Creativity
So here is my long-awaited blog entry about creativity. Only it’s more about a lack of creativity.
Tonight the ChaCha interns, along with the interns from Scott’s other start-ups, had a meeting at Scott’s house.
Story (relevancy is for you to decide/none of your concern). Before I got my Mac, I had all my podcasts in my iTunes on my HP laptop [that I'll sell you for $10... it just needs a new screen display and battery... just kidding, it's NFS. I'll probably dissect the CPU someday]. Getting my Mac was like becoming a new person (in more ways than one… but for these purposes, I am dwelling only on my podcast subscriptions). I didn’t even bother transferring any iTunes from PC to Mac (nearly all of my iTunes are podcasts… and the little music I did have was dispensable), because podcasts are free and I figgered I’d just re-subscribe to the ones I cared to continue listening to (and new ones…). And NOT subscribe to the ones I didn’t really want.
Why did I not just unsubscribe to them before, if I didn’t want to listen to them? Quite honestly, because it was information, and I didn’t want to just throw it away unabsorbed… even though it was free to me. There’s a difference between not subscribing and unsubscribing. Information is such a valuable thing. (Sometimes I wish I was Google and could download and organize all of the world’s information.) So I was listening to all those podcasts just out of feelings of obligation. Can I tell you how freeing it was to not have them wasting memory on my iPod (and time in my life)?
Good thing I have a more-than-30-Gb brain.
There is one waste-of-a-podcast in particular that I want to discuss. It was called The Accidental Creative. Essentially, it’s a self-help podcast about instilling lifestyle habits which allow you to thrive on your creativity in a “create-on-demand” culture. Self-help is so lame as a genre and as a cultural phenomenon. Especially when it comes to creativity. You just can’t lay out steps to becoming creative. The act of laying out steps itself is inherently uncreative. I realize there are some gray areas in those statements, but generally speaking…
But maybe I just think that that podcast is lame because it treats creativity as something that can be achieved through a self-help process. That’s probably more like it, because some of the things I’m about to write about do fit within the realm of The Accidental Creative’s teaching parameters.
The problem in my life right now is that I’m in a job where I want and need to be creative, but I don’t feel creative. Or, at least, I feel like I could be much more creative than I have been.
I’ve laid out a handful of changes in my life that I know I need to make. I’ve completed a couple of them — my weekly weenie-hikes which I hope to continue even into the winter, and setting aside Monday nights for Office Hours where I can just chill for 2 hours with Mac and any guests. My next mile marker is quitting my job at Eddie Bauer (how strange it is to set a goal of quitting… I mean, “moving on”). I only work there once a week tops, but leaving that job will do invaluable things for me. It’s true. It’s a distraction. One that I don’t need anymore (not that I ever need a distraction). Another mile marker in the near future will be cleaning and painting my room at home. That or moving out completely (depending if I have an official job at the time). More distractions.
I noticed this week that my best idea so far this week came to me while I was driving. No distractions.
Let’s just say I’m looking forward to not having all kinds of random intern duties. Not that I mind doing them. Just that they seem to be inhibiting the progress of my more focused projects.
But back to the intern meeting. It was so funny because on the way, Haylee, Jessica and I were talking about questions that we might have for Scott. And mine, although I struggled to word it, was about honing creativity and accommodating for it, since I knew that he wouldn’t answer with self-help tactics. Poor wording/long story short, I didn’t have to even try to word my question. He just talked about it anyway.
Filed under: ChaCha, Eddie, creative, office hours | 2 Comments
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Hi, Hannah. Caught sight of your mention of AC through “Google Alerts.” Sorry you’ve had a bad experience with our podcast, but best wishes on finding a job/career and ultimately a vocation that gives you freedom to do what you want. Creativity is an ethic/choice about how we engage, not a process.
Best wishes,
Todd Henry
AccidentalCreative.com
I ran across your blog because I have a Google alert for creativity. You say some interesting things that I would like to comment on.
First, creativity can be enhanced and improved, because it is essentially about thinking, and one can change the way one thinks.
Creativity is more than just artistic talent, it’s the ability to have ideas that help you do something. It is part of problem solving, decision making AND self expression. Most people only associate it with self expression. They believe in the other myths of creativity…that you either have it or you don’t (everyone has it), that it’s only for very intelligent people (all non-retarded people have some creative capacity), that it is infrequent and rare (it’s everywhere and almost all the time), that you have no control over it (you have a lot of control over it), and there is nothing you can do to improve it (you can improve creative effectivness dramatically, within your “level” of talent…in other words you can be the best you can be).
It’s true you can’t change your IQ. But you can change a lot of things. You can improve what you know — you can read, you can understand things better. Knowing things actually helps one become more creative because it expands what you can combine in your head. New combinations are a key to creative thinking.
Creativity is defined by the experts as “novelty that is useful.” So, if you want to feel more creative one way to get there is to have more ideas that apply to the challenges in your life.
And how might you have more ideas? Awareness of creative process. And focus. It seems crazy to think that creativity and a structured process can work well together, but they can, and it’s proven. By separating divergent thought and convergent thought, that alone, can make almost everyone more creatively effective. One simple thing is to simply start writing your ideas down and making lists of ideas to apply to your challenges. For instance, you mention you need more creativity in your job. Take a work challenge you have, don’t know what that it, but pick one, and just start listing ideas to address the challenge. It won’t feel creative until you get to idea #17 and you have a breakthrough. If you are not doing this kind of divergent thinking work, it’s no surprise why you don’t feel creative. It might take some time, but make a long list of ideas. If you keep pushing it over time you’ll come up with something creative and innovative.
I’ve listened to The Accidental Creative and I don’t agree with everything said in that podcast. However, there are indeed steps in the process of creative thinking. Creativity can “just happen” or it can be deliberately invited, focused, and used to solve the challenges in your life.
In short, there is a well known, 50 year old model for creative problem solving. It’s not “the truth” it’s an approach that works better than random creative thinking. If you want to know more about it, read “Jack’s Notebook” by Gregg Fraley. Or, search the web for “Osborn-Parnes” creative problem solving.
What kind of work do you do? What would you like to do? Creative problem solving begins with knowing what you want. Make a list of your wishes related to work…a long list.
Best of luck.