Idea 86: Suspend judgement
Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.
Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher
The best-known and most widely used creative thinking technique is brainstorming. It was introduced in the 1930s, so it has been around a long time – a sign of its usefulness. You can employ its principles when you are thinking alone, but they work better in a small group.
The essential principle behind brainstorming is simple, namely that you should concentrate on the spontaneous flow of ideas and suspend judgement on them until later in the process. By analogy, turn the hot water tap on full and turn off the cold tap. If you run them both together you get tepid or lukewarm water. What the first rule of brainstorming ...
