Convergent .vs Divergent thinking is needed to get creative in every aspect of your life. When you utilize these two thought practices, you will be amazed at how quickly and effectively you can generate novel solutions.
It is akin to brainstorming divergent thinking calls for brainstorming. See our guide on how to Brainstorm more effectively here!
Divergent Thinking
Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing, “non-linear” manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent cognitive fashion
To Promote Divergent Thinking
Activities that promote divergent thinking include creating lists of questions, setting aside time for thinking and meditation, brainstorming, subject mapping, bubble mapping, keeping a journal, playing tabletop role-playing games, creating artwork, and free writing.
Convergent Thinking
Convergent thinking is taking those ideas, thinking about them, reflecting on them, improving them, and coming up with a decision. By pulling all of the ideas together, generally to see which ones would feasibly work for you with the given constraints, and objectives of your task?
Convergent .vs Divergent Thinking
Convergent thinking is using your analytical thinking to pull all of these ideas back together. While divergent thinking is letting your imagination run wild coming up with creative ideas. To most make use of these two ideas, refer to these guidelines from the Creative Education Foundation.
- Defer judgment
- Combine and build
- Seek wild ideas
- Go for quantity (set a concrete number goal)
- You can only do one thinking at a time.
Start with divergent thinking to generate all your ideas, and use convergent thinking to bring it all back together.
Main Take-Aways
- You need both convergent and divergent thinking to come up with and execute creative ideas.
- You need to give each type of thinking its space to come up with novel solutions. This is the strength of convergent .vs divergent thinking.
Action item
Take 15 minutes to practice divergent thinking on your problem. Then use 15 minutes to use convergent thinking to bring your realistic solution to reality. How is the idea different than how it would have been if you just used one of the thinking patterns?
