Welcome to Think Create Communicate:

• the place to talk about how we think, create, and communicate
• the place to look at strategies and techniques to improve how we think, create, and communicate
• the place to learn about tools to boost our effectiveness as we think, create, and communicate

Think

The building blocks of thought are knowledge. That knowledge may be information you have found through research, discovery, or experimentation, or it may be something you have created. And once acquired, to be of any use, you need to be able to recall—or access—that knowledge, immediately.

A key aspect of thinking, is taking each discrete piece of knowledge and connecting it with other pieces of knowledge, synthesizing the individual elements to make a larger whole. As part of this process, each piece needs to be analyzed from different angles and the relationships—from one piece to another, to yet another—need to be considered.

With tools to help visualize each element and each connection, we can (literally) see what we’re thinking about, as well as move each element in relation to the other. And of course, visualizing our thoughts often makes recall more effective.

Create

It’s too easy to look at creativity as something done by an artist or by someone whose job title is, loosely, “creative”.

In truth, all of us perform creative acts, many times, every day.

We create when we conceive and build something that previously didn’t exist. Writing a shopping list is a creative act—it may not be interesting or have a use to others, but it is an act of creation; you are creating something that didn’t previously exist. But creating something, anything, is the easy part—the hard part is creating something good which is useful to others and has broader application.

Often, creativity is a matter of combination and iteration—combining several ideas to make something new, and then constantly editing and refining that new notion to make it good.

And when you are iterating, recombining, and editing, creativity becomes a process, not a destination. A bad idea is not, in and of itself bad, but rather, it is something that has yet to be improved. But more significantly, a bad idea is often a necessary step to reaching a good idea. A bad idea may be the impetus to power a search for alternative approaches and to focus your understanding of what you are trying to achieve.

Communicate

As we create, there is a need to take our new ideas and teach, share, and debate with others.

We need to explain the ideas in their terms with a focus on how those ideas can help them. When we talk to others, the creation is no longer about us—it is about the other person, and finding why the creation will be of value to them.

Without a firm grasp on the fundamentals of communication, any new creation becomes irrelevant.

Stick Around

Check out the books and the blog posts for other ideas that can help you think, create, and communicate.