What is Creative Thinking?

For many jobs, and in many instances in life, creative thinking is considered to be a critical skill – yet no-one who uses the phrase seems to be able to explain exactly what they mean by “creative thinking.”  The definition is hazy and subjective, and after some consideration I have the distinct sense it will remain so - but what I've stumbled across while studying the topic might lend some clarity.

Mental Modalities

In a very basic sense, the mind works in three modes: mnemonic, perceptive, and creative.   They are generally distinguished by their temporal quality:

• The mnemonic mode contains thoughts of the past.  We call upon memory to remember experiences and stored knowledge that was gained before.
• The perceptive mode contains thoughts of the present.  We analyze the sensory data we are receiving in the moment to perceive what exists in the present time.
• The creative mode projects thoughts into the future.   We leverage our imagination to conceive of what might exist in the future.

In that sense, all people are capable of thinking creatively.  If you can imagine what you will be doing this afternoon or think about what you might be having for lunch, your mind is working creatively.  Only the severely mentally impaired are completely incapable of creative thought.

The Degree of Difference

In common conversation, the phrase “creative thought” does not connote merely the ability to think about a possible future, but a possible future that has a significant degree of difference from the reality of the past or present.

By definition, you are still thinking creatively if your answer to “what will you do tomorrow?” is “the same thing I did yesterday, and the same thing I am doing today.”   But people regard such a statement as boring, mundane, and uncreative.  What will impress them as creative is an answer that suggests something unlike the past and present.   They are not considering whether a thought is creative, only whether it is novel.

And so, the quality that people are attempting to describe when they speak about creative thinking is not merely the projection of the most probable future based upon the recent past, but the imagination of an improbably future that departs significantly from past experience.  Only when you do that will they consider you to be creative.

Too Much of a Good Thing

While people consider it “creative” to envision a future that departs from the experience of a past, the degree of difference tends to fall within a narrow range.   The future you envision must be significantly different, certainly, but it must remain within the realm of plausibility.

A person who expresses wildly implausible ideas that seem to have no basis in known reality and seem impossible to achieve is not considered to be a creative thinker but eccentric and impractical.  Their ideas are removed from the reality of the past and present by too great a degree to be considered possible.

But until a thing is done, who is to say whether it is possible?  The greatest minds throughout history have been regarded with scorn and derision by those who could not accept their ideas as plausible.   Granted, for every great inventor, there are quite a few scatterbrains whose ideas truly are nonsense, but only once a thing has been accomplished is it possible to tell one from the other.

All Things Considered

All things considered, whether a person regards you as a creative thinker has as much to do with themselves as it does with you.   That is, when a person assesses someone else's creativity, it is generally in comparison to his own.

If the ideas you express seem like nothing new or different to them, then they will consider you as uncreative.   If the ideas you express are as different or slightly more different to known reality than their own, then they will consider you to be a creative thinker.  And if the ideas you express are so far removed from known reality as to seem implausible, you’re eccentric.

Perhaps the only objective standard is of the completely uncreative mind: if your idea of the future is no different from the past, then it may be fair to say that you are uncreative. But otherwise, it is a very subjective assessment: how much creativity is enough and how much creativity is too much?   There can be no firm and objective standard.

So, Am I Creative?

Because other people compare you to themselves, they are not a good reference to determine whether you are a creative thinker.   They can be counted on to reliably tell you if you are more or less creative than themselves, but whether that’s good or bad depends on how mundane, creative, or eccentric they happen to be.

And so, as in many instances, you’re better off setting your own standard according to the success or failure you routinely experience.

• If you have difficulty coming up with new ideas, and most often fall back on a proven but laborious solution, then chances are you could benefit from developing creative thinking skills.   
• If you are constantly coming up with ideas that you eventually discover are completely impractical, then perhaps it’s time to dial back a bit on the creativity and rely more on established principles.
• If you find yourself somewhere in the middle, relying on convention sometimes, discovering new and practical methods at other times, and occasionally chasing rainbows, you’re likely in the sweet spot.

And all of this should be considered in the aggregate.  A person cannot and should not be creative at all times – the established methods of doing things often become “the established methods” simply because they work very well and the mental effort to try something different is misspent.  But sometimes, you’ll discover that a new wheel works better and it’s well worth reinvention.  And of course, there is the occasional starry-eyed blunder, for which you’ll simply have to forgive yourself.

Each person must ultimately decide the level of creativity that is most suitable to their own experience – the level that produces sufficient amount of success without too much wasted effort.  A person who has achieved that may confidently comfortably consider himself a creative thinker, and disregard what others have to say, though it seems more likely that it will be an constant area of self-improvement and adjustment.