Art of Thinking: The Critical | Creative Dichotomy

Conventional wisdom reserves that right hemisphere of our brain is endowed with processing of visual, spatial and emotional manipulation. The left hemisphere is there to serve us for linear reasoning and language functions.

However, the irony is there is no direct scientific evidence collaborating the idea that different thinking style lie within the domain specification of each hemisphere...."the neurophysiologists and neuropsychologists who specialize in the human cerebral cortex are starting to view the left-righters with something of the wariness which the astronomers reserve for astrology." - William H. Calvin.

The Art of Thinking is a dance between the critique and the creator within. The brain constantly combines, substitutes, adapts, modifies, magnifies, substracts, adds, re-arrange and reverses bits of information in order for thinking to happen. It is like a cerebral symphony where billions of neurons participate as master musicians. Perhaps, for this very reason there is little agreement amongst scholars about the definition of the two kinds of thinking. However, the thinking pattern of the geniuses reveal that they are skilled both in the Art of Science and the Science of Art. They can reduce the sun to a yellow spot and they can easily visualize a yellow spot as the life enforcing sun.

In his book, Cracking Creativity, Michael Michalko explores the art of holistic thinking exhibited by geniuses.

1. Know how to see, not just look at: “The invisibility of the obvious”. Great sales people are so good that you do not know when they are selling.
2. Make a thought visible: You interpret via the tangible. "Identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions." Be a consummate sketcher.
3. Think fluently: "The holistic experience that people feel when they act with total involvement." It is being in the "flow" as embraced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
4. Make novel combinations: Liquid Paper and Velcro owes their existence due to this novelty.
5. Connect the unconnected: The ever popular Reggae emerged due to the connectivity of traditional African jazz, American jazz, old-time rhythm and blues, ska and rocksteady. Eric Lewis is one such connector. He created a new musical identity: ELEW......it is rock, it is jazz, it is classical piano.
6. Look at the other side: Roger Martin calls this multi-dimensional “integrative thinking”. Martin interviewed more than 50 successful leaders, to find a distinct common characteristic: "the predisposition and capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads. And then, without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they're able to produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea."
7. Look in other worlds: It so happens we have abundance of green plants here on Earth. However, that does make a plant green. When the scientists studied light absorbed and reflected by organisms on Earth (that which attributes to the greenery), determined that if astronomers were to look at the light given off by planets circling distant stars, they might predict that some planets have mostly non-green plants.
8. Find what you are not looking for: The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius who also happened to be a monumental philosopher found equanimity in the midst of conflict.
9. Awaken the collaborative spirit: 'Do Us a Flavour’ An open competition was enacted to design a new crisp flavor for Walkers. The best flavors were then voted on by the public. http://www.walkers.co.uk/flavours/

It is said that the master polymath, Leonardo daVinci always looked at his finished painting from a far distance to get a different perspective. By distancing yourself from the pattern of how you are conceived, you change your perception of who you are, thereby allowing yourself to see something that you could not otherwise see.

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