I used to think I had a pretty good idea of what “creativity” meant, and was confident that I was, indeed, a creative individual.
However, I’ve always believed in the adage that “the older you get, the less you know,” and this seems to apply in the case of Christine’s creativity. Indeed, the more I have explored what it means to be creative, the more ways I’ve found to actually be creative, and my eyes have been opened to new ways to explore, push and execute creativity. I’m both excited and intrigued at this insight.
Following are the thoughts and ideas on creativity. The goal is to integrate, challenge, explore, evolve and scale these into my ever-evolving creative process – or rather simply my process “The Process”.
- Bad ideas happen, but generate enough ideas that there are a couple good ones.
- Fail forward: learn from and tweak bad ideas and mistakes to make new discoveries.
- Creativity doesn’t have to ONLY apply to work and business environment; being creative and innovative (and curious) can help strengthen relationships – especially when overcoming stereotypes and other pre-conceived notions (challenge first impressions).
- Procrastinate is the key to my own process – letting ideas, alternatives and options percolate and develop over time results for me in a better landscape of solutions and alternatives for me to explore when I finally sit down to execute. This also helps avoid brain-blocks and stuckness.
- Creating new words is fun – and it also allows me to move on to solving the problem at hand rather than getting stuck in the “there’s a word for that” weeds.
- Mind-mapping helps to visualize the situation landscape. By mapping out all the nooks, angles and components of a problem, project, task or situation I’m better able to understand what needs to be done and visualize the outcome(s).
- BE CURIOUS. WHY WHY WHY? Because the innocence of questioning leads to new realizations. Being curious is the epitome of intrinsic motivation; when I explore things of interest to me I get energized and excited which is akin to a turbo thrust on my motivation.
- The use of clever descriptions, witty recounts and first-thought analogies helps me place and share new ideas and discoveries in the world.
- Collaboration, or at least someone who I can bounce ideas off and/or have intelligent conversant with is desirable. I need to work on expanding this network.
- Sometimes the horse is bad, or already dead. Don’t kick it – just let it go.
- Intuition is worth a lot – follow it until proven otherwise BUT always reassess intuition to determine whether is comfortable or flexible. Intuition should always be flexible and open to, not discounting, new discoveries and challenging information.
- Stream of consciousness. Conscious thought. Thought train. Train hard. Hard wire. Wireframe. Frame of reference. Reference point. Point blank. Blank face. Face plant. Plant daisies. Daisy chain. Chain smoke. Smoke signals. Signal – This is fun.
Being conventional and following the rules = doing what you’ve always done and getting what you’ve always gotten. Finding – SEEKING OUT – new ways to do things results in new insights.