Start Exercising Your Imagination

Harley J. Earl, styling chief of General Motors, once said, “If a particular group appears to be bogging down over a new fender or grille or interior trim, I sometimes wander into their quarters, make some irrelevant or even zany observation, and then leave. It is surprising what effect a bit of peculiar behavior will have. First-class minds will seize on anything out of the ordinary and race off, looking for explanations and hidden meanings. That’s all I want them to do -start exercising their imaginations. The ideas will soon pop up.”

The subconscious mind isn’t a logical creature which proceeds from point one to point two to point three in a straight line. It’s an illogical character who skips from point one to point eight to point three to point seven, trying all sorts of unusual combinations, making use of every observation and stimulus to create new solutions. This is its importance. It is creative. The ideas that make a difference are the product of our creative minds.

Take this test and find out how your own creative mind works. In three minutes see how many objects you can sketch which have a circle as a main element in their design. Just use a few lines on the circles on the page below to identify your ideas, which might start: wheel, tire, steering wheel, and so on.

Notice how your mind leaps from category to category. For example, your test might run wheel, tire, steering wheel, then hop into another category-speedometer, watch, clock, and then to still another-doughnut, cruller, cooky, pizza; then make another leap to plate, saucer, and so on.

If our minds worked logically we would exhaust every category and list hundreds of types of wheels before we moved on to gears, and list a thousand gears. Instead, our minds bound forward. In a small way this illustrates the leaps, which have measured man’s progress.