This Is A Space To Share Your Thoughts About the Learning Materials An
This is a space to share your thoughts about the Learning Materials and your engagement with the activities in one of the practices in Chapter 2 of the Zig Zag text. First, plan and carry out the activities in the practice. Then, share the story of your experience, while making connections between the practice and the Learning Materials.
Part I: Plan and carry out activities from one practice out of the 4 listed below, found in Chapter 2 of Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity, Learn. Links to an external site. The activities in the practice may be completed individually or collaboratively.
- First Practice: Practice Deliberately
- Second Practice: Master Your Domain
- Third Practice: Learn Forever
- Fourth Practice: Balance Specialty with Generality
Part II: In an initial post, tell the story of your engagement with activities in one of the four practices in Chapter 2 of Zig Zag: Learn. To introduce the story, tell everyone why you chose the practice you selected. Then, talk about the process of carrying out the activities (individually or collaboratively), including what you learned about creative problem solving. As part of your story, make connections between the Learn practice you worked with and one of the podcasts in "Untold Stories of Innovation," as well as “The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World” video.
How do the ideas of neuroscientist David Eagleman and composer Anthony Brandt on bending, breaking, and blending relate with practices in the Learn chapter? Offer thoughts on how you might use some of their ideas in solving the problem you have decided to take on. After telling your story, respond to the stories of at least two peers, preferably those who chose a different Learn practice. This gives you the opportunity to learn more about multiple practices. Check back throughout the week to respond to those who replied to your story.
Paper For Above instruction
The engagement with creative problem solving is a vital component of developing innovative thinking skills. In this paper, I will describe my experiences with one of the four practices outlined in Chapter 2 of
Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity, specifically focusing on the "Practice Deliberately." I chose this practice because I believe that intentional focus and structured effort are fundamental to fostering creativity and overcoming mental blocks that often hinder problem-solving processes.
My journey began with a deliberate planning phase, where I set clear goals for the activities I intended to undertake. I decided to explore the practice by engaging in mind-mapping exercises and divergent thinking tasks, which are designed to expand creative horizons by encouraging the generation of numerous ideas without immediate judgment. This process reinforced the importance of intentionality—deliberately choosing to suspend critical judgment in the early stages of idea generation, a concept that aligns closely with the principles presented by Zig Zag. The deliberate nature of this practice made me more aware of my cognitive biases and tendencies to dismiss unconventional ideas prematurely.
Carrying out these activities individually allowed me to focus intensely on the task at hand without external distractions. I discovered that by consciously adopting a mindset of openness and curiosity, I was able to generate more diverse and innovative solutions to the problem I was addressing: redesigning a community space to better serve diverse age groups. The process involved brainstorming, sketching ideas, and refining concepts, all while intentionally avoiding self-censorship at the initial stages. This practice reinforced the idea that deliberate effort and structured approaches are necessary to unlock creative potential, corroborating the themes emphasized in Zig Zag.
The insights I gained from this experience connect powerfully with the podcast "Untold Stories of Innovation," particularly the episode featuring the story of Howie, an innovative designer who emphasized the importance of deliberate experimentation. Similarly, the video "The Runaway Species" discusses “breaking” and “blending” as essential creative processes, aligning with neuroscientist David Eagleman and composer Anthony Brandt's ideas about bending and breaking norms in the creative process. Eagleman advocates for bending existing knowledge and breaking mental frameworks to enable new insight, while Brandt emphasizes blending disparate ideas to create novel solutions.
In applying these ideas, I realized that deliberate acts of mental bending—such as intentionally challenging assumptions about space use—and breaking cognitive patterns were crucial in my problem-solving approach. For example, I experimented with combining elements from different design philosophies, which initially seemed incompatible but ultimately led to a hybrid solution that catered to multiple age groups. These techniques echo Eagleman and Brandt’s ideas about disrupting normal patterns to foster
Moving forward, I plan to incorporate these concepts by actively challenging my cognitive biases when approaching new problems, consciously grouping and ungrouping ideas, and deliberately seeking out contradictions and anomalies to stimulate creative breakthroughs. This proactive method aligns with the Zig Zag philosophy, emphasizing that authentic creativity requires structured effort, openness to breaking norms, and intentional blending of ideas.
In response to peers who selected different practices, I look forward to understanding how their experiences with "Master Your Domain," "Learn Forever," or "Balance Specialty with Generality" provided unique insights into creative problem solving. Each practice offers a different pathway to innovation, and learning from diverse approaches will deepen my grasp of effective strategies for fostering creativity. Overall, this exercise has illuminated the importance of deliberate effort and strategic thinking in advancing creative problem-solving skills, supported by both theoretical concepts and real-world applications.
References
Eagleman, D. (2015). The Brain: The Story of You. Pantheon.
Brandt, A., & Eagleman, D. (2017). The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World. TED Books.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall.
Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity. (2020). Learning Materials. Retrieved from [URL] Johnson, S. (2010). Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. Riverhead Books. Sawyer, R. K. (2012). Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Oxford University Press. Runaway Species Documentary. (2019). Directed by Anthony & David. [Streaming Service]
Simonton, D. K. (2004). Creativity Across Culture. American Psychologist, 59(4), 339-348.
Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity in Context. Westview Press.
Gerrig, R. J., & Zimbardo, P. G. (2018). Psychology and Life. Pearson.