HOW TO BE CREATIVE -A PASSPORT TO CREATIVITY

HOW TO BE CREATIVE - A PASSPORT TO CREATIVITY The Beauty of New Ideas Book Two of the IdeaTree Seed Series by Peter Harris Copyright © Peter Harris August 2011 Illustrations, cover by Peter Harris © 2011, 2012 Second Edition April 2012 Additions August 2012 Smashwords edition Published by Eutopia Press CONTENTS Introduction A Declaration of creativity The Creative Universal Flux Be happy - Whatever your Home Zone, You are Needed! The First Phase Of Creativity: Openness (Blue Zone) Before you start creating – the inevitable ‘But is this really the time for it?’ objection. The ‘But we can’t afford it’ objection. The Power Of Not Knowing The power of Presuppositions, Assumptions and Rules How to unblinker our perceptions Chemicals, other activities Mental exercises to ‘unjam’ Get out of the verbal bubble! Look for ‘bad’ facts too The Second Phase – The Green Zone Of The Green Zone The flash of inspiration – relax and let it come! Suspending disbelief in Spirit, the Higher Mind 2 The power of ‘Faith’ – the inventor must BELIEVE a Solution IS Out There! The power of Never Reasoning from the Past (How to Refute the Fallacy of Induction once and for all) No Place Like Home Zone, so enjoy your ‘babies’ before they leave The inevitable ‘But How’ objections The Third Phase – The Yellow Zone Of Creativity – Critique, Choosing, Planning Friendly Green-zone critique first! Boldly winnowing the Good to get to the Great Being a Yellow-zone Creator – creativity by simply combining. One problem plus one problem equals two solutions. An example of simple recombination. Google it, Stupid! The Fourth Phase – The Red Phase Of Creativity The (rapid, ‘quick and dirty’) working prototype. Plan B, and C… and D ‘Back of the envelope’ – Kitchen table’ - RAPID prototyping -‘Fail Forward – Fast.’ Red Phase Of Your Reading This Book Suggested headings for applying it. REFERENCES and recommended books on creativity and process 3 Introduction This little book is your Passport to the Green Zone, the Dreaming and Creativity Zone of process. First, a bit of philosophy - don’t worry, it’s all simple to apply, and the one diagram of all process, the IdeaTree diagram, shows it all clearly, so you can apply the four-phase process concept in the same way to any problem or issue. Here goes (skipping detailed arguments for what I am asserting. This is a ‘suck it and see’ book! So: Everything is process; even a rock slowly changes. But only living things evolve, develop, reverse the general law of entropy which says that things left to themselves become more and more chaotic, less and less ordered, like a rock slowly disintegrating or an egg breaking. Is there a simple general pattern to this evolving of living systems towards higher order? Yes! 1 All life requires contact with the outside world - input. That is the Blue zone (or phase - I use the two interchangeably). 2 All life has to go from not having some increased order to having it. That is the second phase of all process. It is essential to the growth of all entities, even those that don’t consciously dream or create. The second, or Green phase is when any Novelty happens, conscious or not; when a beautiful new bit of order emerges from what was more or less chaotic. Like a cake being baked from a bunch of ingredients plus heat and water. 3 Once this novelty has come along, the entity reacts to it, discriminates and evaluates it, on the basis of what it already has or knows, using some form of logic or ordering principle. That phase I call the Yellow Phase, or Truth. 4 Then, it must follow that some new action, or response or output, results from the resulting new ordering, once it is accepted by the entity. This I call the Red Phase, or Freedom. Why Freedom? Because the essence of freedom is that it is the clear and unfettered acting on some conviction, some certainty. Without a purpose you are not really free in your actions, but aimless, affected by random internal or external forces... 4 5 Then, when clear actions based on a clear conviction or plan have happened, the entity will get - new feedback from the environment -Blue Phase. It is now entering a new cycle. So there it is: the four phases of ALL living processes. (The fifth is the resulting total entity as it has become, including all its former stages in its makeup.) The IdeaTree diagram pictures this process flowing through this repeating cycle. Even though we focus on the Green phase or zone in this book, we will find that the four phases are present within the Green – as within all of the four phases. It is just a matter of degree. So once you have a clear picture of the four phases of all process, you can see them repeating in everything. The coloured IdeaTree on the cover shows a bit of this fractal repetition, but it is simplified in that it doesn’t show the fractal levels: four sub-phases inside each of the main phases. Note the purple central part of the IdeaTree: that is the established ‘Status Quo’ - the ‘Fifth Element’ which presides over and feeds us until the new growth starts to bear fruit. Then, if the four new phases of new growth are successful, they become another layer of the Status Quo, and then the process repeats as long as the entity continues to grow and evolve. So, the phases are: 1 the blue zone or phase - input (openness, receptivity to positive things out there in the world; appreciation, love) 2 the green zone or phase -dreaming (guessing, creating novelty) 3 the yellow zone or phase - exposition (logic, planning, reaction, critique) 4 the red zone or phase - action (expression and testing of the newly planned idea; output into the World). 5 ... - tailieumienphi.vn