Briefly About CreativityModel Method Usage

By Thomas Eklund

CreativityModel Method can benefit you the most, if you try to use it in your own life.

In many situations in your life you either need to achieve something or are expressing yourself. Observe your circumstances and actions and see for yourself, whether or not this is true.

Creativity usage is embedded in your everyday life. For the best results, you can use goal oriented creativity and self-expressive choice supported creativity separately and in combinations. Both are sets of thinking skills that you can learn and train, so that you actually manage your creative thinking skills within your abilities, expertise and experience levels.

That's what CreativityModel Method creativity management method usage is about.

I have found CreativityModel Method principles also to be helpful for finding continuity and meaning in different circumstances, including disruptive conditions, and generating the personal and professional best outcomes individually and in team environment.

Below are the main steps that are involved in this Method's usage.

Just the Basics

Everything that you do that requires creative development efforts involves a theme, goals, structure and content components.

Everything.

Again, observe your circumstances and actions and see for yourself, whether or not this is true.

If you need more information on these four elements, they are further defined in CreativityModel Method's Glossary.

In CreativityModel Method context every undertaking that requires creative development efforts is called a project.

Project specific rules and requirements apply to most projects.

You can take apart these elements - the theme, goals, structure and content components - reassemble them in different ways, using characteristics, actions that can be taken and project specific rules. You can also work with the project specific rules and requirements in a somewhat similar manner.

All the projects that require creative development efforts have project development stages that are the same. The projects may seem vastly different, but these project development stages and their principles are the same.

In each case, you want to put together your project's structure by either using goal oriented creativity principles, or choice supported creativity principles. You can mix these two creativity usage approaches in many ways, but for the development of a project's structure you should use one of the two creativity management approaches.

So, here's a question that is relevant to many situations. How to proceed: is there something that you need to achieve, or should you proceed self-expressively?

If in doubt, use goal oriented creativity because it tends to be helpful most often.

In situations where you think that you are both expressing yourself and need to achieve something, well, one of the two creativity management approaches should take priority over the other.

As is stated above, whenever you do something that requires creative development efforts, certain elements are involved - goals, theme, structure and content components. This is the material from which you build the outcome.

Goal oriented creative approach: Identify, what do you need to achieve. Establish the goals, the end point that you need to achieve, the structural parts that will take you there, and thereafter choose your first step.

• What needs to be done right before achieving the goals? What's the structural part before that? Don't start with "what's the first step?" That's a convenience trap. That's how the problems start. You need to figure out the structural parts of the path to where you want to go, starting with the goals and proceeding from there toward the starting point. Thereafter proceed with the first step.

Choice supported creative approach: What is this about, that is, what's the theme and how do you describe it? What do you want to say about this theme? Generate your own opinions on the theme.

• Continue by representing what's in your mind through what you do. Whenever you are uncertain about how to proceed, if you can proceed by trial and error, pool together alternative elements. As starting points, element fragments may do as well. Break apart and connect elements in different ways through their characteristics and actions that can be taken, and test the results.
• You can learn to generate a structure for whatever you do based on the theme, and content based on the theme and structure. This way you can achieve good quality outcomes with less work. You can also learn to combine randomly generated content into coherent outcomes.

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What Can Cause You the Most Problems

It can be difficult to decide, whether to use choice supported creativity or goal oriented creativity as the primary project development approach.

Problems arise, when we use choice supported creativity in situations that require goal oriented creativity usage, and vice versa.

When you use choice supported creativity in situations that require goal oriented creativity usage, you proceed self-expressively and may also be motivated by your own situation-specific needs and wants. You may go in different directions and may not be doing, step-by-step, what is actually needed for achievement of goals or objectives. You may not even recognize, what it is that you actually want to achieve in that situation or in your circumstances.

When you use goal oriented creativity in situations that require choice supported creativity usage, it is likely that you will generate low value, unimaginative, dull, cookie cutter results.

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Beyond The Basics

There is more to CreativityModel Method usage than the basics. For example, in most instances you should use choice supported and goal oriented creativity management approaches in combinations, but so that one of the two is the primary approach for the development of the structure of what you do. This is important. Combining the two creativity management approaches fluently requires skills, too.

In addition to being able to identify with little effort in each situation which creativity management approach to choose as the primary one, there are project development stages that apply and help you to decide when your project's parts and the entire project is complete, so that you can be happy with it.

Of course, your project element handling skills can also make big differences in the outcome.

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Here's What You Can Do

I believe that many people can improve their creative thinking skills and by doing so improve the quality of their life as well.

I personally have had trouble in the areas that CreativityModel Method addresses most of my life, both when I handle everyday tasks and when I work on something that requires longer-term efforts. This is probably one of the reasons why I started being interested in how creative thinking skills management works.

I know that I'm not alone and that people from different walks of life have trouble with managing their creative thinking skills.

Even people in the highest levels of government, as well as some corporate leaders and managers have trouble in their professional lives in the areas that CreativityModel Method addresses. The actions of people in such positions affect their own lives and other people's lives as well.

Life management and career development are also related to the areas that CreativityModel Method addresses. In professional fields, innovation management and new product and service development are closely related to the areas that CreativityModel Method addresses. Other business management areas are also related to the goal oriented and choice supported creative thinking skills usage.

From my personal experience I know that training can make differences in how well creative thinking skills are used. There are many different CreativityModel Method usage aspects that can be trained.

You can train your own creative thinking skills and you can use a trainer's assistance. At this point, there aren't any convenient to use CreativityModel Method usage training materials available yet. However, if you are interested in these topics, contact me and we can discuss both your areas of interest and what we can do about addressing them.