How to Think Divergently
Divergent thinking, or thinking outside of the box, occurs when you look at an idea or a situation in an original way. Though it's usually something talked about in business circles, divergent or lateral thinking can improve the quality of learning of any material, improve test scores and liven up your outlook of any situation.
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Instructions
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Prepare for divergent thinking by brainstorming, concept mapping and keeping a journal. Teach yourself to freely associate ideas rather than keeping all of your ideas focused in a single vein or method.
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When confronted with a brain teaser or real-world problem, look for the most common solution first. Then, instead of stopping with this solution, begin again from the beginning and approach the problem with a completely different perspective, looking for a solution from a different angle.
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Practice lateral thinking brain teasers and puzzles, such as rebuses (pictures that combine to make words) and literal interpretation puzzles (puzzles in which words are arranged to be interpreted as another word or phrase, for example the word "mind" positioned above the word "matter" to form the phrase "mind over matter").
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Practice scrambling and unscrambling words, as well as finding smaller words scrambled within a larger word. Exercises like this help you to see how an accepted reality can be broken up into other, unrelated components.
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Learn to view the world as consisting of a countless number of different perspectives. The more you can get used to seeing simple, everyday issues as a matter of perspective (by looking up news issues from a number of angles, or reading literature written from a perspective different from your own), the easier it is to think divergently in any situation.
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