Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work Hot

Whether you’re a would-be entrepreneur looking for a great idea or just love puzzles and how the mind works, if you want to get the creative juices flowing, this book is for you. It is all about breaking the “logical” patterns of thought we were taught in school that stifled the free imagination of our childhood. Using thought exercises and real life examples, Michalko guides us back to the territory of unfettered “thinkering” where we give our imagination free rein. He shows us how to combine dissimilar or even contradictory subjects and ideas, no matter how far out, in a process he calls “conceptual blending,” which he liberally illustrates with examples of how others have done it and guides us how to do it ourselves. This is the most important factor in creative thinking, according to Michalko, one of the most highly acclaimed creativity experts in the world and author of the best sellers "Thinkertoys" and "Cracking Creativity."

Another useful approach is incubation – just letting the idea percolate for a while, especially overnight. This is what he calls, “letting God” put the pieces together. Michalko recommends that we make a practice of keeping notes about our ideas, observations, and creative attempts, and that we collect information about all the ideas, concepts and problems we are working on. You never know what will spark the creative connection and that “aha moment.”

One of the things I particularly enjoyed in the book was the abundance of riddles and optical illusions. (He always gives the answers at the end of each chapter.) Aside from being fun, they also illustrate the importance of being willing to change your perspective and look as something in a whole new way. At a time when the façades of so many political, financial and social institutions are crumbling, never has “creative thinkering” been more urgently needed.

Michael Michalko will take you on a delicious ride to the next evolutionary level of understanding why creative thinking is often counterintuitive and what methods work to break stilted thinking. Not a day goes by that I don't employ several of Michael's methods. I hope you utilize and enjoy the genius found in CREATIVE THINKERING to carve out a new way of thinking and living that will bring you the fulfillment those methods have brought me. Michael Michalko is the only writer on creativity who offers palpable, common sense tools you can put to work on a daily basis. It is beyond me why anyone would not want to have all of Michalko's books. Simple methods, inexpensive, fascinating, fun . . . and they produce results.
Terry H. Stickles, puzzle writer and columnist