There is a pervasive and unhelpful myth: that some people are creative, and others are not. This is bunk and you should put it out of your mind. You are every bit as creative as the next person. The difference is often in four things that so-called ‘creative people’ do better than the rest. These are:
By paying attention to all four of these, you, too, can turn on your creativity, whenever you need it. For example, I used many of these techniques in creating this article.
Like so much in life, to harvest something of value, you need to make an investment ahead of time. For creative thinking, you can set up the right conditions for future creativity by investing in five things.
If there is one attitude that is vital for creativity, it is curiosity. Cultivate a curious mind that is always wondering, questioning and finding out stuff. Take nothing at face value; investigate everything. Never be satisfied with your state of knowledge. As a scientist, I learned early on the value of enquiry and a constant quest to answer the question ‘why?’.
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more things that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
Dr Seuss: I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!
“Whatever is interesting, we are interested in. Whatever is not interesting, we are even more interested in. Everything is interesting if looked at in the right way.”
QI Ltd: The QI Philosophy
Allow your curiosity to roam across all branches of knowledge. Take an interest in everything. It’s the connections that you can form that lead to creativity, so more diverse knowledge means more connections. I read all sorts of stuff from a wide variety of topics.
Don’t loose your ideas: note them down. And while you are noting them down, develop them. This will make them yours and help you to remember them. Whenever you need inspiration, go back through your notebooks. OneNote, Evernote and similar software are great, but nothing beats 19th-century technology: pen and paper.
Keep articles, clippings and pictures in a file of ideas that you can go to when you need them. I have two physical files (one neatly organised and one full of the stuff that I haven’t organised for over seven years). It’s the latter that offers greatest inspiration. I also use the online save-for-later service Pocket as a digital tickle file for stuff I find on the web.
Chill, relax, unwind and rest. If you don’t, your brain will turn to mush. We know that we are not at our most creative when we are sharp and fresh, but there is a limit to how tired we can be and still remain in any way effective or creative. Turning off, whether sleeping or recreation time, allows your brain to work on a problem in background mode. My brain then lets the ideas out in the quiet ‘in-between times’ like over breakfast, while walking or in the shower, when I am not focusing on anything.
When and where you ‘try’ to be creative can have a big impact, as can the people and circumstances around you. Let’s look at five factors.
You are at your most creative when you feel comfortable, so go somewhere relaxing, with a variety of chairs and zones. The right environment, and the presence of interesting and random things that prompt you to play, can stimulate your sense of fun and help to get the creative connections flowing.
People who are the same think the same way. With a diverse group of people to bounce different ideas around and to interpret each one in a dozen ways, you will find the maximum number of connections.
There is a difference between a dreamer and a realist. A realist focuses on what is and is therefore not creative. Allowing yourself to ‘zone out’ and daydream, and asking yourself questions such as ‘what if?’ will release creative ideas. Walking is an ideal way to access this state of mind.
Don’t relax too much. Necessity is the aunty of creativity. When you feel under pressure, you work harder and reach deeper into the recesses. But avoid so much pressure that you choke. Likewise, constraints help, too – they give you boundaries to press against and burst out of. Even a blank sheet of paper has edges. This article had a deadline and a clear brief.
I plan what I am going to write first thing in the morning. I am fresh enough to have the mental energy, but near enough to my sleep state to be a little dreamy and creative. Early mornings and evenings are when we are at our most creative, near the boundary of wakefulness and sleep.
The dreamer ignores what is and asks what could be. Only when you have the right dream, do you invite the other mindsets to help you. It is a slow process of incubation and germination.
An alternative to the dreamer is the intuitor, who makes a sudden leap to a potentially winning idea. You need to have made the investments of curiosity and breadth to give your intuitor the raw material to work on.
Use the critic to assess the value of your dream: what do the facts say? What are the constraints of rules, regulations and requirements? What are the risks?
The carer cares how other people will be affected by your idea. Without this vital empathic social dimension to your thinking, you risk creating a brilliant idea that nobody will feel comfortable about committing to.
If your dream or intuition stands up to the scrutiny of your critic and carer, use your builder to figure out what resources are available and how to deploy them, to make your idea a reality.
The dreamer-intuitor-critic-carer-builder interplay is the source of innovation: creativity + responsibility + implementation.
Don’t think for a moment that there is no technique to creativity. Here are five techniques that creative people use to squeeze out their ideas.
Systematically varying one or more aspects of an existing idea or solution is a process favoured by engineers and is guaranteed to give you new ideas. Here are eight changes you can make: Substitute one thing for another; Combine two or more components or ideas; Reduce something in size or number; Enlarge one part; Alter something; Multiply the number of some aspect; Eliminate something; or Reverse something to do the opposite. (SCREAMER)
What if you had infinite wealth? This may lead you to a solution, but you clearly don’t. Now ask how you could manage that solution, but with limited means. This changes one problem to a new one, and addresses your constraints.
Combining two things to make a third is called bisociation. Sawdust plus glue equals particle board. Surfboard plus sail equals windsurfer. Combinations can be revolutionary.
Making random connections is a sure way to create new ideas and the ‘Eureka Method’ involves choosing four or five ideas at random – by choosing images from magazines, words from a dictionary or events from the newspaper, for example. Then brainstorm how each one is relevant to the problem that you are trying to solve. Wait for the random ideas to hit you. They will.
Mike Clayton is a business speaker and author of the books Powerhouse and Smart to Wise
