creativity - Nicole Colter

Sanity Saver # 2 – In and Out Notetaking

Posted on July 27, 2015July 27, 2015 by nicolecolter

Ever heard of "in and out thinking?" Maybe not, but I can guarantee you have experienced it. The American Psychological Association studied what people did during a seminar, speech or workshop. Their findings may be surprising to you. According to the research findings, at any given moment, here's what was on their minds: 18% are really listening to the presenter 25...

Rules for Convergent Thinking

Posted on July 27, 2015April 9, 2016 by nicolecolter

Once you have a bunch of ideas from your divergent thinking, you have to start to make choices using convergent thinking. Convergent thinking ensures change is not reckless. It seeks to find the best answer to the problem by screening (filtering-keeping some, discarding others), sorting (categorizing and grouping), prioritizing (ranking), supporting (examining positive attribu...

Rules for Divergent Thinking

Posted on July 27, 2015April 11, 2016 by nicolecolter

Throughout the Creative Problem Solving process, you alternate between divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking aims at producing a large amount and wide variety of unique, even off-the-wall ideas. This is not the time to think about whether the ideas are correct or even workable. It is the ability to “take an idea and spin out elaborate variants” rathe...

Sanity Saver #1 – An idea system

Posted on July 26, 2015July 27, 2015 by nicolecolter

To think just a few short months ago I drove myself crazy by just taking notes all in one place like I'd always done. Completely ineffective, but a classic case of "you don't know what you don't know." Enter an Idea System. According to the course contract and syllabus for CRS 559 - Principles in Creative Problem Solving with Dr. Roger Firestien an Idea System is so ne...

The importance of dreaming

Posted on July 24, 2015August 23, 2016 by nicolecolter

On 8/28/2013, shortly after arriving home from dropping our oldest daughter at college, I sat at my computer and I started to dream. I was inspired by the 50th anniversary of MLK's "I Have a Dream" Speech which was all over social media. DREAMING VIVIDLY I watched the speech on YouTube. I read about how it almost didn't come to be...which was something I never learn...