Dilip Mukerjea shares more tips as he writes in his new book, Imagistix:

Creative Thinking As A Cognitive Process 

It is generated by making new connections across different regions of the brain. All creative work requires using your existing knowledge to help you do new things. Creative behaviour usually involves a product or response both novel and appropriate to the task at hand. Neuroscientists attest that all parts of the brain are constantly interacting, and thereby building strong neural pathways. 

According to studies conducted at the University of Texas’ School of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, engaging in creative activities can improve the strength of neural pathways to the hippocampus which in turn creates strong pathways to memories. When scientists study memory, they look to the hippocampus. This is the part of the brain responsible for the processing of episodic, working, and short-term memory. This part of the brain may also function as a mediator between many other brain processes. 

Here are some ways to exercise your creative thinking skills: 

Change Your Routine 

Challenge your brain to break out of set habits so as to inject some variation into your thought processes. Create new experiences to trigger your creative possibilities. Try changing something small or adding a new activity each day, to snap you out of the well-worn neural pathways that keep you in autopilot mode, and start forging some new ones. 

Exercise 

Exercise is good for your brain as well as for your body. Start stretching your creative muscles by stretching your physical muscles. They complement one another and soon you will become inventive and improvisational in your approach to generating ideas in diverse contexts. 

Learn Something New 

Dare to challenge yourself by venturing into fresh domains. Pick a subject, language, game, or craft; the exposure to new experiences, and your efforts to get skilled in them, will give you more fodder for future creativity

Take an Improv Class 

This particular type of comedy is dependent on making quick connections and responding playfully. It is great for creative thinking since you have to constantly come up, spontaneously, with new and interesting responses to whatever stimuli are coming your way. 

Go Dancing 

Dancing requires us to process a cascade of information and express that interpretation kinaesthetically, visually, and gracefully. We listen to the beat and the lyrics and move to our interpretation of the correct steps. To do all this with perfect coordination is an experience that is guaranteed to catalyse your creativity. 

Read a Book, Write an Essay 

Reading and writing are great mental exercises, and if you are into fiction there are all kinds of creativity involved in the genre. Reading and writing often require critical, analytical, and self-expressive abilities, as well as a sense of self-discovery: they comprise one of the best ways to foster imagination. The more we read, the better we can build up and expand our knowledge. We can be open to new and novel ideas and have an understanding of new things. Reading helps us practise imagination by letting the words describe a certain image while the reader manipulates the picture in the mind. This practice strengthens the mind as it acts like a muscle. We can then translate these skills into writing. 

Creativity is driven by memory. This means that for any given creativity task, it is crucial to find memories that will help you to perform the task The study of linking creative thinking to memory is a reasonably new pursuit and we have only just begun to understand what these benefits could entail. One thing we do know is that creativity is linked to many mental processes, and practising creativity is great for cognitive function. Without imagination, people would not be able to come up with new inventions and new ideas that help advance society. It also pushes discovery and understanding. Imagine, create, discover, beat the status quo! 

Dilip Mukejea writes in his new book, Learning How to Learn (not yet released; still in the works; this is a sneak preview!)

The 4Cs SUPERSKILLS for the 21st Century 

CREATIVE THINKING 

Creativity can be measured by its fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. The most creative minds are those for whom creative thought is fluid. The most creative thinkers are also flexible within their creating endeavours — they are willing and able to manipulate their thinking to improve upon that which they are creating. 

When creative thinkers are at the peak of their creative process, they may enter a state of concentration so focused that they are totally absorbed in the activity at hand. They may be in effortless control and at the peak of their abilities. 

Finally, creative and innovative thinkers are original; they do not blindly "copy" the thinking of others but rather build their thinking from the ground up...via the ability to see what’s not there and make something happen: they are productive, not reproductive. 

CRITICAL THINKING 

Another way to form ideas is to use critical thinking. This involves a person using his own knowledge or point of view to decide what is right or wrong about someone else's ideas. 

This is sometimes called "having a mind of your own." It means that a person doesn't have to believe or accept everything that someone else says or writes. 

In addition to evaluating other people's ideas, critical thinking can also be used to evaluate things, relationships, phenomena, and situations. If used with due competence, critical thinking can help a student be spectacularly successful in school and elsewhere. 

COMMUNICATION 

Eradicating confusion, gaining clarity, by sharing thoughts, feelings, concepts, questions, ideas, solutions. This skill cultivates the ability to synthesise and transmit ideas with fluency in written and oral formats. 

* Articulate thoughts and ideas effectively using oral, written and nonverbal communication skills in a variety of forms, formats, and contexts 

* Listen effectively to decipher meaning, including knowledge, patterns, values, attitudes, intentions, and hidden contexts. 

* Use communication for a range of purposes (e.g. to inform, instruct, motivate, persuade, and evaluate). 

* Utilise multiple media and technologies, and know how to judge their effectiveness a priori as well as to assess their impact on outcomes. 

* Communicate effectively in diverse environments (including multi-lingual), cross-cultural, and multi-disciplinary.

COLLABORATION 

Collaborative Learning provides oral language and listening practice, and results in increases in the pragmatic speaking and listening skills of group members. 

Additionally, the collaborative learning process increases students' reading comprehension and the learning of reading strategies. 

Collaborative learning is ensured where we carefully plan, structure, monitor, and evaluate for positive interdependence, individual accountability, group processing, face to face interaction, and social skills.

 We cultivate this skill via the ability to work effectively and respectfully with others, including those from diverse groups and with opposing points of view.