To be creative and innovative is to be open to the idea your own ideas limited by your own experiences. You need to light several lightbulbs filled with possibilities to create something new.
A simple way of looking at it is: if you do not explore lots of possibilities and light several lightbulbs, ideas cannot shine. A closed or resticted mindset will never allow lightbulbs to glow. Our own beliefs hinder or restrict creative thinking.
Often we are, though it may be difficult to admit, restricted by our assumptions and ideas about how things should be done. We have a fixed mindset about what certain groups of people, animals or non-living things should, ought to or can do. These fixed ideas limits the way we search for new insights.
Being open to possibilities means to be open to gathering more points from which to develop ideas. Think of the well know tune – Happy Birthday and try to transform it while still ensuring that everyone recognises the tune. . .
Perhaps the experience of a jazz muscians will open up your mind to other music styles that you can use to transform the tune. Like Beethoven, Mozart or hip hop. . . a cappella. . .
How can you open your mind to new things? Science fiction is a great tool to help reframe our
Provoking our minds is one way.
Reading books is one way where we can enter different worlds and experiences. Science fiction is a great tool to help reframe our perespectives on the world. Like traveling to new places, it creates a way for us to question our assumptions. Assumptions are useful because they give us a short cut to understand the world. They help us to be more efficient. But they can stand in the way when we want to change things and invent things.
Science fiction can offer more that escapism on a sunny day on the beach. By presenting alternative realities we are confronted with questions – what do we think, how we think, why we think.
The novel 1984 by George Orwell, was not really about 1984 but 1948, the year that the book was written. Today, this classic novel has become very popular and this shows that a great book provides insights into human nature.
Why not select a couple a sceince fiction books and challenge your thinking?
New York is always on my mind on hot summer’s day after having spent a sumemr there. The book New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson is on my reading list this summer. Rising sea levels flood Manhattan and the streets are turned into canals. As climate change accelerates, rethinking infrastructrues becomes more improtant. Link to a review in The Guardian.
Happy Summer Think Diving!
Or Happy Winter Think Diving if you live in the Southern Hemisphere!
P.S. Robots are often used in modern sceince fiction. Here is a robot that grows like a plant! What assumptions are challenged?