Divergent Linking

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” – Linus Pauling

A great tool for making links is divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is a thought process used to generate many ideas related to a subject in a short amount of time. By exploring an anything-goes attitude to the subject, we give ourselves the freedom to explore every thought that comes to mind, without any limitations, and this can spark spontaneous, unexpected, exciting connections.

The word diverge is frequently associated with words related to the notion of separation, among them, divert, divide, different, distinguish, deviate…

Here’s an example of divergent thinking. Let’s say our subject is a mundane pencil. We know we can use a pencil to write and draw and erase. But how else could we use the pencil? Let’s use divergent thinking to brainstorm as many ideas as possible, regardless of whether they are any good.

• We could use a pencil as a back-scratcher. 
• Or a drumstick to drum on things.
• Or balance it on our upper lip like a moustache.
• Or use the pointy end to poke holes in things.
• Or poke it through a hair bun to keep long hair in place.
• Or use the eraser to press buttons.
• Or waggle it in our hand like a fidget tool for stress relief.
• Or chew the eraser instead of chewing our fingernails.
• Or practice hand-eye coordination by flipping and catching it.

How else?

• We could carve it, sculpt it, or turn it on a lathe.
• Or shave it down to use as kindling for a fire.
• Or use it as a cord organizer to wrap a headphone cord around it.
• Or roll paper around its hexagonal surface to create textures on the paper.
• Or do what my friend Thomas Matthews did in 7th grade and fling it point-first to lodge it into the classroom ceiling tile where it remained until the end of the school year.

Any other ideas? Sure! 

• We could snap it in half to have the pencil point in one hand and the eraser in the other. Then we could hold both halves in the same hand with the pencil point and the pencil eraser on the page and proceed to write and erase with a single motion.
• Or we could use one of the splintered pieces as a toothpick.
• Or we could jab the pointy half into the eraser half to create a new deconstructed pencil.

We could keep going to create more and more outlandish uses for the pencil but the point is, we use divergent thinking to create as many ideas as possible. The goal is quantity, not quality. The divergence sets our minds down as many mental paths as our imaginations can conjure, creating a sprawling labyrinth of thoughts. 

Many writers use the technique of “10-minute continuous writing” in the same way. Sit down, start writing, and don’t stop until 10 minutes have passed. Even if the only words that come out are, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play….” for 10-minutes, the task is accomplished. Again, it’s not about quality, but quantity. Some say this is the best cure for writer’s block.

Divergent thinking is an example of what I like to call swarming the subject. Create a flurry of thoughts around the subject, not pausing,  not reflecting, not judging, not caring, just swarming like a hive of busy bees. We don’t know where a thought will lead, and sometime it will lead to another thought, then to another, then another. The result is something several thoughts removed from the original subject and probably not something that would have come to mind in more constrained exercises. It could be pure trash or pure gold, but its strength is that it is just one of many ideas that now exist. It’s about strength in numbers.

These activities create the raw materials for our projects. Words and sentences are the raw materials for writers. Brush strokes and colors are the raw materials for painters. Riffs and progressions are the raw materials for musicians. Starting from nothing, creating a body of something, and then building from there. That’s the birth of original work.

Sometimes it helps to arrange our ideas in a mind map, which can look like a hub with the subject in the middle and several spokes shooting off in different directions, one for each idea. And some of these spokes can themselves have several spokes shooting off from them, one for each derivative idea. When the process is done, we may have a mind map where some areas are sparse and whispy, while other areas are dense with thick tangles of ideas.

Divergent Thinking Mind Map

Now that we have the raw material we can shift to the next step which is to begin manipulating the material. The opposite of divergent thinking is convergent thinking.

But that’s the subject of our next post.