OK, the advice is to stop thinking about what have already been thought through by others, and only think about novel, creative stuff.
Two problems.
You need to be an erudite, and know all the stuff other people has thought through, and ideally the current agreed-upon best solutions. This is, of course, hugely useful, and often fun! But it also takes a lot of time.
Since you quite possibly don't know enough about any particular domain, including the domain where you are trying to be creative, you are bound to reinvent wheels. To learn about known good answers in a particular area, you have to know that such an area even exists.
My approach to this problem is to try, stop, and do research once I've acquired the target.
I often end up on the verge of reinventing a wheel. But once I think that a particular thing I'm about to invent and implement is nifty and generally useful, I stop and and search for existing solutions. I'm very unlikely to be the first person to have this problem. Once I know the problem enough to consider my own solution, I know enough to look for existing ones, and maybe rank them. This saves me from sinking time on reimplementing a wheel once I have invented it, and it's usually 90% of the time expense.
Reinventing the wheel is great for learning or creating something better.
The first version of the wheel used a square glad someone thought maybe a circle could work. Spokes were a big upgrade. The rubber tire filled with air creating[a donut changed the game.
Two problems.
You need to be an erudite, and know all the stuff other people has thought through, and ideally the current agreed-upon best solutions. This is, of course, hugely useful, and often fun! But it also takes a lot of time.
Since you quite possibly don't know enough about any particular domain, including the domain where you are trying to be creative, you are bound to reinvent wheels. To learn about known good answers in a particular area, you have to know that such an area even exists.
My approach to this problem is to try, stop, and do research once I've acquired the target.
I often end up on the verge of reinventing a wheel. But once I think that a particular thing I'm about to invent and implement is nifty and generally useful, I stop and and search for existing solutions. I'm very unlikely to be the first person to have this problem. Once I know the problem enough to consider my own solution, I know enough to look for existing ones, and maybe rank them. This saves me from sinking time on reimplementing a wheel once I have invented it, and it's usually 90% of the time expense.