Techniques for Enhancing Creative Thinking

💡 Can Technology Light Up Our World? I came across the Liter of Light project again this week — a plastic bottle, some water, and sunlight — and suddenly, darkness disappears. It’s one of those ideas that feels too simple to be real. No wires. No batteries. Just light, refracted through clarity. The project began in the Philippines and has since spread across the world — turning discarded bottles into skylights for homes, classrooms, and communities. 100% sustainable. Accessible. Affordable. And human at its core. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Because in my world, innovation usually starts with GPUs, data, and billion-dollar labs. But this one started with scarcity — and still managed to create abundance. That contrast says something uncomfortable about how we define progress. Maybe innovation isn’t about building smarter systems. Maybe it’s about remembering why we build at all. When you design from limits, you see the world differently: → You question assumptions instead of adding features. → You focus on purpose, not performance. → You create tools that return power, not just use it. Here’s what this mindset looks like in practice: ✅ Reimagine the problem. Ask “What’s essential?” before “What’s possible?” ✅ Design for access. If it doesn’t reach the edges of society, it’s not innovation. ✅ Teach simplicity. Complexity might impress people — but simplicity empowers them. But here’s the deeper layer most people miss 👇 → Scarcity doesn’t limit innovation — it purifies it. When you have less, you’re forced to confront what truly matters. → Constraint breeds clarity. It removes everything unnecessary until only truth remains. → Simplicity scales trust. The fewer dependencies a design has, the more universally it works. That’s why Liter of Light feels so profound to me. It’s not just about sustainability — it’s about subtractive intelligence. It shows that the smartest ideas don’t add complexity; they restore perspective. To me, this is the real frontier of technology — not artificial intelligence, but applied empathy. 💭 What if the next breakthrough isn’t about generating more power — but learning how to share the light we already have? #InnovationWithPurpose #HumanCenteredDesign #FrugalInnovation #SubtractiveThinking #TechForGood #AIandHumanity

A monthly ritual that changed my life. The Think Day (everyone should try this): In the 1980s, Bill Gates began an annual tradition he called the Think Week. Gates would seclude himself in a remote location, shut off communication, and spend a week dedicated to reading and thinking. The radical approach became essential to his process: "Think Week is a time when I can be creative and push my own thinking. It's a time to step outside the day-to-day demands of my job and really focus on the big picture." - Bill Gates I first read about the Think Week a few years ago and knew I wanted to give it a shot. I didn't have an entire week to dedicate to it (early career demands, family priorities, etc.), but figured I could adapt something with a similar core vision. The Think Day was my creation: Pick one day each month to step back from all of your day-to-day professional demands: • Seclude yourself (mentally or physically). • Shut off all of your devices. • Put up an out-of-office response. The goal: Spend the entire day reading, learning, journaling, and THINKING. By doing this, you create the free time to zoom out, open your mind, and think creatively about the bigger picture. My essential tools for Think Day: • Journal and pen. • Books/articles I've been wanting to read. • Secluded location (at home, rental, or outside). • Thinking prompts to spark my mind. Six thinking prompts I have found particularly useful: 1. Are you hunting antelope (big important problems) or field mice (small urgent problems)? 2. How can you do less, but better? 3. What are your strongest beliefs? What would it take for you to change your mind on them? 4. What are a few things that you know now that you wish you knew 5 years ago? 5. What actions were you engaged in 5 years ago that you cringe at today? What actions are you engaged in today that you will cringe at in 5 years? 6. What would your 80-year-old self say about your decisions today? I aim for an 8-hour window split into 60-minute focus blocks with walks in between. You have to slow down to speed up. In a speed-obsessed world, the benefits of slowing down are extensive: • Restore energy • Notice things you missed • Be more deliberate with actions • Focus on the highest leverage opportunities • Move slow to move fast. The Think Day can help. Give it a shot and let me know what you think. *** If you enjoyed this or learned something, follow me Sahil Bloom for more in future!

If you want to do creative projects but never have the energy, try this: Nature is more than just a backdrop for relaxation; it actively enhances our creative thinking and problem-solving abilities. Getting out into nature with a clear aim to do creative work as a massively underrated tool. Here’s my protocol for an intentional day of personal projects: → 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗲 Begin your morning by stepping outside. Feel the natural elements (the sun, a breeze, the texture of grass). Just a couple of minutes can really clear the mind, calibrate your senses, and sharpen focus. → 𝗦𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 Carry a notebook and pen on a short walk in a nearby park or natural setting, away from digital distractions. Write down a maximum of 3 things you’d like to focus on. Put a star next to the one that is your highest priority - the one that, once completed, would make the day a success. → 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹 To get the creative juices flowing, handwrite down a short answer to each of these prompts: • Describe your natural surroundings. • What’s 1 trait you want to exhibit today? • What’s 1 thing you’re grateful for? → 𝗗𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 Curate a workspace with natural elements (e.g., plants, natural light, open windows for fresh air). The more minimal and distraction-free, the better. Brew your hot beverage of choice, take a deep breath, and start your day with a 2-hour uninterrupted block focussed on your highest priority task. → 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗹𝗸𝘀 Introduce short, regular walking breaks in your routine, preferably in natural, green spaces. Experiment with different levels of stimulus: Notebook, no notebook. Music, no music. Use this time for reflection or pondering creative challenges, letting the natural environment stimulate new perspectives. → 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻 As daylight shifts to dusk, allow your mind to naturally transition to relaxation. Under soft lighting, jot down any lingering thoughts or reflections in a journal. Close the cognitive chapter on productivity, and enjoy an evening of leisurely reading, cooking, and resting. -- This is an excerpt from an initiative I recently took part in called 'The nature of work' - a collaboration between Unyoked and LinkedIn. They invited Lizzie Hedding, Samantha Wong, James Hurman, Cayla Dengate, Jimmy Lyell and I to create a guide on using nature to slow down and focus on the things that really matter. 🏕️ One takeaway for me: Whether you're an athlete, VC, or musician... try to build more exposure to the natural world into your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly rhythms. Hope you enjoy the guide as much as we did making it. Link in the comments👇

Many senior leaders have a strong "do now" mentality. They want to "move fast", "take action", and "just try it". While this has proven successful in environments with high variability and low data (e.g. startups), it often backfires in situations that require complex decision-making or big organizational shifts. When "do now" is overly valued: 😓 Large reorgs turn messy and set the company back for quarters if not years. 😓 Teams experience constant churn and low ROI from launches, jumping from idea to idea too quickly. 😓 Underinvestment in first-order-negative-but-second-order-positive competitive differentiators, leading to a lack of long-term defensive moats. It turns out that many complex challenges that organizations and teams face today benefit from deep thinking first. To bring this balance into your organization, try the following: ✅ Work with leaders who prefer to "Think Deeply First", and be compassionate about their slower approach to decision-making. ✅ Invest time in debating alternatives, weighing various risks, or making sure everyone's opinions are heard. ✅ Open up your decision-making to a diverse team and take the time to truly hear feedback. Remember, when your "do now" clashes with another trusted leader's "think first", take a step back and consider whether a slower and more considered approach will have outsized benefit in the long term. ----- 👋 Hi! I'm Yue. I am a Chief Product and Technology Officer turned Executive Coach. I help women and minority aspiring executives break through to the C-suite. 🚀  🔔 Follow me for more content on coaching, leadership, and career growth.

What do Albert Einstein, Paul McCartney, and Virgina Woolf have in common – besides being highly influential figures in their respective fields? All three revealed that some of their most creative ideas came to them whilst they were walking or sleeping. Ok, so what’s the brain up to this time? Why should disengaging help #creativity? In 2014, a group of researchers at Stanford measured the positive effects of mild physical activity on creativity – and found that walking boosted creativity by between 50-80%. 👉 When students took a brisk walk around the college campus or walked at a relaxed pace on an indoor treadmill facing a blank wall – their performance on a test of creativity called the “Alternate Uses Task” improved by a whopping 81%! The AUT tests “divergent thinking,” which is the ability to explore many possible solutions, including blue sky or out of the box thinking. 👉 Walking outdoors produced the most novel and highest quality analogies, indicating that walking had a very specific benefit in improving creativity. 👉 Furthermore, walking made people more talkative, resulting in roughly 50% more total ideas being produced compared to when sitting. In other words, just going for a short walk led to a massive increase in creativity. Or, in the words of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, "All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” Sleeping on it seems to have a similar creativity-enhancing effect as physical exercise. How many times have you come back to tackle a seemingly insurmountable problem after a sleep – or even a nap – and the pieces seemed to fall right into place? Studies have found that during the phase of sleep known as Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, the #brain is able to make new and novel connections between unrelated ideas, which is a key aspect of creativity. This state of sleep allows for the free association of ideas, which can lead to creative problem-solving and the generation of innovative ideas upon waking. REM sleep is thought to contribute to "incubating" creative ideas, as the brain reorganizes and consolidates memories, potentially leading to creative insights. Both physical exercise and sleep are mood-enhancers, which may contribute to enhancing creativity. Research suggests that positive moods can enhance creative thinking, making it easier for individuals to think flexibly and come up with innovative solutions. Positive emotional states often increase cognitive flexibility, broaden attention, and allow for more associations between ideas, which are key elements of creativity. Turns out, there are practical ways to spark more ‘Aha!’ moments in our lives. The next time you’re struggling to think of a solution to a problem, try taking a walk or sleeping on it – the evidence-backed cheat-codes for unlocking creativity!

Consider this suggestion that has helped me survive this industry for three decades at Microsoft, Google, and Amazon…during this holiday season step back from the endless cycle of activity and think, reflect, and live in the moment. Being busy every second isn’t what leads to inspired decisions or breakthroughs. Instead, it can stifle creativity, increase stress, and prevent the innovative thinking that moves the needle. Ignore work and be with your family – I guarantee that you will have better ideas and more energy when you restart next year. Here are the specifics: 1. Create Space for Innovation: The best ideas often emerge when you have room to breathe and think. Give yourself permission to slow down over the holidays. With that mental breathing room, you’ll be better equipped to imagine creative approaches, develop new strategies, and identify opportunities that may have been hidden in the day-to-day grind. 2. Prevent Burnout: Non-stop work leads to burnout—worn-down energy levels, reduced clarity, and diminished effectiveness. By intentionally setting aside time to recharge, you protect your mental and physical well-being. Returning to work refreshed means you can hit the ground running with renewed focus, making it easier to channel your energy into the projects that drive real results. 3. Refresh Your Objectives: Innovation doesn’t just appear out of thin air; it emerges when you thoughtfully consider what’s been working and where you can improve. Use the slow ramp at the start of the year to reflect on the road ahead. Coming back with a fresh perspective will help you zero in on what matters most, ensuring your efforts align with your core objectives. 4. Invest Time in Yourself: Slowing down provides time for learning and personal growth—reading, thinking, or exploring new perspectives outside your normal routine. By expanding your horizons during the break, you return to the office with heightened curiosity and sharper judgment, ready to tackle complexity. This holiday season, step away from the mindset that more activity equals more success. Instead, recharge. Let your mind wander. Immerse yourself in moments that inspire you. By doing so, you’ll return to work with greater clarity, a fresh sense of purpose, and the creative momentum.

We are more creative than we think. It’s just buried under all the ways we learned to judge ourselves too soon. Growth mindset gets talked about a lot in career work. But I think we miss one of the most important places it shows up: Creativity. So many people move through life believing they have a hard creative ceiling. They decide early that they are analytical, practical, organized, responsible, strategic, academic, technical, service-oriented. And somehow, creativity gets assigned to other people: the artists, writers, designers. But creativity does not usually disappear. Instead, it gets... ↳ buried under perfectionism. ↳ crowded out by overwork. ↳ trained out by systems that reward the right answer. ↳ shut down by comparison. ↳ confused with performance. A fixed mindset around creativity turns a block into a personal verdict but a growth mindset treats the block as useful information. Maybe the person needs more practice or permission to make something awkward before it becomes good. This matters in career development because creativity is part of almost every meaningful career move. ↳ Exploring options requires creativity. ↳ Reimagining identity requires creativity. ↳ Telling your story requires creativity. ↳ Solving workplace problems requires creativity. ↳ Building a next chapter requires creativity. Career professionals can help reacquaint clients to their creative side through simple exercises. One example is the 3 rough versions exercise. 1/ Choose one doable career task, like crafting a networking message or outlining a possible career direction. 2/ Ask the client to create three rough versions: One clear version. One bold version. One unexpected version. 3/ Evaluate each version and review the three versions together. Ask: What feels most honest? What has energy? What sounds forced? What surprised them? 4/ From there, help the client build from the strongest pieces, offering a practical way to practice creative thinking. The goal is to help the client see that creativity often shows up after they stop treating the first idea like a final answer. Clients rarely need us to convince them they are creative geniuses. They need us to help them question their self-imposed limitations. Sometimes the limit is not their ability. It is the conditions they have been creating under. _______ Follow Dr. Heather Maietta - Coach for Career Coaches for daily coaching strategies. artist: unknown

The best book on creativity I've ever read is 48 pages long, was written in 1939 by an ad man who left school in 6th grade, and takes about 30 minutes to read. Here's his entire method: The book is "A Technique for Producing Ideas" by James Webb Young. Young wasn't an academic...he was a copywriter at J. Walter Thompson who created one of the most controversial ads in history (a 1919 deodorant ad so blunt that 200 women cancelled their magazine subscriptions and female copywriters told him he'd insulted every woman in America. Sales went up 112%.) Here's the method: Step 1: Gather raw material (both specific and general). Young says the quality of your ideas is directly tied to the quantity and diversity of what you feed your brain. * Specific material is research about the actual problem. * General material is everything else: history, psychology, random conversations, unrelated industries. The more pieces you have, the more combinations are possible. Step 2: Mentally chew the material. Take the facts and turn them over. Look at them from different angles. Try fitting pieces together like a puzzle. Young says most people quit here because it's uncomfortable...you're holding a bunch of disconnected information and nothing clicks yet. That discomfort is the process working, not failing. Step 3: Drop it completely. Stop thinking about the problem. Go for a walk. Watch a movie. Sleep. Your subconscious is still connecting the pieces even when your conscious mind has moved on. Step 4: The idea shows up on its own. Young says it'll come to you "while shaving, or bathing, or most often when you are half awake in the morning." This only works if you did steps 1-3 honestly. If you skipped the research or rushed the chewing, nothing shows up in the shower. Step 5: Test it against reality. Take your idea to other people. Let them poke holes in it. Young says most people are so attached to the flash of insight from step 4 that they skip this entirely, and the idea dies on contact with the real world. Good ideas survive criticism, but great ideas get better from it. The underlying principle is simple: An idea is nothing more than a new combination of existing elements. You can't combine things you haven't collected, and you can't connect dots you've never seen.

The psychology of thoughtful creation To THINK BEFORE CREATING is a form of resistance in a world that celebrates immediacy. It means stopping the impulse to produce for the sake of producing, to observe, to understand, and to give meaning to every decision. It is recognizing that clarity does not emerge from speed but from stillness, that quality is born from the time we dedicate to reflection. It is not about slowing the creative process down but about giving it direction. Thinking is the first act of design, the foundation on which everything takes shape. → When the mind gives itself time, ideas gain depth. What once seemed scattered finds connection, what was instinctive becomes coherent, and what was an impulse turns into strategy. The pause is not emptiness but a fertile space where information settles and ideas naturally arrange themselves. In that silent interval, creativity stops being reactive and becomes a conscious process. → Structured thinking seeks harmony, not accumulation. Understanding the whole before the parts allows every element to respond to a greater purpose. That is where design transcends aesthetics and becomes a language, a way to communicate order, balance, and meaning. Decisions are no longer random; they become part of a system where every detail matters. → Thinking with intention gives creation purpose. Every gesture, texture, word, or form acquires significance when born from reflection. Brands that take time to think achieve coherence between what they do, what they show, and what they stand for. Reflection turns execution into expression and form into experience. → Mature thought recognizes interdependence. Nothing exists in isolation; every decision affects the whole, and every choice communicates beyond itself. Within that network, limits are not barriers but structures that give freedom its meaning. To think before creating is, in essence, to design with consciousness, purpose, and precision. Featured brands: Glossier Clasique Guerlain Febble Wildhood Schwarzkopf Professional

"The lesser you use your brain, the louder you use your mouth." Many years ago, I've been THAT person. The one who fills silence with words. The one who mistakes speaking first for adding value. But here's what I'm learning to embrace with fierce determination: - Thinking deeply is a competitive advantage. In a world drowning in noise, those who pause to think are revolutionary. Those who ask "Why?" before declaring "Here's how!" are invaluable. Those who master the art of listening before speaking? - They're unstoppable. I'm done with speaking just to be heard. I learned the lessons the hard way. I hope you don't have to. → Asking more questions than I make statements → Listening with the intent to understand, not just to respond → Doing the mental work BEFORE the meeting, not during → Valuing depth over speed in my analysis → Creating space for quieter voices that often carry the deepest wisdom Because here's the brutal truth: - Anyone can have an opinion. - Anyone can react. - Anyone can fill airtime. But real, rigorous, critical thinking? That's what transforms careers, builds companies, and creates lasting impact. The leaders I admire most aren't the loudest in the room—they're the most prepared. They've done their homework. They've considered multiple angles. They've wrestled with complexity instead of oversimplifying for the sake of a quick take. When they speak, people lean in—not because of their volume, but because of their substance. I want to be THAT person. The one who brings insights, not just inputs. The one who solves problems rather than just naming them. The one who earns influence through depth of thought, not force of personality. 🔻 To anyone reading this: This week, before your next meeting, invest 30 minutes in deep thinking. - Challenge your own assumptions. - Research the angles you haven't considered. Then walk in prepared to contribute something that actually moves the needle. Watch what happens. Because in a marketplace where everyone's shouting, the person who's actually THINKING is the one who changes the game. 🙋♀️ 🙋♂️ Who is with me on this journey from noise-maker to value-creator?