How Writing Helps with Creative Thinking
We are the species that can’t stop thinking about things. In our waking hours, there are moments of conscious thinking while we’re idling by and even when we’re doing something entirely different from our running thoughts.
Our thinking process can fall into different territories, one of which into daydreaming and one other a part of the creative process. What divides the two is the action we take for our thoughts, where daydreaming lets thinking vaporize into the void of our mind while creative processes make those thoughts tangible.
Some may think taking tangible action requires heavy lifting, complex physical processes, or highly educated decision-making. Although yes, if you want to increase the chance of self-sabotage. Yet actually, tangibility can start in the simplest way, which is through writing. Don’t start thinking about writing a novel. Writing can start with a word that reflects your thinking and if time is your friend, then writing with a form of story would be great and can be achieved with the simplest Indonesian grammatical form: the SPOK (Subyek Predikat Obyek Keterangan).
Generally, writing our thoughts helps us ingrain data into our minds and structure our ideas better. This is especially true when done through handwriting because “...handwriting forces you to organize your thoughts that lead to deeper processing,” said Jared Hovarth, from the University of Melbourne’s Science of Learning Research Center to HuffPost Australia. But in a creative process, writing, whether done manually or digitally, helps you detach yourself from your thoughts and see them from a third-person perspective. By looking at your own ideas, you can see where the gap has been or whether it’s an assumption or facts.
The gap-filling function can work like this: The word “creative” is often mistaken for a leap of thoughts that appear out of nowhere or a eureka. But it’s actually a train of thoughts or a chain of stories. Creative processes consist of filling the gaps in those thoughts or stories, so whatever form of solution or outcome of the process makes sense to the human's story-wired brain. If we recall the simple form of SPOK to this gap-filling function, it can look like this:
(S) Ibu.
What is ibu doing?
(S) Ibu (P) duduk.
Why does she sit? Where? On what?
(S) Ibu (P) duduk (O) di kursi (K) rotan yang dibuat oleh anaknya.
From there it can go everywhere. You can trigger many more trains of thought that might fit the stories. We can simulate whether the mother is sitting in the chair on the terrace, drinking tea while deep in her thoughts or whether she is eating biscuits. We can imagine as well what kind of chair she is sitting on and the environment settings she is currently surrounded with.
Ibu duduk di kursi malas rotan yang dibuat oleh anaknya. Sembari minum teh, melihat pemandangan hutan kota Bandung, ia teringat bagaimana anaknya mendesain kursi tersebut, mengukurnya dengan tubuhnya agar sesuai dipakai sampai ia renta. Kursi malas tersebut tidak terlalu rendah, tidak ada sudut tajam, dan dengan sandaran tangan yang kokoh terbuat sari kayu. Agar nanti kelak, ketika ia sudah sulit berdiri dari duduk, ia dapat berpegang kuat pada kursi tersebut dan meminimalisir terjatuh.
Designers, let’s say furniture designers, can use this gap-filling function to imagine what kind of person they are designing the chair for and how it should function. Imagine if there’s no Subject (Subyek) in the sentence or thoughts that designers produce. The chair's purpose will be questionable.
The assumption-breaking function of writing works to question the stories you’ve created in your mind. Sometimes, with all our biases, we conjure stories, even detailed ones. Our brain automatically fills in the gaps to make the narratives make sense to our own minds. By writing your thoughts and simply putting a question or a question mark, we can start to reassess the stories again.
Is it true that the mother in the story above will not fall off her chair? Is it true that she can stand up quickly in her old age simply by holding the hand rest? From here, designers can start breaking the assumptions by testing the product or doing more research on elderly people.
Now, can we do all these creative processes without having to write? Of course. But in the modern age that is so embedded with corporate bureaucracy and social media algorithms, our experience says people often feel they have contributed enough to their community or environment only by talking about their thoughts. This resulted in less accountability for our own ideas, gaps in a supposedly end-to-end process, unresolved problems, junior-level professionals being overworked, decision-makers creating ill-suited policies, and more. We often overestimate our own capacity to remember and digest our own thinking. We’re usually overconfident with the thoughts we’ve created but uncomfortable when questioned back or asked to elaborate.
This is apparent in a cross-level, cross-team/sector design thinking workshop. Often they discuss things but lack the sharpness and focus toward the issue given. In addition, often they progress or make decisions highly based on assumptions. Writing itself can be a method to create open conversation and even a discourse, at least to yourself. It helps put thoughts into focus by forming the thoughts into a cohesive and universally understandable form.
Design thinking workshop tackles this issue simply by handing post-it and a marker to each workshop attendee and asking them to write a word for each of their thoughts towards the issue, whether it’s right or seemingly wrong.
Designers should be comfortable in holding the marker and making a leap from thinking to doing.
In the innovation and design world, there’s a term for “design by doing”. It’s a phase where thinking is processed by taking action. To those who felt unfamiliar or uncomfortable in taking action in an area outside of their “expertise” or “scope,” the post-it and the marker to write/sketch is the hammer to break up the uncomfortableness.
Now, you can go back to your conscious thinking moments, and pick up a pen to write down your thoughts, however strange the topic is. Make friends with the creative process and release yourself from daydreaming because this applies to all sectors and professions.