Try this exercise to improve your divergent thinking abilities.

“How many uses can you think of for a paper clip?”

Get a piece of paper and give yourself five minutes to list as many unusual uses as you can for this item. Come up with ideas as quickly as you can; don’t stop to think about whether they’re any good, or whether they’re unusual enough. The key to successful creativity is quantity. In this video on Divergent Thinking Sir Ken Robinson states that most people might come up with 10 to 15 ideas, while people who are good at divergent thinking would come up with around 200. You can also try this exercise with other common objects around you (broom, pencil, cup, ….). Try it each day to improve your divergent thinking ability.


Now that you have generated a great amount of ideas, it is time to practice convergent thinking.

Look at the ideas emerged and try to group similar ideas together. Look for thoughts or ideas that appear to fit together, then identify the category or group these ideas represent. Give a label or "heading" to each of the categories you identify. You should identify 3 - 5 categories. Evaluate the categories according to these two criteria - usefulness, originality and feasibility – to select the most promising one.

creativity