How To Add Novelty To Your Thinking

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Novelty brings happiness. A life full of novelty can introduce us to many surprises and new joys coming from different angles each moment. When you taste novelty, you never have dull moments. Life turns out to be pure joy to enjoy.

Thinking is not easy but it should not be that way all the time. Thinking is a learnable skill.

All of us can be better thinkers.

I studied thinking about thinking and learning about learning at the doctoral level. I earn my life by thinking and taste its joy with novelty that I create each day with different thinking modes.

Creative and innovative thinking is a critical success factor for gaining novelty. In this story, I want to introduce essential thinking modes to create novelty in our lives. Novelty is an important concept for happiness, joy, motivation, and productivity.

I don't want to bore you with theories of thinking but a little theory can be useful to learn.

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In this story, without going into details, I touch on five major thinking modes to taste novelty.

The common thinking modes are

• vertical,
• horizontal,
• binary,
• visual, and
• design thinking.

Understanding the use of these thinking modes can help us create novelty in our life.

To create novelty in our lives, we need to acquire multiple modes of thinking. In our day to day activities, most of us commonly think vertically and usually in binary mode just like black and white.

Creative people use a combination of horizontal, vertical, visual, binary, and design thinking at different ratios. While horizontal type covers breadth, the vertical approach goes into depth.

Vertical type of thinking is also known as linear thinking. Linear thinking goes deep down, layer by layer, in a sequential, and logical manner for problem-solving. We can apply linear thinking to come up with creative ideas and innovative options.

As opposed to vertical thinking, horizontal thinking covers more breadth rather than depth and aims to generate unpredictable ideas by breaking out the rigid thought patterns.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

By using horizontal thinking in transformative activities for business, we challenge the assumptions posed in traditional situations. In horizontal thinking mode, we look for alternatives and go beyond the ordinary. Horizontal thinking can lead to radically creative solutions.

We can usually apply horizontal thinking to modernizing and transformative problems to create innovative ideas. There are various techniques that we can leverage horizontal thinking in our day to day activities at work.

Horizontal thinking was popularized by Bono in a popular book titled 6 Thinking Hats in the late 60s. The framework was called “lateral thinking”. The framework is still used in innovation design workshops as a tool at work. To give you an idea on the representation of the hats in the framework, I provide you with a table summarizing the meanings.

Image Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats

There are many techniques that we can use for horizontal thinking. For example, some commonly used techniques for horizontal thinking are

• randomization,
• distortions,
• reversals,
• exaggerations,
• metaphors,
• analogies,
• dreaming,
• theme mining,
• questioning the norms, and
• creating contradictions.

Using these techniques effectively and collaboratively can open new opportunities for our creativity leading to innovative design solutions.

Where does the binary thinking mode fit?

Binary thinking is critical for quick decision making.

For example, business people may need to use binary thinking to assess and validate some immediate situations at work. Binary thinking consists of simple terms such as yes or no, black and white, good or bad. Binary thinking can be useful in a particular innovation context; however, it poses limitations for qualitative assessment requirements.

Another essential thinking mode is visual thinking.

Visual thinking is critical for creating innovative ideas and design solutions.

There are different methods and techniques for visual thinking.

One of the practical and commonly used visual techniques is mind mapping. Using mind maps, we can articulate our thoughts with representative maps on a paper, on a whiteboard, and even digital devices such as laptops, notebooks, and smartphones.

In business, visual thinking plays an important role.

For example, in innovation design workshops, we use usually visual representations, such as diagrams, heat maps, simplified pictures on a whiteboard or storyboard especially to articulate the context and deep dive the attributes of abstract ideas.

We can visualize abstract ideas better by looking at the illustrations. The proverbial a single picture can tell a thousand words can truly reflect this desirable situation for design ideas.

There are various powerful thinking frameworks, techniques, and tools that we can use for creating innovative ideas and product design solutions at work. One of the best practices to generate innovative and inventive ideas is Design Thinking.

I plan to post an article about "Design Thinking" as it relates to all professions and we can even use this type of thinking in our day to day lives. It turned out to be a professional practice and even a discipline. In short, Design Thinking to put ourselves in the shoes of our customers or people we interact. Empathy plays an important role in design thinking.

Design thinking encourages us to think outside of the box and even beyond the box. I conducted extensive research on design thinking and have been performing as a design thinking professional for many years. I am also a thought leader on design thinking globally. I'd love to share my insights with my readers.

Photo by Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash

Takeaways

To create novelty in your life you can use multiple thinking modes in an integrated way.

The most common thinking modes are vertical, horizontal, binary, visual, and design thinking.

Mixing these modes of thinking in different ratios can help us see different aspects of objects, relationships, and interactions.

Using popular six hats formula popularized by Edward De Bono, we can look at the big picture, facts, information, feelings, emotions, judgment, positive, negative, and neutral aspects.

Apply design thinking principles to think outside and beyond the box.

Thank you for reading my perspectives.

I wish you have a joyful life that brings you lots of novelty.

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