Imagination Exercise: Think Like a Child
Want to become more creative? Try thinking like a young child. An experiment at North Dakota State University (and recounted on the Ideas to Go website http://bit.ly/1sXmBxJ ) took two groups of adult graduate students and asked a simple question: “If school was canceled for the day, what would you do? Where would you go? Who would you visit?”
But one group was given one additional piece of guidance: “Pretend you’re 7 years old.” Both groups had 10 minutes to write down their answers, and then were given a series of creativity tests. The group that had been instructed to think like 7-year-olds exhibited higher degrees of creative thinking than the “adults.”
So whenever you’re looking for innovative solutions, try lowering your mental age a bit. The results might be exciting.
