Realize Your Creative Potential  （教你如何开发创造潜力）(realize难道就译成开发？我不知道译成开发对不对。似乎就全文来看就是实现的意思，总看全文似乎有说明指教的意思。）

1.The heart of all new ideas lies in the borrowing, adding, combining or modifying of old ones. Do it by accident and people call you lucky. Do it by design and they’ll call you creative. All of us have the ability to create ideas almost at will. The problem is to understand and utilize the processes that allow us to do it most efficiently and effectively. It’s generally agreed that the act of developing new ideas involves some five steps.

我们每个人都有创新的能力，问题是我们如何理解并利用这个创新过程，进行高效的创新活动。这一过程大致可以分为五个步骤。

2. FIRST INSIGHT.(想了很久也不知道这个词怎么翻) You have a problem you want to solve or an activity you want to do-- you want a better job, the house needs redecorating, your company produces a waste material you would like to turn into a profitable byproduct. All of these are examples of first insight.

首要远见：有一个问题需要解决，或者有一个活动需要参加。

3. PREPARATION. Now you investigate all the possible ways in which this germinal idea can be developed. Get as much information as you can about the subject, read, take notes, talk to others, ask questions, collect information. Be receptive to your own senses. Picasso once remarked, “The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place, from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” These ideas form a springboard for launching our own imagination.

准备工作：研究一下所有可能的方式。尽可能多的收集关于主题的信息，研读一下，做些笔记，和其他人讨论一下，提出问题，再收集信息。

4. INCUBATION. Now let your subconscious take over. Take a walk, take a nap, take a bath, work on another project or hobby, sleep on it. As author Edna Ferber once noted, “A story must simmer in its own juice for months or even years before it’s ready to serve.”

策划阶段：现在让潜意识主导你的生活。散散步，小憩一会，洗个澡，做做另一个项目或自己喜欢的事(为了和前面的“做做”搭配,所以将hobby译成自己喜欢的事,这些话语偏口语化)，把问题留在第二天解决。

5. ILLUMINATION. This is the climax of the creative process. An insight pops into the mind, and suddenly everything falls into place. Charles Darwin gathered information for his theory of evolution. Then one day when he was riding in his carriage, it all came together. “I remember,” Darwin wrote, “the very spot in the road when to my joy the solution occurred to me.” Illumination is the most exciting and joyous phase of creative process. 

突受启发：这是创新过程的高潮部分。灵感之光闪过脑海，突然间一切事情都已一清二楚。

6. VERIFICATION. Yet for all of its wondrous insights, illumination can be terribly unreliable. Intellect and judgment are brought into play, and your hunches and inspirations are logically confirmed or denied. You back off and look at your ideas to make them better and often come up with new and better insights in the process. 

确认阶段：回头重新审视自己的点子，优化这些点子，并在此过程中有新的更好的灵感。

7. Summing up, the key to understanding the creative cycle is to realize that there are five distinct phases. There is the initial desire to create, followed by a lengthy period of investigating and information gathering. Then there is the period of incubation where the subconscious efforts surface. And finally, there is a period of refining and verifying the ideas created.

8. In addition to giving yourself an incentive, you must also create a sense of urgency. There is a natural tendency to procrastinate in all of us. Create the necessary pressure by giving yourself reasonable but challenging deadlines for coming up with new ideas. Then be sure to stick to them.

7~8（第七段是对上面五个步骤的总结，大致内容相同，所以略而不计，第八段为新的内容和信息，所以译出来）除了以上五点之外，要给自己一点动机，你必须要有紧迫感。