My guests had arrived, but once again, I'd forgotten to put the wine in the fridge. "Don't worry," a friend said, "I can chill it for you right away."

    Five minutes later she emerged from the kitchen with the wine perfectly cooled. Asked to reveal her secret, she said: "I poured it in a plastic bag and dipped it in ice water."

    My guests applauded. "How wonderful if we could all be that clever," one remarked.

    A decade of enquiry has convinced me we can. What separates the average person from Edison, Picasso or even Shakespeare isn't creative capacity. It's the ability to use that capacity by encouraging creative impulses and then acting upon them. Most of us seldom achieve our creative potential but the reservoir of ideas hiding within every one of us can be unlocked.

    The following techniques suggest concrete ways of increasing creativity:

    Capture the file:///E:/%E6%96%B0%E8%A7%86%E9%87%8E%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%A6%E8%8B%B1%E8%AF%AD/%5B%E6%96%B0%E8%A7%86%E9%87%8E%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%A6%E8%8B%B1%E8%AF%AD%E6%95%99%E7%A8%8B_1~4%E5%86%8C_%E5%90%AC%E8%AF%B4%E6%95%99%E7%A8%8B%26amp;%E8%AF%BB%E5%86%99%E6%95%99%E7%A8%8B%5D.NHCE_1/Pages/images/8-2.jpgText-Ways of Increasing Cr" TITLE="新视野大学英语Unit8-B Text-Ways of Increasing Cr" />fleeting. A good idea is like a rabbit. It runs by so fast, sometimes you see only its ears or tail. To capture it, you must be ready. Creative people are always ready to act — possibly the only difference between us and them.

    In a letter to a friend in 1821, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote about thinking of a beautiful tune while half asleep in a carriage: "But scarcely did I awake when away flew the tune and I could not recall any part of it." Fortunately, for Beethoven and for us, the next day in the same carriage, the tune returned to him and he captured it in writing.

    When a good idea comes your way, write it down — on your arm if necessary.  Not every idea will have value but capture it first and evaluate later.

    Daydream. Painter Salvador Dali used to lie on a sofa, holding a spoon. As he began to fall asleep, Dali would drop the spoon onto a plate on the floor. Shocked awake by the sound, he would immediately sketch the images seen in his mind in that fertile world of semi-sleep.

    Everyone experiences this strange state and can take advantage of it. Try Dali's trick, or just allow yourself to daydream. Often, the "three bs" — bed, bath and bus — are productive. Anywhere you can be with your thoughts undisturbed, you'll find ideas emerge freely.

    Seek challenges. Try inviting friends and business associates from different areas of your life to a party. Bringing people of different ages and social status together may help you think in new ways.

    Edwin Land, one of America's most productive inventors, claimed the idea leading to his invention of the Polaroid camera came from his three-year-old daughter. On a visit to Santa Fe in 1943, she asked why she couldn't see the picture he had just taken. During the next hour, as Land walked around Santa Fe, all he had learned about chemistry came together: "The camera and the film became clear to me. In my mind they were so real that I spent several hours describing them."

    Expand your world. Many discoveries in science, engineering and the arts mix ideas from different fields. Consider "The Two-String Problem." Two widely separated strings hang from a ceiling. Even though you can't reach both at once, is it possible to tie their ends together, using only a pair of pliers?

    One college student tied the pliers to one string and set it in motion like a pendulum. As it swung back and forth, he walked quickly to the other string and drew it as far forward as it would reach. Then he caught the swinging string when it passed near him and tied the two ends.

    Asked how he succeeded, the student explained he had just come from a physics class on pendulum motion. What he had learned in one context transferred to a completely different one.

    This principle works elsewhere as well. To enhance your creativity, learn something new. If you're a banker, take up tap dancing; if you're a nurse, try a course in vitamin therapy. Read a book on a new subject. Change your daily newspaper. The new will combine with the old in novel and potentially fascinating ways. Becoming more creative means paying attention to that endless flow of ideas you produce, and learning to capture and act upon the new that's within you.

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