10 Creative Thinking Exercises

Here are 10 creative thinking exercises to help stimulate your creative thinking abilities. Have fun with them. Remember: you can use your creative thinking abilities at any time, and don't necessarily need the exercises to do so. These are just here to help give you a little push along the way.

1. The Perfect Bathtub

You have unlimited money and no restrictions. Think up the perfect bathtub and write them down. Once you think of one type, think up 25 more different types of bathtubs. They could be totally impractical, outlandish and crazy, and something no one would ever use. That's not the point. Just think up 25.

2. Lateral Thinking Problem: The Checkers Players

Two friends, Bill and Joe, were excellent checkers players, and were equal in ability. One night, Bill and Joe played eight games, and each won six games. How can that be?
See answer below

3. The Small Notebook

Buy a very small notebook, and carry it with you everywhere, along with a pencil or pen. Whenever you have a random thought that comes into your head, jot it down in the notebook, whether or not it seems worth it. The more you do this, the more you will think creatively, because you are giving yourself an outlet for your thoughts.

4. Clear the Mind

Be in a quiet environment, either in your home or in a nice, tranquil setting outdoors. Sit down and breathe deeply. Close your eyes. Allow the mind to empty and be free of its usual busyness. Do this everyday for anywhere from five minutes to half an hour. The more you allow the mind to quiet and get in touch with the empty spaces of the mind and body, the more you will be able to be a creative thinker.

5. Cultivate the Intuition

Intuition is an important tool for helping to free the mind, because it causes you to bypass the analytical mind, which tends to see things in more black and white terms. To use your intuition, try a number of things:
When the phone rings, intuit who it might be.
Before the mail arrives, intuit what might be in the mail.
In the morning, intuit who you might see during the course of the day.
When going out to a restaurant, make your menu choice based on a gut feeling as to what dish you think you would enjoy the best.

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6. Stream of Consciousness Writing

With pen or pencil in hand, start writing. Just let it flow. Don't put any restrictions on what you write, nor edit it. Just let it come out naturally and organically. Don't go back and read it from the beginning until you're absolutely, positively done.

7. Greeting Cards to the Dead

Greeting cards to the dead - what an absurd idea! What absurd ideas can you come up with? Pull out pen and paper, and list ten of them.

8. The Chicken Salad Sandwich

In your mind, make a chicken salad sandwich. But there's a catch: there's no bread, no taco shell, no pita bread, no English muffin, no bagel, no croissants; and you have no money, you're destitute. You have to make it out of something else, it has to be totally new - and you have one minute to come up with it, or the dog will eat it.

9. Lateral Thinking Problem: The Charley Problem

One night, Fred returned to his apartment, and discovered Charley lying dead on his living room floor. Next to Charley was broken glass, and next to that was water. Also standing in the room was Fred's roommate Linda. When he saw Linda, Fred knew what happened. What did Fred figure out?
See answer below

10. Visualization

Clear your mind and either sit or lay down in a tranquil setting. Visualize with your mind something that you would like to accomplish, or something you want, or some absurd idea. See it in your mind - image it as vividly as possible. Spend some time examining it and looking at it from the inside out. Once you are done, go back to what you were doing before.

As is well known, when you can embed something in the body that you have visualized with the mind, you are well on your way to making it a reality.

Answers to the two lateral thinking problems:
2. The Checkers Players: They played other people; they didn't play each other

3. The Charley Problem: Charley was a goldfish. Linda dropped his fishbowl on the floor, breaking it.

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