‘Uncreative people’ can use this simple tip to easily brainstorm new ideas, Adam Grant and Brené Brown say

It is possible to think of new ideas even when you are not creative.

Ask Adam Grant and Brown.

The pair talked about their strategies on Tuesday's episode of the "A Bit of Optimism"

Grant said that he thought he was uncreative when he was a child. I was able to figure out what was going to be on the test and get an A.

Her family moved to the Houston suburbs when she was a child. She said that she was pressured into being a conforming person.

It was conform, conform, conform, which is in line with the research we see on shame and creativity in kids. She said that it was high pressure and peer- conforming ages.

Between the ages of 8 and 14 a 30 percent drop in girls' confidence levels can be seen in research.

Brown and Grant used the same tactic to get out of their ruts.

Grant's schoolwork became less about regurgitating existing knowledge and more about coming up with a novel observation when he was in college.

Grant said he thinks of his brain as a quilt and that everything he reads is lonely. It is looking for more than one square.

Put the squares together is the key to new ideas, according to him. Grant noticed a number of people complaining to him about their interactions with other people.

The complainers didn't know when their interactions should be transactional and when they should help the people around them.

Grant was interested enough to look for more papers on the topic. Grant was able to identify a common theme of people being givers, takers or even traders when he combined the different languages.

A light bulb went off. Grant said that he was like, "Wait, this is a world view." There was already something out there. Nobody had made it.

Grant's book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, was one of Oprah Winfrey's "riveting reads" and one of The Washington Post's " books every business leader should read"

Brown claims to have been a pattern hunter since she was a child.

Her book is named after a line in a speech by Theodore Roosevelt. Brown saw a connection between Roosevelt's worlds and her academic studies which focused on the connections between vulnerability and successful leadership.

She used a small string to tie her modern research to a bigger historical thread.

Grant and Brown both said to always stay open minded.

The huge size of Brown's reference set is one of the reasons he thinks he can connect what's seemingly un connectable.

Too much information can lead to overload, so you need to be careful with it.

Grant said to filter the information in your environment through a goal or a problem you are trying to solve.

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