How to Be a Better Thinker, Innovator and Problem Solver

5 steps to future-proof yourself by improving your mental agility

Cogs replaced hands so to speak during the U.S. Industrial Revolution when businesses felt a rush to automate manual tasks. Now the technology rush is removing the cogs as we hurry to replace people running the lines with automated systems. With artificial intelligence not too far away, the trend for less human involvement is set to continue into the future.

So it makes sense that business is evolving, too, moving from a “doing” model to a “thinking” model.

As technology handles more tasks, mental agility has never been more important. If we want to future-proof our businesses, and ourselves, we need to be able to think, re-think and even un-think current processes. Like anything, coming up with solutions and new ways to see things takes practice.

Behavioral strategists Dan Gregory and Kieran Flanagan, authors of the new book Selfish, Scared & Stupid , teach people in business how to become better thinkers, innovators and problem solvers; here are their best tips to get your mind muscles working:

1. Ideas are a numbers game.

When brainstorming, you want the numbers on your side. This is the secret to the best creative and problem-solving minds on the planet. You have to generate enough options to get the obvious thinking out of the way. Like reps at the gym, you need to push through the easy stuff and get to the difficult things for the best results.

Your first ideas are obvious and thus first-level thinking. You need to go deeper than that to find gold. You must go beyond that first-level thinking to discover unseen ideas that truly solve the problem.

2. Think in questions.

Train your brain to think in questions not statements. The problem with statements is that they presuppose a solution and can stop you from coming up with an innovative solution. Questions in contrast open up the solutions. Asking for a shelf sticker that draws attention to a product is very different from the question of how to increase noticeability at the shelf; it leads to different solutions.

The first gives you exactly what you asked for, but the latter could lead to breakthrough ideas: new packaging designs, a revolutionary product design, sound-activated point of sale, or multiple products in new flavors.

3. Don’t come up with ideas. Come up with solutions.

You need a problem to solve. One of the biggest problems we find is that people say, “I need a great idea,” and then they wonder why they can’t think of anything. We have never come up with a great idea in our combined 40-plus years in business, but we have come up with a huge number of innovative solutions.

Ideas solve problems (even those the market is unconscious of), and if you have not defined a problem, chances are you will not miraculously have any ideas that are useful. Spend time looking for problems that need solving rather than trying to think differently about nothing in particular.

4. Back yourself into a corner.

The tighter the corner, the more creative you seem to get. So much so that creative people have a mantra: “Grant me the freedom of a tight brief.”

The brain seems to work better under duress; perhaps our survival instincts kick in and adrenaline fuels us to find a way out. So find a problem and then add parameters until you feel a little panicked. Slight beads of sweat forming on your brow are perfect.

5. Collide ideas and thinking.

Your ability to think different is crucial. A great way to do this is to get different inputs and inspirations from different people, places, industries and systems. If you want to become an agile thinker, you have to learn beyond your own role, read a lot, be interested in everything and look to other industries to see what they are doing.

The most successful patents often combine thinking or tech from different industries, and new product design can be as simple as colliding thinking. For example, putting use-by dates onto pillows as the Australian brand Tontine did is a food industry idea repurposed very successfully.

Are you ready to start working out and developing those idea muscles? You may be surprised at what you can do.

What’s your creative style of thinking—are you a leaper or a linker? Both can produce original and imaginative ideas…. They just do it in different ways.

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The Problem With the ‘New Year, New You’ Mindset

The question is about as hard to dodge as the “So, are you dating anyone?” questions you hear at nearly every family function. As the new year approaches, we as a society tend to do a lot of reflecting on how the last 365 days unfolded. Did we stay in shape like we planned? Did we impress our bosses enough to secure that next promotion? Did we find someone to love, or properly appreciate those we have?

Although the holidays are a time of joy and gratitude, the last days of the year are often filled with forward thinking, our faces to the horizon, looking for ways to make the following year even better. Phrases like “clean slate” and “starting over” saturate our newsfeeds, along with articles filled with a laundry list of life hacks for self-improvement. And although I love the hopeful eye with which many gaze, I have to admit that I have a problem with the “new year, new you” mentality.

I understand it’s meant to inspire; reframing the stroke of midnight as the gift of a fresh start. If this year we fell short of who we wanted to be, we can try again next year. New year, new you!

But is that really what we want?

If I were to start the year completely unaffected by my past, who would I be? And what in the world would possess me to toss all of those memories into the trash?

“New you” is said so casually that it’s easy to miss the deeper meaning. Oxford describes new as this: “made, introduced, or discovered recently or now for the first time.” New Year, new you literally means beginning the year as a completely new person. I don’t know what you think, but to me that sounds a little off. If I were to start the year completely unaffected by my past, who would I be? And what in the world would possess me to toss all of those memories into the trash?

It seems we only want to start the year anew when we feel the last was, well, less than satisfactory. But that is exactly the moment we should be digging in! When in your life have you noticed yourself grow stronger? I can tell you it’s not when things are sailing smoothly. In life, we expand our strength and courage in the hard times. It’s an “Oh shit!” response during the freefall, and a simple lesson in physics—when you take a deep breath and make yourself as big as possible to slow your speed in an effort to avoid crashing into the ground. Beginning the new year as a new you would be abandoning the possibility of your moment of glory. As someone who has free fallen many times and fought hard to reach where and who I am today, I’d rather like to bring that warrior into the new year with me.

Over the years, that warrior has crushed self-doubt, juggled multiple jobs, experienced injustice, lost loved ones, survived heartbreak and skin cancer…. Sure, she made (plenty) mistakes and didn’t always “drink more water” or meet my other expectations, but that’s no reason to erase it all to start fresh. The victories and the mistakes I’ve made have brought me to the place I stand before you today, and for that I am grateful.

The desire to improve is admirable and should certainly be encouraged. But we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves as to demand we start over if come January 1st we haven’t got our lives figured out. Some of my favorite memories came from things that were spontaneous and unplanned! And it would be a shame to discredit how far you’ve truly come. Life is hard. Perhaps you didn’t lose those 10 pounds or find a new job. Regardless, the year was not a wash because of a couple failed resolutions. You tried, and that counts for a lot more than you’d think. Gaining character and resilience is something to celebrate, not bury, at the start of a new year. I, for one, am not willing to hide my battle wounds for the sake of newness and perfection.

It would be nearly impossible to make a masterpiece if you were continually starting over.

I stumbled across a quote somewhere that stated this idea simply: Life is like a canvas and every day is a new brush stroke. It would be nearly impossible to make a masterpiece if you were continually starting over. The “new year, new you” philosophy discredits the beauty of your journey, of taking failure and running with it. Maybe you accidentally dropped your paintbrush and smeared a black streak across the entire painting, and now your plan to paint a Thomas Cole version of the Alaskan winter is out of the question. That doesn’t mean you can’t still paint something sensational. And the best part is, when you do, that painting will be a true original and all yours.

So as the new year begins, be bold. Be brave. Don’t ditch what might look like a mess of a canvas for the ideal of perfection in a blank slate. Because real and lasting progress is made slowly and with grit, not simply when the date on the calendar says so. A fresh start might sound appealing, but there is something to be said for refusing to give up on yourself. For looking in the mirror and being determined to make something beautiful out of what you see, no matter the state at which you stand.

The important thing is to have patience and treat yourself with compassion. And remember that you, as you are now, are more than deserving of another year, a new year, to build and grow upon. You don’t need to start new, you simply need the courage to start as you. 

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