Hipotalks : Creative Thinking — Itır Dumlu

Hipo
Hipo
Published in
5 min readSep 1, 2016

--

Every Thursday, people at Hipo talk about their interests and experiences during HipoTalk sessions. Last week, Itır Dumlu shared her own experience on Creative Thinking. Let’s see what she says about creative thinking techniques.

  1. How did you find out about Creative Thinking?

During my second year at Istanbul Bilgi University, one of my instructors introduced me the concept of creative thinking in her class. That opened a new door for my curiosity. I was fascinated by the concept, so I started doing more research on it.

2) What are the basics of Creative Thinking?

It is hard to say that there are certain “basics” of it. The path to creative thinking is a personal journey but I’d say surrendering, destroying judgement, creating curiosity, paying attention and asking dumb questions are the some steps many people take to get there. Whenever we stop judging ourselves and others, we can get to that “point” where we completely feel free. A free mind leads you to having more creativity overall, and that is something you can learn and practice.

3) Has this affected your life, personal or professional? What are the visible effects of creative thinking?

Well it definitely affected my both personal and professional life. First of all I’ve become a more patient person. I try to find a way to free my mind before working on a new project and when I do, that improves the quality of the work I put out. Many times, I am able to stop judging myself, which helps me be much more productive. I still can’t say that I am at the stage I want to be, but I am aware of my own progress, and it is a lot of fun to see myself improve.

4) Are there any techniques that you may want to suggest?

I think meditation is the best way to get rid of all unnecessary judgement and it definitely helped me be more productive. I’d recommend mindfulness meditation, -“Vipassana” meditation-. This type of meditation leads you to calm your mind and helps you to avoid over-thinking. Back in college, our instructer would ask us to keep ideabooks, where we wrote down every single judgment that we caught ourselves making. That actually helps you to see how judgement takes all of your daily energy and time. Instead of making judgments, you can start creating something from scratch. For instance, if you were not good enough during your pitch at work, you may start judging yourself or others like you didn’t work enough or listeners didn’t try to understand your point. Instead of putting all of your energy on a negative pattern you may want to take a minute, take a deep breath and try to see exactly what you can do to make a better one for the next time. You need to free your mind to get more creative.

4) How often do you practice meditation?

Well, I try to practice every day. If I can’t have a full session, I try to have a 2–3 minute water meditation in the shower. It is very simple and takes no time. The basic idea is to focus on your senses, feel the water drops, and concentrate on yourself — and nothing else — for a few minutes. That helps me to clean my mind from the usual daily stress. I used to go to meditation sessions every week in Toronto. Meditating with a group of people also enabled me to get in discipline. When I’m by myself, I try to make a session every other day.

5) Why would you recommend others to start this process?

It definitely improves the quality of your daily life. Many times, people tend to judge others, themselves and lose time for no reason. I was always judgemental, especially against myself, but I didn’t know that before I read my own idea book — that little notebook that I noted down my own judgements — I saw the fact that I was wasting all my energy on negative thoughts and putting too much pressure on myself. That changed the whole perspective in life. Now I can say I am more productive and happy when I am working.

6) Are there any other ways to achieve this other than meditation?

Sure, there are a few techniques that you can use, especially in your professional life. Brainstorming is the most well known and practiced one in a professional setting, but latest research seems to suggest that group brainstorming can actually decrease the amount of creative thought in a room compared to solo thinking. Looking at it individualistically, you can develop rituals to inspire yourself. For instance, your ritual can be listening to music, reading every morning or taking several deep breaths, all of which can help you find a different perspective when you look at a problem again. Creating something small every day can be also helpful. When it comes to completing a whole assignment, it might be harder to think out of the box so every little step makes it easier. I’ll also recommend a book to discover creative techniques called “Thinkertoys”. It can really help you find your own Creative Thinking process.

--

--

We help disruptive startups and small businesses create meaningful products and services. http://hipolabs.com