Seventeen Greatest Ideas for Creative Thinking Skills

Idea 48: Four phases of the creative thinking process

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.

Albert Einstein, German physicist

1 Preparation

The hard work. You have to collect and sort the relevant information, analyze the problem as thoroughly as you can, and explore possible solutions.

2 Incubation

This is the depth mind phase. Mental work – analyzing, synthesizing and valuing – continues on the problem in your subconscious mind. The parts of the problem separate and new combinations occur. These may involve other ingredients stored away ...

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