Creative Tip of the Day #2: Connect Brainset
Research shows that the mind is always seeking to make sense of the things that it sees. If you read or experience something absurd, odd, or surreal, it’s like sending your brain into “overdrive” while it tries to recognize patterns and it can boost creative thinking. When you access the connect brainset, you enter a defocused state of attention that allows you to see the connections between objects or concepts that are quite disparate in nature.
Look for ways of putting things together that have never been there before.
Dr. Tina Seelig, a creativity expert and professor at Stanford University, gives the example of Chindogu, the Japanese art of putting together everyday gadgets that are not useful, but not altogether useless either (unuseless). In other words, if you invent something which turns out to be so handy that you use it all the time, then you have failed to make a Chindogu.
Yea, it’s impractical, but there’s an interesting idea there. Steve Jobs once said, "Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while."
Tip #2: Take the contents of one trash can and create as much value as possible using only the content inside of the trash can. What will you come up with when you let your brain connect things you have not connected before, and create something new from the already existing?