An amazing thing about us as humans is that we are intrinsically wired to experience the world around and the world within, through our own individual perspective and surprisingly become aware of it. You are aware of your expectations from this text and have already formed a sense of learning about “imagination” and how we can bring it to “reality”. We constantly ask ourselves questions. The availability of millions of books and the Internet can answer almost every question we face today. But, sometimes we are exposed to certain situations, circumstances or transient events in life that allows us to diverge a little and ask: “what could be?”.
How can I do this better?
What could be the result if I see the problem with a different perspective?
What if I had a sensor activated pen to digitize my doodles as I draw them on paper?
What could be the shortcut to my morning commute?
What if the people in the world lived as one?
This is imagination, playing an active role in our daily lives. Imagination partly derives its name from the word image. It is an image of “what could be”. It’s not just vague ideas. Imagination is a very vivid representation of a different world, derived as a possible solution to the situations, circumstances, and events that requires thinking in a different way. But, imagination is not the “reality”.
Creativity is the element that tries to close the gap between “where I am now” and “what could be”. It essentially becomes the vehicle that travels from the origin of the question in my mind to the destination, the answer, in the real world. But what road is this imaginary vehicle is taking?
Let me put it for you in different steps.
1. Where do you want to go? Get Ready to ride!
It all starts with the ability to see “what could be”. Create an image of the possible future which looks and feels better when you think about it with your imaginative ideas in action. In the modern world, this simple process of seeing what the world can be when you apply your imagination to it is called vision. Visionaries are thinkers who pay attention to the problems they face and imagine a world with no such problems. Any problem or question you come across has an answer to it. If the answer has not been found by anyone, innovation or even an invention is on the way.
Imagination is the most powerful activity that helps us give a big-picture of the world that encapsulates the present “where I am” and the imaginative “what could be”. Start paying attention to the problems around you, the problems you are facing, and imagine a world without them.
2. Start the engine, ignite the curiosity
Imagination is not mere vague ideas. It is a complete process of finding a problem and seeing a world without it. Being curious is the first step towards bringing your imagination to our reality.
Start digging more into your imaginative mind, this time with a goal to aggregate possible ways in which you can start finding solutions to the problem. Learn more about the problem first. Do a quick search online, ask people around you, or read about it in books. Start digging deeper and reach the refined question. For example, the imagination will make me ask:
What if I doodle on normal paper and as I draw my computer digitizes it?
After digging into the question, with the help of curiosity, I reached the question:
How can I make a sensor-activated pen that understands my hand movements and sends signals to the computer to digitize my drawings?
There is a huge difference between these two questions. The second one is closer to reality than the first. So, start the engine, put your curiosity into the ignition mode and push that accelerator. One thing, please go wild with your imagination + curiosity, there are no boundaries.
3. Put it in the gear, tap in your creativity
Creativity is the element that makes one try new things out. Curiosity helped us get to the refined questions we should ask. Now, we got to work with curiosity and creativity together to see how we can bridge the gap between imagination and reality. This is the step where you put your imaginary vehicle into the first gear and push that accelerator!
Creativity is a process and that too a highly iterative one. It could be broken down into the following steps.
a. Start with a small step. Try to answer your question with a rudimentary thought process in your mind.
b. Build a very basic solution, call it the first try.
c. Find out if the solution is aligning with the vision you had
d. Focus and pay attention to how you can make it better
e. Challenge yourself that you can make it better
f. Take the next iteration and repeat the process
This iterative approach is one of the proven ways to train your creative process. Since every human being is different, the time, methods, and materials taken to iterate through this process will be different for everyone. The creativity algorithm is the one that will turn your imagination into an experience in the real world.
Keep changing the gears of your vehicle. Take turns, smooth or wild ones, and reach the destination that you set earlier.
4. See your thoughts coming to reality, love them
This is the step where you can say, “ *sigh* Finally”. Bringing anything into our reality from that thought in your mind is not an easy job, particularly when the scale and complexity of the problem are different and the one that affects a lot of people or plants and animals in this world.
There will always be potential improvements. Think about them and restart the process if your creation doesn’t fit with what you imagined. You can either pause your vehicle here or set a new destination. Don’t forget to get constant feedback from the people whose thought process aligns with yours.
No matter how small or how big your final creation is, it was thought once. Seeing that thought in your reality is what matters. Your creation is in the real world now, so time to show it off. Show off your creations to people, animals, plants, to whoever you come across. Sounds a little absurd but “Hey! I got one life and I’m gonna show my stuff to everyone!”
Imagination + curiosity + creativity = Anything. This is the equation that we also follow while creating our doodles, engaging in workshops and communicating with people. The process no doubt takes a lot of time but the results? “Dope”
Don’t forget to show off your creations to us on our @doodlekitproject Instagram.
fin
Written By: Rahul Sharma
©2020 Doodle Kit Project
Images copyrights @doodlekitproject
