What Is Creative Thinking (And How to Train It)

Creative thinking gets described as if it were a mysterious gift held by artists and inventors. The research says something more useful: it is a small set of thinking habits that can be learned. Below is the working definition, the specific habits that make it up, and how to train them.

The working definition

Creative thinking is the ability to produce ideas or solutions that are both original and useful. The originality comes from generating many options rather than committing to the first one. The usefulness comes from evaluating those options rigorously enough to keep the good ones and discard the bad. Both halves are required. Either alone is not creative thinking; it is either novelty for its own sake or competence without imagination.

The four core moves of creative thinkers

Generation of many options before choosing one. Questioning assumptions that the problem seems to require. Connecting ideas from fields that seem unrelated to each other. Evaluating options against a clear standard rather than stopping at the first that feels acceptable. Every strong creative thinker cycles through these four moves, sometimes consciously, sometimes as a habit worn smooth by practice.

Examples of creative thinking in practice

A product designer who lists twenty ways to solve a problem before evaluating any of them. A writer who drafts three different openings and picks the sharpest. A founder who challenges the industry assumption everyone else accepts as fixed. A scientist who applies a method from one field to a question in another. Each of these is a specific application of the same underlying moves.

The difference between creative thinking and problem solving

Problem solving finds a good answer to a well-defined problem. Creative thinking often starts by redefining the problem itself. A creative thinker will spend more time on "what is actually being asked" and "what if the question is wrong" than on the answer. That extra time upstream is often where the biggest gains in output quality come from.

How to train creative thinking

Force yourself to generate at least five options before picking one, even for small decisions. Ask "what would have to be true for the opposite answer to be right." Read deeply in one field outside your own for cross-pollination. Keep a running note of ideas you had that you did not use; review it monthly. Each of these is a small practice, and the effects compound.

Common mistakes people make about creative thinking

Waiting for inspiration instead of practicing the moves. Believing you have to be born creative. Confusing being different with being creative. Chasing novelty without evaluating usefulness. And treating brainstorming sessions as the whole of creative thinking rather than one small part of it.

Where creative thinking meets the audience

The final test of creative thinking is whether the output finds the specific audience it is genuinely useful for. On engagement-optimized platforms, the audience is optimized for what stops the scroll, which biases creative thinking toward provocation. On community based platforms, where reach is earned through voted, deliberate audience backing, creative thinking is rewarded when the output is genuinely useful to the people who back it. Cracy is built for this shape, so the harder move of pairing novelty with usefulness pays back.

Read next: why creativity is a skill, not talent and how to beat creative block.