The exercise of the 30 circles was created by Robert MCKIMprofessor of mechanical engineering in Stanford. This tool aims to work on the divergent thought process and develop its ability to generate as many ideas as possible.
Divergent thought, source of creativity
Divergent thinking is a thought process that is used to produce creative ideas by imagining as many solutions as possible. It occurs in a free, spontaneous and non -directive settingso that ideas can fuse randomly.
When the proposals spring from all sides, original and unexpected (therefore creative) suggestions necessarily end up arriving. Research has shown that these are the musicians and music composers which tend to use divergent thought mostly in their creative processes.
L’Exercise of 30 circles aim to allow you to:
- Locate yourself in terms of creativity By making you discover your ability to go off the beaten track and generate ideas.
- Start a work session by “warming up” your creativity and encouraging your divergent thinking on a simple problem.
- Train your creative fluence by repeating this exercise several days apart to get used to going beyond the blocking that can occur once all “conventional” or obvious ideas have been found.
Print this pagetake a pencil and opens the “chronometer” application on your phone.
1. Do the exercise of the 30 circles
- For 3 minutes, transforms as many circles as possible into recognizable objects. Use a circle to draw the moon, another for a bicycle wheel, another for a soccer ball, etc.
- Do not try to aim for artistic quality, the idea is to fill a maximum of circles in 3 minutes.
- Then take the time to look at your results and comment on your own performance: are you proud of yourself? Could you have done better or more?
2. Analysis your results
Then ask yourself the following questions that will give you an idea of your ability to use divergent thought and generate ideas on the fly:
- How many circles have you filled? 10, 20, or even 30?
- Was there the same theme that was available on several circles?
- Have you used the exterior of the circles?
- Have you respected the rule or, for example, have you combined several circles by connecting them to draw a pair of glasses or handcuffs?
- Did you feel a blockage after 10 or 15 circles?
- What helped you continue or, on the contrary, prevented you from going further?
How to train your creativity?
If you easily filled the 30 circles, you probably have no worries to generate a lot of ideas and adopt a divergent way of thinking. And all the more so if you got out of the “frame” by combining several circles for example.
On the other hand, if this exercise posed you difficulties, that you have encountered blockages or that you have limited yourself to decline 3 or 4 ideas, you can have an interest in practicing regularly to generate ideas.
For example, you can redo the exercise of the 30 circles in a few days or choose an object of everyday life (a spoon, an umbrella, a book …) and find it 20 different uses …
