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“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

-Jack London, American Novelist 

How does a creative person arrive at a “Eureka!” moment? Are some people just more in tune with the right side, the creative side, of their brain than others? Are we supposed to wait around until inspiration strikes? According to psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director of The Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, the neuroscience behind the creative process is much more complicated and is largely comprised of four basic stages which engage both the creative right side and analytical left side of the brain. The four stages of the creative thinking process are as follows: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. 

Preparation is square one of the creative thinking process, it begins by identifying a problem, a specific need, or an otherwise area where a solution is needed. In this phase, you must focus on collecting as much information and doing as much research as possible. Immerse yourself in the subject. This will serve as the foundation and planning stage by which the additional three phases are built on, so being as thorough here as possible is advisable. Ultimately, this is the phase where you are putting every observation and idea on paper, nothing is too silly to be off limits. 

Once you have a gained a thorough understanding of the subject and sufficient research has been completed, the incubation phase will begin. In this phase, the information you have gathered will spend some time in your subconscious allowing you to form more complex opinions and create new connections with the subject matter. Use this time to look over all the information gathered and begin narrowing it down while also remaining open to forming new thoughts. Allow your subconscious mind to digest and consider everything you’ve learned, this is often the stage by which creative ideas strike, often unexpectedly. The incubation period can be short or it can be long. 

Eureka! Sometime during the incubation period, when all of the information is circulating through your subconscious, you’ll finally have an light bulb moment. This phase is appropriately named the illumination stage, this critical moment generally appears very suddenly and is normally accompanied by a feeling of certainty. You will feel as if a missing puzzle has been put into place. This finally brings us to the the final stage of the creative thinking process, called verification, in which you will test and evaluate your idea to determine if it will work. If it works, you must polish and refine the idea as well as figure out how to appropriately package the idea so the message comes across to your audience. In some cases, an idea may not work out, and the creative process must begin anew. 

The creative process, just like everything else, is something that requires practice  before you can become skilled at it. There is not an exact formula behind being creative, but this process can provide a tried and true framework to generate and refine creative ideas. Use this as a general approach to creative problem solving, and over time, tweak it to better serve your specific needs. 

Works Cited

Sharp, Callum. “The 5 stages of the creative process.” The Writing Cooperative, Nov. 2019, https://writingcooperative.com/the-5-stages-of-the-creative-process-4f8037b7119f

“Creative Thinking Process” The Peak Performance Center, Nov. 2019, http://thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/thinking/types-of-thinking-2/creative-thinking-process/

I like the way you describe preparation and the necessary mental/physical steps to begin the creative process. I agree that research, asking questions and immersing yourself fully in the task at hand is essential. I appreciate you mentioning the incubation process and letting your subconscious gain a solid understanding of what’s important, and in time, sparking unexpected ideas. This is something a lot of people don’t realize is key to having a “eureka” moment for a concept, and you tie this into the following paragraph nicely. I hadn’t read the following paragraph, and for you to tie it in and explain the light bulb moment being the “illumination stage” was nice to read. I agree that when the idea hits you, you feel like you’ve found the missing piece to the puzzle. It’s true that the idea that hit you might not formulate the way you expected it to, thus the recommendation of having many different ideas is crucial so you don’t backtrack in the creative thinking process.

       From what I have read about design thinking, it is the process in which businesses take in order to solve a problem for a specific project, and then from there, they choose the best and strongest solution. Design thinking is definitely a smart strategy and a part of the creative process. In one of the articles that I read, a quote that caught my attention by Mike Joyce, said that “design thinking has the power to change the way you approach problem-solving by always referencing the ‘why.’ Why are we doing this? You learn to question you assumptions every step of the way.” I strongly agree with this statement. In my opinion, it is good that you question things because you are recognizing it as a potential issue that you would like to fix and thinking about the different affects and variables of what the outcome would be. It is also a good way to stay organized with your thoughts. For example, when I begin a new project or simply just my homework, I sometimes have to force myself to sit down and ask myself “what’s the most important thing I need to do first?” or “what’s due soon?” This helps me to destress and to efficiently work on my homework accordingly. In another article I had read, it continued to explain what design thinking was: “Design thinking is a shorthand that the business world has adopted to describe the combination of creativity and pragmatism that a design mindset brings to the development of new products and services,” followed by, “design thinking is a toolbox of resources and methods that teams can use to systematically recognize opportunities and solve problems they’ve never seen before…it is an intimate process—collaborative, empathetic, visual, iterative—where user insights and epiphanies become the DNA of new or improved experiences.”