Can You Become More Creative?
Many years ago, being creative wasn’t something that was even in my consciousness. I just got on and did the things that needed doing. Then one day a friend said. “Tony you seem to find solutions to problems that we had just about given up on. Where do you find such creativity?” My answer was. “it’s nothing to do with creativity, I’m not creative I just do what seems like the right answer.” I, like most people, didn’t even think about being creative let alone recognise it and want to be more creative.
So, Here's a question for you. Can you actually become more creative, or are you stuck with whatever amount of creativity you happened to receive, and didn’t even know you had, when the great talent lottery was held?
I think you can probably guess which side I'm going to come down on.
If I thought creativity was something you either had or didn't have, there wouldn't be much point in creating the Product Creation Academy. I could save myself an enormous amount of work, put a notice on the front page saying, "Creative people this way, everybody else go home," and find something else to do.
Fortunately, I know from experience that it doesn’t work like that.
Like it, know it, or not. You already have creativity. The more interesting question is whether you can develop it, and I am certain that you can.
You Already Do This with Other Abilities
Think about something you're quite good at today that you weren't very good at when you first started.
Driving perhaps. Cooking. Gardening. Photography. Using a computer. Playing an instrument. Writing. Even something as ordinary as having a conversation in a foreign language.
When you first started, you probably had to think about everything. I can still remember learning to drive and wondering how anybody could possibly steer a car, watch the road, change gear, operate three pedals, look in the mirrors, indicate and avoid hitting things at the same time. It seemed an unreasonable number of activities for one person to perform simultaneously.
Eventually, most of it became automatic. What changed? You practised.
You made mistakes, learned from them and gradually became better. Nobody finds that particularly surprising. Yet when it comes to creativity, we sometimes abandon the idea of improvement and assume that whatever ability we have today is all we're ever going to get.
Why should creativity be any different from anything else you do?
Perhaps Creativity Needs Exercise
No! I’m not suggesting that you go and run 10 miles every morning and you will miraculously become more creative. But, if you stop the running for a few weeks, the next time you try it’s going to be a bit of a challenge. Why should creativity be any different? Two hackneyed phrases spring to mind. “Use it or lose it.” And “The more you do, the more you can.”
Unfortunately, irritating clichés occasionally survive because there's something useful hiding inside them.
If you rarely ask yourself to think of alternatives, experiment, imagine possibilities or create things, why would you expect those activities to come easily? On the other hand, if you regularly give yourself little creative challenges, you become more accustomed to exploring possibilities rather than waiting for the first obvious answer.
That doesn't mean spending three hours every morning sitting cross-legged in a darkened room trying to summon your creative spirit. Ten minutes playing with an idea can be enough.
Creativity doesn't necessarily need a ceremony. It needs using.
Stop Looking for the Right Answer
Most of us have spent a considerable part of our lives being asked questions for which somebody already knew the answer. "What is the capital of France?" Paris. "What is seven times eight?" I could go on indefinitely but that would not be a very creative use of our time would it? Those questions are useful because sometimes we need the correct answer. I would prefer the person designing an aeroplane to be reasonably interested in correct answers.
Creativity often asks a different sort of question. ,"How many ways could we use this?" "What else could this become?" "What would happen if we changed that?" "How could we make this more interesting?"
Now we may have dozens of possible answers, including some completely useless ones.
That's fine.
In fact, useless answers can be surprisingly helpful because they get you away from the obvious ones.
Suppose I gave you a brick and asked what you could do with it. Building a wall would probably appear fairly quickly. You could use it as a doorstop. Put a few together and make a shelf. Use one as a weight. Paint it and turn it into a rather unattractive ornament. Heat it and use it to warm something. Draw a face on it and call it Fred if you really have nothing better to do.
I'm not suggesting the world has been waiting desperately for the invention of Fred the Brick. The point is that once you stop demanding a sensible answer, your imagination gets a little more freedom.
And somewhere among the silly ideas there may be an interesting one.
Give Yourself Permission to Be Wrong
This might be one of the most useful things you can do for your creativity.
Be wrong occasionally. Not when you're filling in your tax return. There are limits. But when you're exploring an idea, being wrong can be remarkably productive. You think something might work, so you try it. It doesn't. Now you know. You try something else.
Children seem quite comfortable with this. Give a child a pile of miscellaneous objects and they will happily experiment with them. They don't appear particularly concerned that their first attempt might not meet accepted industry standards.
We adults can be rather less adventurous. We want to know whether something will work before we've tried it, which is a little inconvenient because trying it is often how we find out.
Creativity needs some tolerance for uncertainty.
Change the Question
Here's a little trick I particularly like.
When you're stuck, change the question. Suppose you ask, "How can I improve this?" Perfectly reasonable question, but perhaps nothing interesting occurs to you. Try asking, "How could I make this worse?" That's much easier.
If you were running a restaurant, you could make customers wait two hours, serve everything cold, employ rude staff and remove all the chairs. Congratulations, you've created the world's worst restaurant. And the world’s best Fawlty Towers episode!
Now reverse some of those ideas. Could waiting be made more enjoyable? Could service become more personal? Could customers be entertained while they wait? Suddenly you're looking at the original problem from another direction.
Or ask, "How would a child solve this?" "How would I do it if I only had £10?" "What would I do if I had unlimited money?" "What could I remove?" "What could I combine?"
The question determines where your mind goes looking for answers. Change the question and you may change what you find.
Borrow Without Stealing
Creative people borrow ideas all the time. Before anybody gets nervous, I'm not suggesting you copy somebody else's work and put your name on it. That's not creativity. That's likely to result in an unpleasant email.
What I mean is that an idea from one area can inspire something completely different somewhere else.
Nature has inspired engineering. Games have influenced education. Supermarkets borrowed ideas from industrial production. Website designers borrow ideas from magazines, shops, television and each other.
You can do the same. If you like something, ask yourself what you actually like about it. Is it the simplicity? The way information is presented? The humour? The colours? The experience? The way it makes you feel? Once you understand the principle rather than merely copying the thing itself, you can ask where else that principle might be useful.
Ideas are sociable creatures. They seem to enjoy meeting other ideas. Introduce a couple and see what happens.
Do Something Differently
You can also give your creativity a nudge by occasionally interfering with your routines. Nothing dramatic. I'm not suggesting you sell your house, move to Peru and become an alpaca farmer simply because you've been taking the same route to Tesco for fifteen years. Although there are people who have done things like that and it has been a great success, so DON’T RULE IT OUT. That’s another important creativity principle. Print it out and hang it on your wall.
Try taking a different route somewhere. Read something you wouldn't normally read. Listen to somebody whose interests are completely different from yours. Try cooking something unfamiliar. Visit somewhere you've never been.
Why? Because creativity needs raw material. If you continually see the same things, read the same things, talk to the same people and have the same experiences, you're giving your imagination a fairly predictable box of ingredients.
Put something unfamiliar into the box occasionally. You never know what it might connect with.
Have a Go at This
We said these articles wouldn't simply talk about creativity, so here's a little exercise.
Choose an ordinary object near you. A cup, paperclip, cardboard box, spoon, old newspaper, whatever happens to be available. Give yourself five minutes and think of as many alternative uses for it as possible. Don't stop when you've found three sensible ones. That's when the exercise is just getting started. Try for ten. Then twenty.
Some of your ideas will be ridiculous. Good. If you find yourself thinking, "That's stupid," write it down anyway. We're not manufacturing anything. Nobody is investing their life savings in your alternative use for a teaspoon.
What you're practising is the ability to move beyond the first obvious answers and continue looking for possibilities. You may surprise yourself.
Don't Try Too Hard
There's a slightly annoying thing about creativity. Sometimes the harder you chase an idea, the faster it runs away.
Here we are back with Alice again.
"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" The Red Queen in “Through The Looking Glass”.
You've probably experienced this when trying to remember somebody's name. You know you know it. You can almost feel the answer sitting somewhere in your brain, but it refuses to come out. Ten minutes after you've stopped trying, there it is.
Ideas can behave in much the same way.
That's why people get ideas in the shower, while walking, driving or doing something completely unrelated. Part of your mind seems quite happy to carry on working after you've officially given up. So, give yourself time to play with ideas but also give yourself permission to leave them alone.
Go and make a cup of tea and sit and stare into your looking glass for a while. Your imagination knows where to find you.
Becoming More Creative Isn't About Becoming Somebody Else
I think this is important. Developing your creativity doesn't mean turning yourself into an eccentric artist, brilliant inventor or somebody who spends meetings covering the walls with coloured sticky notes. Unless you enjoy coloured sticky notes, of course.
You're not trying to become somebody else's version of a creative person. You're discovering how your own creativity works. You may be methodical and creative. Quiet and creative. Practical and creative. Technically minded and creative. You might enjoy writing, designing, building, organising, solving problems or simply coming up with ideas.
There isn't a creative uniform you have to put on. There is just you, with an imagination that can be encouraged to explore a little further than it did yesterday.
Can you become more creative? I think so. But don't take my word for it.
Pick up that teaspoon and prove me right.