Most people have considered creativeness an elusive ability that is born, not made. They look upon a new idea as an accident that descends from the ether and just dangles before the eyes of some fortunate person. But as we shall see, there is no mystery or magic involved. The whole problem resolves itself merely into getting the right combinations of old ideas or parts of old ideas int a new, practical or interesting arrangement.

To be sure, information gained from wide experience prepares one to see a particular subject in relation to other things and to have a proper sense of proportion about values and possibilities. With this sense of relationship closer and sounder analysis is achieved. The widely informed person can do a better job of recognizing pertinent and significant factors than one who is not so alert. So, keep exposing yourself to new experiences. Avoid doing things exclusively by force of habit. Habits have many valuable and profound uses, but we can carry this to extreme. The idea seeker must be flexible, not bound by tradition, the same old thing, the habitual reaction. They should go to different restaurants, go to work by a different route, avoid the same vacation every year, read books in different fields, meet people in different groups or classes, expose themselves to new and different situations and experiences.

It may be said, before considering the various sources of material for particular ideas, that there is present in every completed idea the broad general background of your individuality. Often it is this background of individuality that determines whether an idea is to be a success or a failure. The whole person is always present in every sincere effort.

Therefore, try to know yourself and your real interests, for the enthusiasm which interest begets has great carrying power. To develop a fundamental approach to getting ideas, start by listing your own skills, special talents and experiences. You cannot make the most of your assets in the fields you know best, and permit them the opportunity of being useful to you, if you do not know what they are. Decide whether your skills or interests are primarily scientific, artistic, business, social, mechanical, organizational, visual and domestic. Decide whether you prefer details or generalities, whether you think better concretely or abstractly. After you decide in which you are strongest, list the rest in order of their appeal for you.

In addition, there are certain character qualities which are useful, not only in getting ideas, but in any phase of successful living. These include open mindedness which enables you to judge new ideas or things on their merits, avoiding their rejection because they are strange or unfamiliar. Also planning, which helps you to work out in advance the details of what you must do to achieve the results you want. Without planning, you leave things to chance, to hit or miss, trial and error. Likewise carefulness, which permits you to carry out your work with painstaking effort, thoroughness and cautiousness in avoiding mistakes. Overlook this, and you perform your work in a slipshod manner, which surely cannot reach a result in which you can take pride. Very important, of which we shall speak later on, is observation, whereby you can pick out the facts of a situation, the facts that count, enabling you to analyze and form sound judgments. Without this valuable trait, the real facts of a situation are obscured, and inconsequential factors loom more important that the essential mater. In addition, there is resolution to stick to the right decision once you have made it, rather than wavering changing your mind and being unpredictable to yourself, not to speak of being unreliable where others are concerned. A valuable asset is patience which enables you to stay with a task which makes severe demands on your attention particularly if the outcome is in doubt and overdue in coming. Without this, you tend to be restless, irritable, causing the haste that makes waste, and resulting in serious errors. From this brief comment it must be apparent that mental efficiency is important to the creative thinker. Those who realize this and work to develop their mental faculties are the ones who stand the best chance of becoming skillful producers of ideas. Ideas can be produced by a process of combinations and permutations, but they are more fun when the spark of individual fire is added.

You have two ways to go about solving your difficulty, the wrong way or the right way. Here is the too familiar picture of the wrong way:

• You neatly set before you some blank paper
• You sharpen your pencils
• You light a cigarette (if you smoke. Maybe if you don’t!)
• You gape, and then glare at the uncompromising white sheets upon which no idea appears

Your mind wanders, thumping heavily on the flowers that bloom in the spring and other matters that have nothing to with the case. At last, with a sense of horror on par with that of the man in “The Pit and the Pendulum” as your time limit expires, you seize upon some half-baked plan that suits no one. You admit you are beaten. This process is in complete accord with the definition of Kettering, the dynamic wizard of General Motors, “Experts are people paid to tell you it can’t be done.”

photo credit: feathers chapman

The right way is a planned activity devised to avoid mental confusion. It endeavors to keep your mind clear of irrelevant matters and to put your attention on points useful to your purpose. It seeks to place idea production on a practical technique based on fundamental principles. To acquire any art the essentials are to learn principles and then methods. A mental giant differs from the ordinary person in that the giant can put their mind on one thing for hours at a time, and observe all sorts of connections, relationships and associations with other things. The ordinary person becomes mentally tired after a short period of mental activity. They lose the connecting links, associations and relationships which could lead to new ideas, or otherwise solve their problems. The easier, more sure ways of doing this, presently to be described, takes much of the fatigue and defeatism out of it.

Edison said that in working out an invention the most important quality is persistence. Nearly everyone who develops a new idea works it up to a point where it looks impossible and then they get discouraged. That’s the place to interested! Hard work and forever sticking to a thing until it’s done are the main things an inventor needs. And they won’t do a bit of harm to those of us who may be working on lesser ideas.

At the same time, Rev. D. S. Parkes Cadman who favored the old virtue of diligence admitted that it could be overdone or perverted. He cited the example of a bishop who industriously got up every morning at four o’clock. The rest of the day he divided between congratulating himself on his early rising and yawning!

Rather than look for any one particular idea, it is much wiser to train the mind in the method by which all ideas are produced. There are certain principles we shall get to presently. Knowing these, your pencil chewing, pad doodling days are over. You can always help yourself to an idea.

Some persons regard each fact as a separate piece of information. Others realize it is a link in a chain of knowledge, with relationships, similarities and contrasts that can illustrate a general law which applies to all facts. If we had to learn afresh why every apple falls to the ground, we should never get anywhere. The one principle of gravitation covers the situation wherever it occurs. Similarly we have an overall principle that the production of an idea results from the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations. This depends largely on the ability to see relationships. And to see relationships is readily prearranged by means of certain devices which it is the purpose of this book to describe.