Divergent thinking is a way of generating different ideas in an open-minded and free-flowing manner—like flies bouncing around in a glass bottle. During divergent thinking, we don’t think about constraints, possibilities, or budgets. We just throw around ideas, open to whatever might present itself. We become optimists in the way that physicist David Deutsch defines the term—as someone who believes that anything permitted by the laws of physics is doable.25 The goal is to create a flurry of options—both good and bad—not prematurely judging them, limiting them, or choosing among them. At the
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