Creativity Construction Set

Creativity appears to be largely about mental connections - making mental connections between many different ideas or mental models.

Key to this is having an extensive library of mental models to draw from. Mere combination of disparate items from this mental model library can result in novelty - as in the metaphir 'ideas having sex'. Thus in a way - there is nothing original about creativity - it relies on mashup of existing ideas.

But just a mashup may not be enough. When combining ideas, new meaning must be created by taking parts of one concept, relating it to other concept - some kind of synthesis. A technique as simple as combining words - such as 'creative destruction' - or 'cognitive Override sublimation' - where I just made the latter up based on a clear personal experience. But even without experience - we can simple take two ideas - such as 'cognitive Override' and 'sublimation' to create a specific type of insight. Something that may be important or novel or not readily visible.

So to sum up - start combining mental models and see if the creating is something meaningful. This is a creativity hack - one of many. All these hacks or tricks can be learned. No magic here. Magic is simply having a piece of information or skill that someone else doesn't have, or thought was impossible.