Thinking Vs Doing – Creative Thinking in Business

Thinking Vs Doing – Creative Thinking in Business

Some days, the ideas come through thick and fast. The type of days when you just want to sit back and let your mind go off on a tangent. However, other days, all you really want to do is get moving. You’re anxious and can’t really focus on any one thought in particular. Instead, you are most efficient when you are getting things done.

It’s no coincidence that the motivation to think and the motivation to act seem to strike us at different times. Research by psychologists Arie Kruglanski, Tory Higgins, and their colleagues suggests that we have two complementary motivational systems: the ‘thinking’ system and the ‘doing’ system – and generally, we’re only capable of using one at a time.
How do you generate your best new ideas? Usually, you ‘brainstorm’ or try to come up with as many concepts as possible. That is called diverging and requires our ‘thinking’ system. On other occasions, you need to analyse those concepts and work out which ones are the best. That is called converging and it requires the motivation of the ‘doing’ system.
Managing your mindset can help you channel your thinking when you are trying to be creative. Here’s a few suggestions for influencing your motivational state which in turn, can be effective either for you as an individual or when you are working in a group.

Distance yourself

Physical and mental distance influence the way you think about things. When you are near to something, you think about it specifically, and you focus on the ways that you can interact with it. Being close to your work activates the ‘doing’ system. When you are far from it, you think about it more conceptually. Distance activates your ‘thinking’ system. Your workplace environment is strongly associated with getting things done, so in order to engage your ‘thinking’ mindset, spend time working in another place. Change your environment and it will enable you to change the way in which you think.

Movement is stimulation

The modern workplace involves a lot sitting. Most people have a primary workspace that involves a chair in front of a desk. This posture is great, because it allows us to work for long periods of time without causing bodily fatigue. In addition, the seated posture does not support many complex actions, so it reinforces the activation of a ‘thinking’ mindset, courtesy of years of schooling.

If you need to boost your ‘doing’ mindset, get mobile. Stand up, walk around your workspace, go outside and get some fresh air. Put your ideas on individual sheets of paper and spread them across your desk. Look at each idea and examine it separately. By getting up and moving around, you switch from a mode of contemplation to one of selection.

Turn up the heat

A looming deadline can also activate different systems: the closer the deadline, the more your ‘doing’ mindset is motivated. As the decision point approaches, you will naturally feel an increased need to determine a course of action.

Alternatively, use tight deadlines with caution as a tight deadline will make you feel the pressure to complete a project and, despite your best intentions, you may activate your ‘doing’ motivation and begin to analyse options before exploring them fully. Remember, you are going to be best at diverging when you have the freedom to think without having to reach a quick decision.

Getting to know how you react when your ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ systems are active will allow you to develop creative solutions to new problems, when needed.