Ming the Mechanic:
Creativity technique:
Sentence completion

The NewsLog of Flemming Funch
 Creativity technique: Sentence completion2004-06-10 16:59
5 comments
by Flemming Funch

Mentioned on Occupational Adventure and Innovation Blog, Tim at The Nub talks about a simple and useful creativity technique:
"1) Take any issue you want to consider. E.g: your relationship with your kids or partner; your relationships at work; your project; your time; your stress -- ANYTHING.

2) Now create a sentence stem that focuses on your issue. E.g. If I want to improve my time effectiveness by 5% I must...

3) Then complete the sentence between 6-10 times. Don't get fixed too long trying to say the right thing, if in doubt, invent - just make sure the ending is grammatically correct.

Example endings could be: If I want to improve my time effectiveness by 5% I must...
...get up 30 minutes earlier
...set deadlines
...get to bed earlier
...organise my desk
...stick to my decisions
...accept that I can't do everything
...keep in mind why I am doing something"
Indeed, as Chuck Frey says: "Our marvelous brains love closure. Give them an open-ended question or statement, and they will work overtime to come up with answers." We have an obsessive tendency to try to wrap things up, which we can use to trick ourselves into bringing answers out of our sub-conscious that we might not otherwise be aware that we had.


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5 comments

10 Jun 2004 @ 18:46 by Quirkeboy @209.92.185.199 : Lets try this..
If I want to improve my time effectiveness by 5% I must...
... remember to paint the penguins.
..go fishing in storm drains.
..populate the earth with giant ambidextrous amoebas.
..get a piggy-back ride from Martha Stewart.
.. marry a porcupine with excellent hygiene.
.. replenish my supply of red crayons.
.. find a really spicy hat soup.  



10 Jun 2004 @ 19:41 by skookum : I think I
will stick to my poetry... fewer rules lol  


11 Jun 2004 @ 07:47 by Tim Rowe @81.109.241.105 : "....which means that ...."
In the past, I've used sentence completetion for getting a handle on deeper issues. For example "I'm afraid of dying young - which means that .... I won't get to see my kids grow up.", and so on. But this way of sentence completetion certainly looks good for creativity. Either way, it'll make a change from completeting my wife's sentences for her :) (No wonder I failed the Communication Course' LOL).  


11 Jun 2004 @ 08:44 by ming : Completing sentences
Heheh, probably works best to complete one's own sentences. Which obviously can go in a number of directions. Serious stuff one might not have voiced before, or wonderfully off-the-wall stuff.  


20 Jul 2006 @ 15:39 by meenakshi @202.65.136.178 : hello
can u plz send some more question for sentence completion  


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2014-09-27 00:04: You must be an expert by now
2014-09-26 15:15: Brevity
2011-11-06 21:33: Counting what counts
2011-01-23 13:46: Authenticity
2010-08-23 01:31: Semantic Pauses
2010-06-27 02:28: Doubt
2009-10-25 17:04: Opinions, perceptions and intuition
2009-10-15 08:32: Abstraction
2008-06-29 16:47: Complicated and Complex
2008-02-20 16:39: The universe as a virtual reality



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