Many people believe the only time they use their creative thinking skills at work is during a brainstorm. In reality, you use your creativity every day – frequently so, often without realizing it.
Anytime you’re trying to solve a problem, you use your creative thinking skills to come up with a solution (an idea) to get what you want.
When you want or need something – like how to ask the boss for time off, to get a promotion, to ask for more money – you use your creativity to come up with different methods, steps or tasks to bring about the desired outcome.
Perhaps the most common way you use your creativity skills every day is when you write.
- How you select and define the topic
- How you choose your words, in what order and in what tone
- How you decide what call to action may work best
- How you pick the right channel to get it from you to the other party
That’s all creativity … even more when something goes wrong!
Remember a time you were writing something on the computer. Suddenly the computer crashed, taking with it that important document you were typing.
After you stopped cursing/crying/screaming … you began to re-write. Didn’t the document improve the second time? Most likely you didn’t recreate it exactly. You probably used different words – perhaps better words. You probably also phrased sentences differently or chose a new order.
In other words, you brainstormed other options in your head while you wrote, hopefully improving it the second time.
I’m not suggesting you crash your computer to deliberately force yourself to be more creative. But you could try to write something once, set it aside for a while, then re-write it a second or third time. Each version generally gets better.
Here’s another suggestion to use your creative thinking skills every day and improve your business writing.
How many times do you stop to correct and edit while you are writing?
Writing is creative thinking.
Editing is strategic thinking.
It’s not efficient to try to apply both types of thinking at the same time.
Any creative writing teacher will tell you it’s most effective to simply write. That is, to create first. Get all of your thoughts down on paper or via keyboard so that you’ve completed a first draft. Once it’s written, then go back and edit. Now, you’re using both types of thinking, separately, at the proper time.
How else do you apply creativity every day at work? Please add your thoughts and comments below.
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