Exercises — Chapter 27: Creativity and Problem-Solving

These exercises work best when you approach them with the spirit of the research: generate first, evaluate later; seek unusual connections; welcome constraints; and treat wrong answers as information.

Part 1: Divergent Thinking Practice

Exercise 27.1 — Alternative Uses Task

This is the classic divergent thinking exercise from Guilford's research.

Round 1: List as many uses as you can for a brick in 3 minutes. (Set a timer.)

Round 2: List as many uses as you can for a newspaper in 3 minutes.

Evaluate your responses on four dimensions: - Fluency: how many uses did you generate? - Flexibility: how many different categories did your uses fall into? - Originality: how many uses are genuinely unusual — things most people wouldn't think of? - Elaboration: how specifically did you develop each idea?

(a) Which dimension was your weakest?

(b) Try a third round with a rubber band. This time, deliberately attempt to: - Generate at least 20 uses - Include at least five different categories - Produce at least three genuinely unusual uses

(c) Did deliberate attention to the four dimensions improve your performance? What does this tell you about whether divergent thinking is a trainable skill?

Exercise 27.2 — Remote Associates

Practice finding the fourth word that connects three apparently unrelated words.

Try these:

1. CREAM — SKATE — WATER → _____
2. FRENCH — BOOK — POCKET → _____
3. ACHE — HUNTER — CABINET → _____
4. CAKES — SWISS — COTTAGE → _____
5. IRON — PIANO — BAND → _____
6. NECKLACE — BUTTER — MILK → _____
7. FIRE — AGENT — STEEL → _____
8. STAR — WISH — BONE → _____

(Answers: 1. board; 2. mark; 3. head; 4. cheese; 5. key; 6. cup; 7. gun; 8. wish [trick: all connect with "wish"] — actually: 8. fish — wishing bone/starfish/wish)

(Correct answers: 1. board; 2. mark; 3. head; 4. cheese; 5. key; 6. cup; 7. gun; 8. fish)

(a) For the ones you got quickly: what happened? Was it conscious search or did the answer arrive?

(b) For the ones you struggled with: what happened when you stopped trying and then came back to them?

(c) The chapter describes creative people as having "flatter associative hierarchies" — unusual connections come more easily. Is this a trainable quality? What would training it look like?

Exercise 27.3 — SCAMPER Practice

Choose a product, process, service, or practice you know well and want to improve.

Apply each SCAMPER prompt and generate at least two ideas for each:

(a) Which prompts produced your most interesting ideas?

(b) Did any prompt break a mental set you hadn't noticed you had about this subject?

(c) Select the three most promising ideas from the full SCAMPER list. What would a prototype of each look like?

Part 2: Problem Definition

Exercise 27.4 — The Problem Reframing Practice

Most problems we try to solve are not stated in the form that makes them most solvable.

Choose a problem you are currently stuck on.

(a) Write your current problem statement.

(b) Generate five alternative problem statements — different framings of the same underlying situation:

Frame 1: What if the problem is actually about [completely different angle]? Frame 2: What if the constraint I'm assuming is not a constraint? Frame 3: What would the problem look like from [stakeholder who isn't me]'s perspective? Frame 4: What is the problem behind the problem — what's the root? Frame 5: What if I reversed the problem — what's the opposite problem?

(c) Which reframing produces the most different set of possible solutions?

(d) Apply this exercise to one work or personal problem per week for a month. Notice whether the reframing habit changes how you approach new problems.

Exercise 27.5 — The "How Might We..." Practice

Design thinking uses the "How Might We...?" format to transform problem statements into generative questions.

Take a challenging situation you're navigating:

(a) Write the problem as a "How Might We...?" question: "How might we [achieve the goal/solve the problem] for [person or context] so that [positive outcome]?"

(b) Notice the three-part structure: the verb phrase (what you're trying to do), the person/context (who it's for), and the outcome (why it matters). Ensure all three parts are specific.

(c) Generate 10 different "How Might We...?" questions for the same underlying challenge — varying the verb, the person, and the outcome. Which question produces the richest direction for idea generation?

Part 3: Incubation and the Creative Process

Exercise 27.6 — Deliberate Incubation

Choose a problem that has been resistant to direct analytical effort.

Step 1: Work on the problem directly for 30 minutes. Write down everything you know, every approach you've tried, every constraint you're working within. (This is the preparation stage.)

Step 2: Stop. Do not work on the problem for 24–48 hours. During this period, engage in physical movement (walking is particularly good), take a shower, sleep, do work in a completely unrelated domain.

Step 3: Return to the problem without reviewing your Step 1 notes. Write for 15 minutes about whatever comes to mind about the problem.

Step 4: Compare Step 3 output to Step 1 notes. Did anything new emerge?

(a) Did incubation produce any ideas that the direct analysis had not?

(b) If so: what was different about the ideas that came during incubation? Were they more unusual? More holistic? Less constrained?

(c) The chapter notes that sleep and walking specifically facilitate incubation. Try the exercise with and without a specific walking or sleep period. Is there a difference?

Exercise 27.7 — The Creativity Journal

Begin a creativity journal — different from the learning journal in Chapter 26.

The creativity journal has one rule: capture everything. Ideas, images, overheard phrases, visual observations, questions, connections between apparently unrelated things. Write or sketch without evaluating.

For two weeks, spend 5 minutes each morning writing: - What am I noticing today that surprised or interested me? - What connections am I making between things I don't usually connect? - What question came to me that I haven't answered?

(a) After two weeks: are there patterns in what you notice and record?

(b) Did any entry produce a useful idea in a domain where you were stuck?

(c) The chapter describes the creative practitioner's habit of capturing ideas before they disappear. How often did ideas occur at inconvenient times? What happened to the ones you didn't capture?

Part 4: Constraints and Creativity

Exercise 27.8 — Constraint-Based Ideation

Demonstrate for yourself that constraints can facilitate creativity.

Round 1 (no constraints): Design your ideal workspace. No constraints. Whatever you want.

Round 2 (tight constraints): Design a workspace for a specific person (yourself) for a specific purpose (the work you most need to do creatively) with specific constraints: - Budget: $200 total - Space: a 10' × 10' room - Must incorporate at least one object you currently own

Which round produced the more interesting, specific, and genuinely useful design?

(b) Apply constraint-based ideation to a current project: impose three specific constraints (budget, time, material) and generate ideas within those constraints. Notice whether the constraints drive more original thinking than unconstrained generation.

(c) The chapter notes that constraints work best when they are "tight enough to force lateral movement but not so tight as to make the problem insoluble." Find the sweet spot in your own work.

Part 5: Creative Collaboration

Exercise 27.9 — Brainwriting vs. Brainstorming Comparison

Conduct two ideation sessions for the same problem with the same group of people (or the same people at different times):

Session 1 — Brainstorming: The classic format. Everyone speaks ideas out loud, building on each other. 15 minutes.

Session 2 — Brainwriting: Each person writes ideas silently and independently for 5 minutes. Papers are passed around; each person reads others' ideas and writes new ideas (stimulated by what they've read). 15 minutes total.

Compare: (a) Total number of ideas generated (b) Percentage of ideas considered original or unusual by the group (c) Individual participants' experience of the two formats

Did the research prediction hold — did brainwriting produce more and more original ideas?

Exercise 27.10 — Six Thinking Hats Practice

Apply the Six Thinking Hats to a group decision or creative challenge.

Work through each hat sequentially, spending 5–10 minutes in each mode:

1. White hat: What are the facts? What information do we have and what do we need?
2. Red hat: What are the emotions and intuitions? How does this feel?
3. Yellow hat: What is most valuable here? What's the best case?
4. Black hat: What could go wrong? What are the risks and problems?
5. Green hat: What alternatives exist? What creative possibilities haven't been explored?
6. Blue hat: How is our thinking? What process should we use next?

(a) Did the structured separation of thinking modes change the quality of the discussion?

(b) Was there a hat your group resisted or spent too little time in?

(c) The research on brainstorming suggests that mixing evaluation with generation is particularly damaging. Did you notice a difference between the black hat (evaluation) and green hat (generation) phases?

Part 6: Creativity and Environment

Exercise 27.11 — Analogical Reasoning Practice

The chapter describes Jordan's insight as an "analogical leap" — recognizing structural similarity between problems in different domains.

Choose a problem you are stuck on.

(a) Describe the structure of the problem in abstract terms — not the content, but the pattern. ("I need to coordinate change across multiple parties with partial jurisdiction and no incentive to absorb the coordination cost" rather than "I need to get four departments to collaborate on onboarding.")

(b) In what other domains does this structural pattern appear? (Biology, urban planning, international relations, cooking, sports, music, history?)

(c) How has the problem been solved in those other domains?

(d) What elements of those solutions can be adapted to your domain?

Practice this with three different current challenges. Notice which domains produce the most useful analogies.

Exercise 27.12 — Creative Environment Design

The research identifies conditions that facilitate creative work: mild positive affect, reduced self-monitoring, broad diffuse attention, psychological safety.

Design your personal creative environment:

(a) Time: when in your day is your mind most conducive to divergent thinking? (Usually not the most analytically focused time — often mid-morning or early afternoon, or immediately upon waking.)

(b) Space: what physical environment supports your creative thinking? (Some people need quiet; some need ambient noise; some need the outdoors.)

(c) Ritual: what beginning ritual would signal "creative mode" to your cognitive system?

(d) Capture system: how will you capture ideas when they arise at inconvenient times?

(e) Protection: what would protect your designated creative time from the demands that usually crowd it out?

Design a 30-day experiment using this environment. Assess creative output and experience at the end.

Part 7: Applied Creativity

Exercise 27.13 — Design Thinking Sprint

Apply the design thinking framework to a real problem you face.

Empathize (30 minutes): Talk to three people who experience this problem. Ask about their experience, their workarounds, what frustrates them. Observe rather than ask leading questions.

Define (20 minutes): Synthesize what you heard into a specific "How Might We...?" problem statement. Make sure it's specific enough to direct ideation but not so specific that it pre-determines the solution.

Ideate (20 minutes): Generate at least 20 distinct ideas. Use brainwriting if you're working with others. Do not evaluate during generation.

Prototype (30 minutes): Choose your most promising idea and build the simplest possible representation of it — a sketch, a mock-up, a description, a physical model made of whatever is at hand.

Test (in the next week): Show your prototype to at least two people who have the problem. Ask for genuine reactions, not approval.

(a) What did empathizing reveal that you hadn't known or hadn't considered?

(b) What did testing reveal that prototyping alone could not?

(c) Did the process change your definition of the problem?

Exercise 27.14 — Overcoming Creative Block

You are stuck on something creative. Apply this protocol:

1. Name the block: is it an empty page problem (don't know where to start), a wrong frame problem (the current framing isn't working), an evaluation problem (internal critic is too loud), or an incubation problem (needs more time away)?

2. Match the intervention to the block type: - Empty page: start with a constraint or a prompt; do the worst possible version first - Wrong frame: apply the reframing exercise (Exercise 27.4) - Evaluation: set a timer for 10 minutes of pure generation with explicit no-judgment permission - Incubation: step away deliberately; do something physical; sleep on it

3. Apply the intervention.

4. Assess: did it break the block? If not, what type of block was it really?

Exercise 27.15 — The Creative Audit

Assess your current relationship to creativity in your work and life:

(a) In which domains do you currently produce creative work (however modest)?

(b) In which domains have you stopped producing creative work that you used to enjoy?

(c) For the stopped domains: what changed? Was it time, evaluation apprehension, loss of intrinsic motivation, or something else?

(d) The chapter notes that creativity is a practice, not only a talent. If you were to reactivate one stopped creative domain: what would showing up look like? What would the first 20-minute session involve?

(e) What would protecting 30 minutes of creative time per week — for work that is intrinsically engaging and not instrumentally evaluated — do for you over a year?