How to Get a Great Idea The guests had arrived, and the wine was warm. Once again, I’d forgotten to refrigerate it. "Don’t worry," a friend said, "I can chill it for you fight away." Five minutes later she emerged from the kitchen with the wine perfectly cooled. Asked to reveal her secret, she said, "Easy. I poured the wine in a plastic bag and then dipped it in ice water. After a few minutes the wine was cold. The hard part was getting it back into bottle. I couldn’t find a funnel (漏斗), so I made a cone with wax paper." My guests applauded. "How wonderful if we could all be that clever," one remarked. A decade of research has convinced me we can. What separates the average person from Edison, Picasso or even Shakespeare isn’t creative capacity--it’s the ability to use that capacity by encouraging creative impulses and then acting upon them. Most of us seldom achieve our creative potential. I think I know why, and I can help unlock the reservoir of ideas hiding within every one of us. One puzzle I’ve watched students deal with is retrieving a Ping-Pong ball that has fallen to the bottom of a sealed, vertical drainpipe. The tools that they can use are either too short to reach the ball or too wide to fit into the pipe, which is also too narrow to reach into by hand. At last some students make the connection: drainpipe= water=floating. They pour water down the hole, and the ball floats to the top. This and many other experiments suggest concrete ways of increasing creativity in all of us. Here are the best techniques. Capture the fleeting. A good idea is like a rabbit. It runs by so fast that sometimes you see only its ears or tail. To capture it, you must be ready. Creative people are always ready to act, and that may ha the only difference between us and them. Poet Amy Lowell wrote of the urgency with which she captured new ideas, "Whatever 1 am doing, I lay it aside and attend to the arriving poem," she wrote. Like many other writers, Lowell sought paper and pencil when she saw a good idea coming. I enter new ideas into a pocket computer. Anything--even a napkin--win do. In a letter to a friend in 1821, Ludwig van Beethoven talked about how he thought of a beautiful tune while dozing in carriage. "But scarcely did I awake when away flew the tune," he wrote, "and I could not recall any part of it.’ Fortunately--for Beethoven and for us--the next day in the same carriage, the tune came back to him, and this time he captured it in writing. When a good idea comes your way, write it down--on your arm if necessary. Not every idea will have value, of course. The point is to capture first and evaluate them later. Daydream. Surrealist Dali used to lie on a sofa, holding a spoon. Just as he began to fall asleep. Dali would drop the spoon onto a plate on the floor. The sound shocked him awake, and he would immediately sketch the images he had seen in his mind in that fertile world of semi-sleep. Everyone experiences this strange state, and everyone can take advantage of it. Try Dali’s trick, or just allow yourself to daydream. For many, the "three b’s"--bed, bath and bus--are productive. There, and anywhere else you can be with your thoughts undisturbed, you’ll find that ideas emerging freely. Seek challenges. When you’re stuck behind a locked door, every behavior that’s ever gotten you free turns up quickly: you may push or pull on the knob, bang the door--even shout for help. Scientists call the rehappening of old behaviors in a challenging situation resurgence. The more behaviors that reappear, the greater the number of possible interconnections, and the more likely that new ideas will occur. Try inviting friends and business associations from different areas of your life to a party. Bring people of two or three generations together. This will get you thinking in new ways. Edwin Land, one of America’s most prolific inventors, said that the idea that led to his invention of the Polaroid camera came from his three-year-old daughter. On a visit to Santa Fe in 1943, she asked why she couldn’t see the picture he had just taken. During the next hour, as Land walked around Santa Fe, all he had learned about chemistry came together, with amazing results. Said Land, "The camera and the film became clear to me. In my mind they were so real that I spent several hours describing them." Put new and crazy items--like kid’s toys--on your desk. Turn pictures upside down or sideways. The more detersive the stimulations we receive, the more rapidly the mind produces new ideas. Expand your world. Many discoveries in sciences, engineering and the arts mix ideas from different fields. Consider "The Two-String Problem". Two widely separated strings hang from a ceiling. Even though you can’t reach both at once, is it possible to tie their ends together, using only a pair of pliers One college student found the solution almost immediately. He tied the pliers to one string and set it in motion like a pendulum (钟摆). As it swung back and forth, he walked quickly to the other string and drew it as far forward as it would reach. Then he caught the swinging string when it passed near him and tied the two ends. Asked how he had solved the problem, the student explained he had just come from a physics class on pendulum motion. What he had learned in one context transferred to a completely different one. This principle works outside the lab as well. To enhance your creativity, learn something new. If you’re a banker, take up tap dancing. If you’re a nurse, try a course in mythology. Read a book on a subject you know little about. Change your daily newspaper. The new will interconnect with the old in novel and potentially fascinating ways. Becoming more creative is really just a matter of paying attention to that endless flow of ideas you produce, and learning to capture and act upon the new that’s within you. To enhance creativity, people should always learn something new.