I recently started reading several blogs and e-books related with creative thinking.  As my job requires a lot of brainstorming and creative solutions, I tried to boost my imagination and get around several useful tips on the topic.

As always I started with creative thinking Don’ts, blocks and barriers.

First I tried to find an answer to the question what exactly is thinking block?

The simplest answer I could get is that this is a situation where all of a sudden you just cannot come up with a decent answer or solution to a problem, because your mind goes blank. And the harder you try the more confused you get. Creativity depends a lot on how our brain works. It all rests on which hemisphere of the brain is more engaged while thinking. Experiments showed that the left hemisphere of our brain is responsible for logical thinking, while the right one is for creative and lateral thinking.
I will try to use both sides of my brain equally while writing this article. Here are several situations that caught my mind:

1. There is always another solution! Someone once said it would be stupid to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. That is why, when thinking, analyzing, making a decision or brainstorming, you should always look for another opportunity. Creative thinking is not an exam in which all questions have one correct answer. View things from a different perspective or maybe consult with your colleague or friend, because third party opinion is always welcome.
2. Black and White perspective! Because of some current situation, comments of others or personal factors at the moment, people have the tendency to switch their attitude from highly positive to highly negative in just several minutes. This attitude change can misguide you and give different course of thinking and action. It’s far healthier to stay neutral and not let emotions influence. Because things are rarely as good or as bad as you think they are.
3. Combine play and work! The biggest ideas and innovations are born through play and pooling of different perspectives, not thinking and working in isolation. Studies show that a child’s mind has greater number of connections, because children do not limit their world view. When you think and play like a child, accepting everything without judgment, than you can let your imagination free and use full mind capacity. Creative thinker does not make a difference between work and play.
4. Think of details, but always remember the big picture! Not seeing the forest from the trees is one common creative block. Usually when trying to organize ideas and actions around specific goal we start with the big picture and then go into details. While striving to do things the best possible way, we spend energy and creativity on inconsequential things, at the end losing ourselves in a dead end. Keeping the big picture in front of you while looking at details will help to put everything in order and context.
5. Mistakes happen! Nobody likes them, nobody likes to admit them. But mistakes are part of our everyday work and they are a driver for improvement. Creative thinking is not about being wrong or right. It is about exploring new ways and opportunities, finding new challenges. As Albert Einstein said:  “Person who never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
6. Other do it also syndrome! This exists to a different degree in all of us. Even if we hate to admit it, other people’s actions do heavily influence ours. There’s always pressure to adopt the behaviors of the groups we’re in and fear of looking dumb. But creativity is not about standardized rules and regulations. If your idea is, in fact, original, it may stand alone because, well, it is different. For instance, the Dyson vacuum cleaner was the first to use a cyclonic action to separate dust from air, meaning that a bag or a filter was no longer required. This truly was an innovation in home vacuum products.
7. Denying your creativity! If your start point is an assumption that you cannot do something because you are not creative enough, than you probably have another creative block. “Thinking outside the box” is true only if our mind creates that imaginary box. Creative thinking skills are as much about attitude and self-confidence as about talent. Creativity is often less ordered, structured and predictable. Imagination is the beginning of creation.

You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. George Bernard Shaw

Today we recommend you one great free eBook you can find on litemind.com.

Litemind is about exploring ways to use our minds efficiently. This translates to a wide variety of topics such as creativity, problem-solving, visual thinking, memory, self-mastery and more.

The Very Best of Litemind is aggregation of several valuable techniques that will help you to organize your thoughts more easily and improve your thinking and problem solving process. You can download the e-book by only leaving your email.

Hope you will find it very useful like we did.

Just wanted to share a recent post for DropMind iPad version. The text was originally wrote by Jan Schultink on http://blog.ideatransplant.com

Triggered by the iPad touch interface, I started to use mindmapping for the first time in presentation design. Mindmapping is a process in which you jot down ideas and the connections between them quickly, and edit, clean up, and move things around later to get a more organized picture. I must say, it works a lot better than my previous approach: the pencil and a piece of paper. Especially since it is a lot harder to lose that piece of paper with your notes on it.

I purchased 2 iPad apps: iThoughtsHD and DropMind. iThoughtsHD was designed specifically for the iPad, and is the cheaper of the 2 ($10 versus $50 for DropMind). The DropMind app is an extension from an existing suite of desktop and web applications. The latter probably explains why it took a relatively long time for DropMind to come out with the app, a working iOS 4.2 version only appeared last week in the app store.

When reading my impressions remember that I am a light-weight mind mapper, just using it to structure ideas for a presentation. Reading around on the Internet it looks like mindmapping is a whole design approach taking things much further than I do.

For the purpose I use it for, iThoughtsHD works perfectly fine. The interface is straightforward and clean, and it is every easy to export mindmaps to PDF or sync them using a Dropbox account.

DropMind’s user interface looks a little bit more sophisticated with more graphical options. When you buy the iPad app, they also offer a perpetual license for the desktop client, and the web app. You can exchange mindmaps between the applications. There is a wide arsenal of tools available that I did not yet have time for to explore. The one drawback I found is that when you export a map to PDF or JPG, the resolution seems to be very low (not an issue with iThoughtsHD). I think this is a bug, or maybe I did not configure the settings correctly).

The bottom line. For basic presentation outline scribbles, iThoughtsHD works just fine and costs a lot less than DropMind. Personally, I tend to favor the DropMind app, because of the cross-platform integration and the ability to start using some of the more sophisticated tools available once I have come up the learning curve (on the condition that they fix the resolution of the exported images).

Following user’s requirements from this past period, we have worked hard and developed fresh and new DropMind™ Desktop v.3.0 and Web v.2.7 applications. We have tried to implement your ideas and start a new page in the area of visual thinking.

What your ideas can do for you with the right tool? That was our main motto while working on the new releases of DropMind™.

We tried to do something more valuable, more close to you. With the implemented Gantt Chart view in the new 3.0 Desktop version, we have created an environment where your ideas can get organized flow, can be turned into powerful tasks and be initiation of great projects. With the help of MS® Office integration your map could be easily exported to MS® Project to further development. We believe that the new features will save your time, organize your goals and turn them into powerful tasks.

This is the time where innovations and changes occur fast on the web. Ideas are raised, shared and developed. We want you to be able to track and organize them from anywhere, in no time. That is why we have created the new Web version 2.7. It has small improvements, but great on-line sharing and collaboration capability. The web version allows simultaneous work on a map or idea sharing. The map can be accessed from any place, updated and saved quickly.

Explore the new opportunities and enjoy our new releases.
Visit dropmind.com. We would be pleased to hear your opinions and suggestions regarding our new versions.
And remember: Creativity grows out of the desire for change.

After months of dedicated work we are more than happy to announce DropMind™ application designed specifically for the iPad. With DropMind™ for iPad it’s easy to capture anything, from ideas, information to things you like and see. A great set of features will help you keep you workflow even when you are out of office. The application has a beautiful user interface, made for easily creating and sharing mind maps. The app synchronizes seamlessly with DropMind™ Web version.

We have already received a great feedback from our customers. One of our customers said: “I find DropMind™ absolutely gorgeous, and look forward to use it for several different purposes.

Chuck Frey, one of the recognized mind mapping experts, on his blog specialized for mind mapping techniques and tools, wrote:

“DropMind makes impressive debut on the iPad”

“A great user interface design, combined with easy synchronization with DropMind’s “cloud” application help to make this app one of the best for the iPad”.

Download the application, explore all features and start creating you mind maps on the go.