One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries, like A A Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh.
The skill of creative thinking can be very useful in professional life. There are some professions where it’s obvious that creativity is absolutely essential. For instance, if you are a writer, artist, dancer, or performer of any kind it’s likely that you will be required to exercise creative thinking regularly in order to be competent at your work. Indeed, you might have the skill naturally and that is probably why you’re in that profession. But creative thinking need not be restricted to the arty ones alone! In fact, it’s a skill that is worth developing in any profession you are in if you want to progress fast and achieve your goals.
Anyone who’s reasonably Internet-savvy these days is sure to have a Facebook account. If you’ve watched the movie, The Social Network, which is largely based on how Mark Zuckerberg came up with the concept of Facebook and made it popular, you’d know that creative thinking isn’t about following the rules doggedly. Rather, it’s about sticking to an idea doggedly and immersing yourself in it so completely that the idea becomes you. As Zuckerberg said, ‘A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.’
It is people who have the ability to understand this who start new civilisations in barren lands. The book Blue Ocean Strategy by W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne deals with creative thinkers in the field of business management who’ve managed to create markets out of non-customers. These are people who created spaces where there is no competition because it hadn’t occurred to anyone else to enter that space. If you are interested in becoming an entrepreneur, you must ask yourself whether you want to be one among the many or whether you want to stand out — your product in itself may not be all that unique, but an innovation or a new way of marketing it can make all the difference. Those involved in the Sciences too need to develop this skill if they are to go beyond what is already known. The mind of a creative thinker is always active and receptive to ideas — you may have heard of Kekule who hit upon the structure of Benzene in his dream!
Even if you only hold a routine office job, you can employ creative thinking to deal with problems on the work front. Remember that working smart is more valuable than working hard. Instead of simply finishing the tasks set out for you at work, be ready to be inspired. If work begins to seem like just work, take a break and recharge your batteries. Come back to it with eagerness and not a tired attitude. You’ll see that your mind begins to enjoy working. Unless you infuse joy into what you do, you’ll never be able to excel at it. So the next time you suffer from Monday morning blues, take the extra five minutes to get out of bed, but when you do, begin the day with a smile!