There are many creative problem solving techniques, and each will lead you to different kinds of solutions. One of the simplest, though, is the “add, subtract and change” technique. What follows is a basic explanation of how to use it to generate more creative solutions.

Add

Whatever you are working on, whether a scientific experiment, a business concept, or a personal issue with family, this technique can help. It starts with the simple question, “What can I add to this?” Open your mind up in answering this. If designing a new vehicle for people who love the outdoors, it’s easy to imagine things to add; a tent platform on the roof, a skylight for star viewing, windows with screens, etc.

With other problems you will have to think more widely. For example, if you are trying to find a way to travel to India, you may not immediately think of things to “add” to the problem. Money does come to mind, though, and something as seemingly meaningless as “a group of people” might trigger the idea to go free as a guide, or to get a reduced fare for selling a tour to friends. Let a few random thoughts enter here, and see how adding this or that might lead to a new solution.

Subtract

The second step of this creative problem solving technique is also very easy if you are just working on product innovation and invention. What can you take away from a television? How about half of the buttons on the remote, or half the weight? Look at what is there and ask what would happen if you subtracted it (or part of it). The screen? You might have a television receiver that displays through the user’s computer screen.

With a business problem, like how to gain more repeat customers for your restaurant, you have to think more broadly. What if you subtract payment? Hmm… Customers order from a “subscribers menu,” which includes the fast meal at a set price, billed monthly. They don’t have wait for the bill. Subtract the menu? Perhaps for a discount customers would prepay for tokens good for specific meals, to be redeemed anytime. They just hand a token to the host when they walk in, and get their meal fast. Once they prepay, they have to come to your restaurant to redeem the token, thus guaranteeing repeat business.

Change

This is the fun step, where you ask what you can change about the problem or the current situation. If you are looking for a way to increase the value of your home before selling it, you ask what you can change about the home, the way you advertise it, the terms of the sale, and anything else you can think of. But to make your problem solving more creative, get a bit crazy in your questions. For example, ask, “What can I change about the buyer?” This may seem silly at first, but it also might suggest targeting a market with buyers who are willing to pay a bit more.

Look for all the things that might be changed, and all the ways you might change them. As with all problem solving techniques, the idea is to generate as many different ideas as possible. Only afterwards do you look at them more critically to find the good ones.

For example, John had a neighbor with too much junk in his yard. It was lowering the value of his home, and he planned to move in a year or so. He asked what he could change about his approach, where he lived, where the neighbor lived, the junk itself, the view, and so on. Asking about changing where the neighbor lived was not so silly as it first seemed. As it turns out, he was a renter, and wanted to move, but was short on cash. John loaned him a few hundred dollars, figuring that even if he was never repaid he would gain ten times that on the increased sale’s price of his own home. That’s a creative solution.

What can I add? What can I subtract? What can I change? Just ask these three questions and be open minded in answering them. That is the basis of this simple problem solving technique.

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You may have heard the expression, or even had the experience, but what is brain fog? It is that state of mind when you can’t quite focus or think clearly. As for how to cure it, that depends on the cause. There are two basic kinds of causes.

Physical Causes Of Brain Fog

A lack of sleep can make it difficult to concentrate. Sleep requirements vary, but the bare minimum for almost everyone is somewhere around five hours, and many of us suffer if we sleep less than seven or eight hours. Some research indicates that after a minimum quantity, the quality of sleep is more important to the normal functioning of your brain.

Too much sugar can cause brain fog. To prove this to yourself, eat a piece of sugary cake on an empty stomach and try to do math problems thirty minutes later. What you’ll experience is commonly known as the “sugar blues,” and can leave you tired and irritable. Avoid eating too much sugar if you want mental clarity.

Certain prescription drugs can cause brain fog. Illness, alcohol and even brain damage are possible culprits too. Some of these problems can be remedied on your own, while others will require the help of medical professionals. You may have to experiment a bit to see what helps (talk to your doctor if this means quitting or reducing a prescription).

Mental Causes Of Brain Fog

Specific thoughts and worries can make it tough to think clearly. I refer to these as “mind irritations.” They can easily get in the way of your attempts to focus. Such unresolved thoughts or feelings are often just below consciousness. Just as it would be difficult to concentrate on work in the middle of a chaotic group of people, it is tough to focus a mind full of unwanted thoughts and feelings. An unmade decision that is hanging there, a conversation that wasn’t quite finished, thoughts about the future, and many common worries could all be sapping your brainpower.

A simple mindfulness technique can take care of this problem. Start by watching what’s going on in your head until you become conscious of the “noise” and “characters” in there. Perhaps a thank you card you need to write has been quietly bothering you all day, for example. Maybe you’re worried about an upcoming job interview, or continually reviewing what someone said to you three hours ago.

Pay attention for a minute or two, and once you become aware of these “mind irritations,” do something to resolve each one. You might send that card, for example, or just put it on your “to do” list so your mind can let go of the thought for the moment. If nothing else, bring a problem to full consciousness and tell yourself something like, “There is nothing I can do about this until Thursday.” This categorizing of things as “nothing to worry about now,” will often stop unconscious thoughts from repeating themselves.

Once you have done this a few times, you’ll find it becomes easier to recognize what’s just below the surface, irritating you and preventing concentration. If you take care of those things, clearer thinking is almost guaranteed. Finally, one last suggestion: Taking several deep breaths through your nose and letting the tension drain from your body can sometimes clear that brain fog in seconds.

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What is thinking out of the box? It is getting outside the usual ways of looking at things (that’s the box) to arrive at new and useful ideas. How do you do it? Here is one of the many ways.

How To Get Your Thinking Out Of The Box

One of the simplest techniques for “out of the box” thinking is to identify each of the elements of the “box” and consider any alternatives that come to mind, even crazy ones. Most of these will not be useful, but work with them and some may be made into ideas that aren’t so crazy after all. Once in a while they may even lead to great innovations. Let’s look at a specific example to see how this works.

Suppose you want to stop smoking, and you are looking for a creative new way to do this? First, you need to identify the ideas, assumptions and solutions that are common. These are the basis of the “box.” They could include:

- It is a matter of willpower.

- This is a personal goal.

- You’ll pay for some program to help you quit.

- You have to stop smoking.

- It is difficult to quit.

There are certainly other common ideas and solutions, but these are enough to show how the process works. Starting with the willpower issue, you might ask, “Why does it have to be a test of willpower?” This leads you to consider the easiest ways to quit. Perhaps hypnotism could help. It also suggests not being around others who smoke for a while, so there is no temptation. There is nothing too creative here, so you move on to the next item.

It is natural to assume that this is a personal goal, but not necessary to keep that perspective. Many people want to quit, perhaps even a few of your friends. Is there some way to make this a group goal? While that thought is in your mind, you challenge the next item with the idea; “What if a program paid me to quit?” That leads to an out-of-the-box solution: A group challenge and bet.

You arrange with three friends who want to quit to each put a thousand dollars in a pot. After one year, those have not smoked a cigarette get to split the pot. If two of you succeed, you’ll each be a thousand ahead. If only one succeeds, he or she will make three thousand dollars. There’s some real motivation, and the competitive nature of the challenge may help as well.

What about the assumption that you have to quit smoking? Is there a way to continue smoking without the health problems? You might switch slowly to cigarettes with less nicotine. You might find that the sensation of the cigarette in your mouth is as important as the nicotine, and you can eventually just “smoke” them without lighting them. These ideas may work, but are not too new, so you move on.

What about the idea that it is difficult to quit? You ask yourself, what if it was easy to quit? That gives you nothing, so you play with the idea and ask, “What if it was difficult to smoke?” Now that is an out of the box question, and it immediately suggests some ideas. How do you make it difficult? Perhaps you and your spouse could pay five dollars per cigarette into a special account to be split at the end of a year. Whoever smokes less will gain the most, and the pain of the high cost will make it tough to smoke much.

The most potentially profitable idea, though, may be that of having a drug that causes you to get immediately nauseous when you smoke. That makes it difficult to continue. It would be something like the drug “anabuse” which makes alcoholics vomit if they drink. It would be even better if it was in the form of an injection that lasts for a month, so you can’t “forget” your pill.

You can see the basic process here. First define the “box,” by listing all the usual ideas and solutions. Then consider these one-by-one. Attack them, alter them, look for opposites, and do anything else to find a new perspective. There are many ways to have more creative ideas, but this is one of the simplest and most systematic techniques for getting your thinking out of the box.

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Here is the quick lesson on how to be smarter: Do something that has been shown to improve brain function until doing so becomes a habit. Then do another thing that boosts brainpower until that is a habit. Then eat something that is good for the brain. Then eat another brain food. With enough of these brain boosting practices and substances and habits you’ll be noticeably smarter.

For the sake of this article I will use one example: exercise. Recent studies reported on at the annual Meeting Of The Society Of Psychophysiological Research in Montreal recently show immediate benefits from exercising, as well as long-term effects. It seems that exercise helps your brain work more efficiently right now and actually makes you smarter in the long run.

Subjects were tested beforehand in order to measure their thinking abilities. Then they ran on a treadmill for thirty minutes. When their heart rates returned to normal resting levels they took follow-up tests to compare with the first set. Participants were also connected to an electroencephalogram (EEG), in order to track their brain waves during the testing.

Exercise had increased the speed of their decision-making by a fraction of a second on average. It was enough to be considered significant. Scoring the tests also showed that the subjects answered more accurately after the exercise than before. Naturally, faster, better decisions could be considered a sign of faster, smarter brains.

Although the subjects were in their twenties, researchers think the findings will hold true for other age groups. Other research involving exercise has demonstrated that just ten minutes of moderate exercise each day can improve mood and reduce fatigue. Intelligence wasn’t specifically tested, but it seems likely that less fatigue can mean clearer thinking. Make exercise a habit and you’ll be helping your body and mind.

The Best Exercise To Be Smarter?

The science has mainly focused on jogging, but it’s likely that running, bicycling, swimming, dancing and any other aerobic exercises will have a similar effect on brain function. Ten minutes of exercise is apparently enough to have effects on the brain, and it’s not clear how much more benefit there may be with longer periods. Interestingly, though the scientists probably expected to confirm other research that has shown we get better brain function from long-term exercise programs, the study using treadmills showed an immediate effect too. Get up and run around right now, and you can be smarter in ten minutes. Do it several times weekly and the effect will be more lasting.

How do we determine the best exercise to do if you want to be smarter? You can wait for more research, but in my experience, walking is one of the best. Any aerobic exercise will increase blood flow and therefore oxygen and glucose delivery to the brain, which may help explain the results shown in the studies, but I think there is something more to walking. Perhaps it’s the rhythmic and relaxing nature of it, but myself and many others find that our clearest and most creative thinking happens when taking a walk.

Walking, like other aerobic exercises, gives you better sleep, a healthier immune system, easier weight control, and a lower risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes as well. The research now suggests that you can add better brain function to that list. Why not get out and take a walk today? Then, in accordance with the plan laid out at the start of this article, get busy with the next brainpower booster.

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