Thinking is the basic activity of the human brain. It generally refers to any mental or intellectual activity involving an individual’s subjective consciousness. We know the meaning, we know the process. But how do we individually use it, do we make difference among separate types of thinking, and do we know how to take advantage of them?
We often use creative, critical, and visual thinking as well as brainstorming, interchangeably. In order to develop our thinking techniques properly and use these different types of thinking most effectively, we need to know how to differentiate and combine them when needed.
So let’s look at what theory says:
1. Creative thinking is the merging of ideas that have not been merged before.
2. Brainstorming is one form of creative thinking: it works by merging someone else’s ideas with your own to create a new one. You are using the ideas of others as a stimulus for your own.
3. Critical thinking is the process we use to reflect on assessing and judge the assumption underlying our own and others’ ideas and efforts.
On the other hand, visual thinking is the common phenomenon of thinking through visual processing using the part of the brain that is emotional and creative to organize information in an intuitive and simultaneous way.
When compared all of these definitions we can conclude that in order to maximize your thinking potential, the best formula is to combine critical, creative, and visual thinking.
How is this possible?
When you think creatively, you are generating a list of new ideas. The creative thought is unpredictable, revolutionary, original. It often happens spontaneously. But in order to grow and become achievable, critical thinking is needed. Critical thinking is exercised to achieve applied creativity. This is logical, focused, conservative, practical, and reasonable. We can first generate a pool of ideas using creative thinking, analyze their potential and drawbacks with critical thinking and visualize the idea as a whole.
If you are working on product development and problem-solving, one solution is to include more members of the team that have different opinions and perspectives on the problem. Maybe one of them will be more creative, and another will have a real picture of the current situation. Combined with a visual tool like iMindQ, the effectiveness will be increased in no time.
