of your mind and go do something else that excites you and energizes you.
- Let your idea return to you. After you have stopped thinking about it, your idea will come back to you with a flash of insight and renewed energy.
- Shape and develop your idea based on feedback. For any idea to succeed, you must release it out into the world, submit it to criticism, and adapt it as needed.
Creativity is learned
Some people are primed to be more creative than others.
However, nearly every person is born with some level of creative skill and the majority of our creative thinking abilities are trainable.
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