SEVEN BLOCKS OF CREATIVITY

In this modernization era, we used to hear and see the word of “Nothing is impossible”, in newspaper, television, radio or even in the Internet. In fact, everything seems to be possible except of bring back the dead to life. Creativity and innovation in problem solving will cause people to come out with solution that helps in daily life. With the latest technology of ICT and research, it is not impossible to see more weird stuffs that previously nobody thought off could happen. Meanwhile, the government should encourage the people to think out of the box. This is very important, in order to come out with something that is creative with market value and able to bring goodness the end users. However, there seven creativity blocks that could stop someone from contributing to the world.


1.    PERCEPTUAL BLOCK
* We always have a negative thinking about anything around us.
* Always judge people through our perception by looking from their external side without knowing him/her true colors.

First on the list is a perceptual block. This includes anything that interferes with our perception of a problem or situation and its possible resolutions. Perceptual block happened on the first stage when we firstly face the problem. It causes negative thinking about anything around us. We normally judge people through our perception by looking from their external side without knowing him/her true colors. So, as a normal human being like others, we should not be like “judge book by is its cover”, because others might have their own reasons for being that way, while the inner them are differently.


2.    EMOTIONAL BLOCK
* The feeling of down/sad when the problems we faced and solved did not reach of what we have expected.
* The feeling of scare when we had hurt other person’s heart and always blame ourselves on what happen.
* When we cannot think out of the box and take a long time to think about it when we need receive new task.

Next block of creativity is emotional block. We usually scare that what we done is not what people expect from us. A good analytical and beyond view characteristic are needed to overcome this block. The secret to be success is to be creative and dare to take risk on an extraordinary idea. Never been scare to be unique and be brave to trust own idea if it could really bring you to a better tomorrow. For example, who can expect Genting Highland could be one of Malaysia best tourism’s destinations if not the late Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong. This risk taker prove that zero could be something if we able to overcome the emotional block.


3.    IMAGINATION BLOCK
* Always dream the bad outcomes without trying to solve the problem.
* Imagine/dream the good outcome where else we know and realize it will become worst.
* Always imagine if we have own something that we dream off for example hand phone or anything else but actually we already know that we will never have that stuff.

Then we have imagination block on this list. In life, we sometime need to predict the bad outcome too. Never be too naïve to easily trust others, it could drag us to the worst. Do some homework on collected data and surveys to make sure we could hear what the basic requirement from users is. The best example I could think of is the ideas of designer from IKEA.


4.    CULTURAL BLOCK
* Something that we do, we must follow the right path so that we can avoid from breaking our tradition.
* Sometime we cannot differentiate and think well about bad or good moral values.
* For Muslim, they need to figure out first whether the things are “halal” or “haram” to protect their culture well.

The forth block is cultural block. We could simply define it by saying that different places might have different ways of problem solving and ways of practice. We must choose the right path to prevent us from breaking the tradition we used to follow. We need the good ethics value for us to differentiate good and bad. For example, Muslim must make sure everything that they done are “Halal” to them.


5.    ENVIRONMENTAL BLOCK
* Easy to be influenced with the environment and it will make our mind changes.
* Always think that if anyone else can do some kind of things, we also can do that.

Followed on the list, we have environmental block. Always have a positive thinking on ourselves, be confident that we could make it just like others. However, we do need to be a bookworm so that we do at least have the basic knowledge on certain subjects that we need. For example, the tagline of Nike brand, “Just Do It”, widely spread to public, encouraging people to do the thing that they trust.


6.    EXPRESSIVE BLOCK
* Express our feeling to anyone else if we cannot bare our problem alone so that we are not keep it in our own self and our problem can be settled smoothly.

Behind every successful man, there is a great woman; this is briefly the idea of expressive block. We as normal human being, we do need someone beside, who can understand us, who that able to support us when we are in need. Our family, friends and colleagues are the closet people who can help us to overcome expressive block.


7.    INTELLECTUAL BLOCK
* We must think out of the box and we can give extraordinary opinion.
* Thinking with intellect or open-minded opinion can give us self-confidence and it will make us be ourselves.

Lastly, we have intellectual block. Most failure is because of lack of knowledge and experience. Therefore, we need to have enough knowledge because we start to plan for something big, especially when it deals with big amount of money and efforts. Business is all about earning, so we need to prepare ourselves enough. Do not do something without planning in depth, the used of ideas from systems development life cycle, SDLC, is good for us to plan, analyze, design, implement and maintain to start, create and enhance ideas.


As conclusion, there are blocks in our daily life that we could not escape from; we have to be ready enough to face it. A famous quote from Lao Tzu,

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich”

truly define in need of knowledge. Nevertheless, praying to God for success and return back to the nature if we do succeed someday later.