Sharpen Your Creative Thinking With Random Words

Sharpening the ability to think creatively and originate unique but practical solutions to problems is time well spent.

Creativity is always in short supply. No one has too much of it. So, learning how to develop creative thinking skills is of critical importance to leaders and decision-makers.

No one has thought more about creativity in a lifetime than famed psychologist and physician Edward de Bono.

The author of more than 80 books on creative thinking published from the 1960s until the end of his life in 2021, de Bono invented exercises to expand lateral thinking and to help people become more creative.

He believed creativity is a skill that can be learned, developed, and applied. His word exercises were once hugely popular around the world but have since been largely forgotten.

De Bono relied upon random words to teach creativity and designed exercises that trained the creative mind. At the back of many of his books was a Random Words List for use in his games and exercises. Your smartphone can generate such a list in a matter of seconds.

Here are three of his most popular exercises.

Exercise One. Select five random words. Choose the one word of the set that suggests a problem, crisis, or challenge. Be specific in your head about this issue. Now, suggest how one of the four remaining words could manage, resolve, or rescue the situation. Strive to find a solution from one of those words. Explain your reasoning.

Exercise Two. Select five random words. Describe how each of these random words might influence the other words in some way. Articulate this influence.

Exercise Three. Select a single random word. Think about it. Now, draw another random word. See if there is any kind of connection you can make to the first word. Keep going by drawing yet another word and see if you can find a connection to either of the first two words. So long as you can keep describing a strong connection, keep drawing random words. Explain your connections.

De Bono designed dozens of similar exercises that formed a mental gym for developing creative thinking habits and skills.

It’s no coincidence that many of the world’s most popular internet games involve words and the meanings they convey. Find a way to use words, random or not, to sharpen your creativity.

Words are full of possibility, and possibility is the key to creativity.