Archive for creativity
Complicated problems need creative solutions
Posted by: | CommentsI’m still traveling this week, but like everyone else, I was horrified to learn of the tragic devastation that occurred in Japan. I lived in California for many years, where earthquakes were a fact of life. But I never experienced anything like the quake that hit Japan last week. And of course, the tsunami took a bad situation and made it even worse.
I won’t attempt to give advice to the people of Japan right now. What they most need from us is prayer and relief efforts. But one thing I do know is that they will need to be creative in overcoming the difficulties they are now faced with. And we can all benefit from becoming learning more about that topic. So let’s talk a little about creativity.
To face the greatest challenges of life, we need to cultivate creative thinking. In times of crisis, you need to tap into every good idea you have. Of course, the best time to increase your creativity is before the crisis occurs. This can be done by establishing the discipline of creative thinking. Here are a few ways we can do that:
1. Spend time with creative people.
Make a habit, both inside and outside of work, of spending time with creatives. Let their way of thinking challenge and influence yours.
2. Look for the obvious.
When problem-solving, many of us make the mistake of looking only for the “big” solution. Creativity means exploring all ideas, even the obvious and seemingly insignificant ones. Often the simplest solution is the best solution.
3. Be unreasonable.
Logic and creativity can work together quite well, but sometimes rational thinking gets in the way of being creative. Be willing to look at unreasonable ideas. Often they expand your thinking and lead to breakthroughs that you might otherwise miss.
4. Practice mental agility.
Creativity requires flexibility. Rigid, bureaucratic thinking is in direct opposition innovation and creativity. So make a habit of considering every idea, no matter how difficult it might seem to implement or how much change it may require.
5. Dare to be different.
Being creative means standing outside of the norm. You must cultivate a willingness to challenge every rule and assumption.
6. See problems as opportunities.
Sometimes the only difference between a problem and an opportunity is the word you use to describe it. Whenever you face a problem, take a step back and ask how it could be described as an opportunity—to innovate, build, and improve.
The discipline of creative thinking will change you—and for the better. As jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.”
My prayer is that people who have spent years cultivating creativity are already at work in Japan – and the Middle East, and around the world – to serve people and bring solutions to hurting nations. May we keep them in our prayers.
You can’t find the right answer if you’re asking the wrong question
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“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions.”
~Sir Antony Jay
When problem-solving, it’s so easy to fall into the rut of uncreative thinking. We can focus so much on answers and solutions that we lose sight of the question. And if we’re asking the wrong questions, we’ll often end up with the wrong answers.
How creative is your thinking? When faced with a problem, do you immediately turn to the tried-and-true solutions that you’ve always used? Or do you open your mind to new ideas? A good way to do that is to start asking some right questions, like these:
• Why must it be done this way?
• What is the root problem?
• What are the underlying issues?
• What does this remind me of?
• What is the opposite?
• What metaphor or symbol helps to explain it?
• Why is it important?
• What’s the hardest or most expensive way to do it?
• Who has a different perspective on this?
• What happens if we don’t do it at all?
You get the idea—and you can probably come up with better questions yourself. Physicist Tom Hirschfield observed, “If you don’t ask, ‘Why this?’ often enough, somebody will ask, ‘Why you?’” If you want to think creatively, you must ask good questions. You must challenge the process.
Seeking creativity in its natural habitat
Posted by: | CommentsIn Part 1 on the topic of creativity, I told you that I didn’t fit the creative mold. But I didn’t let that stop me from working to become more creative.
I shared with you how I look to the creative thinking of others for the tools and inspiration to grow in this area. (If you haven’t read Part 1, click here to learn more.)
But learning from others wasn’t enough. I have discovered that my usual environment and learning methods sometimes make it very hard to get into a creative frame of mind.
Forget waiting for creativity to find you.
You see, I’ve been described as a “high energy person.” I’m always on the lookout for new opportunities, and I really like being busy. I find great enjoyment in multitasking.
In the Fast Company interview that I referenced in the last post, Teresa Amabile said, “Time pressure stifles creativity because people can’t deeply engage with the problem. Creativity requires an incubation period; people need time to soak in a problem and let the ideas bubble up.”
That can be a problem for me: Lack of time. I’m capable of filling every hour with tasks and appointments. When that happens, creative thinking falls by the wayside.
To change this, I have to give creativity the time and attention it deserves.
The first thing I do is write thinking time onto my calendar like a regular appointment. And then I treat it like an appointment. I gather my legal pads, files and other resources, and I move from my normal work area and settle into a quiet, peaceful spot. There I narrow my focus.
Over time, I’ve developed the discipline to keep my mind from wandering off-topic. And carving out these distraction-free hours makes me quiet and still enough to let creative ideas “bubble up.”
When I was younger, my thinking spot was a rock on a hill. Later, I set up a “thinking chair” in my office, which I use solely for that purpose. These days, I also do some of my best thinking while swimming laps in the pool. It doesn’t replace the writing time that I still schedule. (I just haven’t found a waterproof legal pad yet…) But an hour of swimming laps back and forth, with its silence and rhythm, gives me just what I need to focus on one or two specific problems or ideas.
Maybe deep thinking and introspection comes more naturally for you. Even if it does, setting aside dedicated time for creative thinking will help you be intentional. No one can afford to go about their daily life waiting for the muse to strike. Instead, chase after and tackle her, doing so in a way that works for you.
No one person has a corner on all of the creativity.
If you want to do something creative, bring in others to help you. Now this comes easily for me. I love spending time with people. The synergy of a good conversation energizes me like nothing else.
And my favorite thing is to gather with people I respect for a shared creative meeting. In fact, I do this with just about everything I come up with. And I promise you, every idea I take into a collaborative environment comes out better than it was before.
Here’s a current example. My newest book, Put Your Dream to the Test, started out going in a completely different direction. Sitting with a “creative brain trust,” I shared an outline that I thought would be great for the new book. But as we batted it around, my writer, Charlie, zeroed in on a single chapter and its outline. He spoke up: “John, THIS is the book you need to write.” The energy in the room ignited. We all knew very quickly that he was right. And that single chapter outline bloomed into one for the entire book. I think it goes without saying that Put Your Dream to the Test is a much better book than that original outline would have produced.
Do you share your creative ideas with others? Or do you merely turn them over and over within your own mind? If so, you might be limiting your ideas, when including others in the process could take them to a level 10.
Pull together a team of people who can increase the creative energy in a room. Then toss your idea into the middle of the table and let them have at it.
Want to be more creative? Be proactive. Schedule it. Chase after it. Don’t wait for the muse to strike. Creative thoughts rarely come and find us. We have to be intentional about finding them.
Put Your Dream to the Test is available online and in bookstores now.
Want to learn more? Read the entire first chapter here.
Developing your creativity – even if you’re not sure it’s within you.
Posted by: | CommentsOne magazine I enjoy reading is Fast Company. And I recently came across an interview there with Teresa Amabile It’s from a few years ago, but it really got me thinking.
Amabile heads the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School. For eight years, she and her colleagues combed through a study they conducted on creativity in the mid-1990s – in which they looked at creativity “in the wild.”
“We wanted to crawl inside people’s heads,” explained Amabile, “and understand the features of their work environment as well as the experiences and thought processes that lead to creative breakthroughs.”
In the end they came up with “The 6 Myths of Creativity.” Take a look at the entire interview. It’s a fascinating study, and I found myself agreeing with its conclusions.
The article also prompted me to share some of my own observations about creativity. This felt especially timely in light of our tough economic situation, when innovation is so important.
In fact, I found that I have so much to say on the subject that I can’t do it all in one blog post. So the following is Part 1 in what I want to communicate on building creativity. Let me know if it helps you.
Creatively Challenged
I discovered my own need for creativity in a college class. At the beginning of the semester, everyone took a quiz to measure creative potential. My result? I registered very low on the creativity scale.
I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t a creative person? Did this mean I would end up one of those boring pastors? I really hoped not.
Many years later, the Harvard study seems to show that the rationale behind any kind of creativity assessment is flawed, because the first myth on their list is, “Creativity comes from creative types.”
Amabile explains that creative “types” don’t have a monopoly on creative thinking. To the contrary, she says, “almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work. Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells.”
Fortunately for my college self, even though I didn’t have access to the Harvard research, I was still too young and ignorant to be totally discouraged by the test. I decided right then that even if I wasn’t born creative, I would become creative.
Creative Thinking Does Not Begin in a Vacuum.
Creative people don’t necessarily sit down with a blank piece of paper and invent something completely new. In fact, they usually start by turning to the creative work of others to help them solve their particular problem.
Right after I saw the score on that assessment test, I set my mind to studying creativity. I started collecting creative material: quotes, articles, notes from speeches, books, whatever I could get my hands on. Everything was categorized and filed. At first this did a lot to teach me how creative minds thought.
Soon I discovered that it inspired creative thinking within me.
After that, whenever I planned a message, book, or article, I would pull out my file on that topic and read through the material.
One quote would get me thinking about a concept that would become a point in my lesson. I’d read an article, and because I disagreed with one point, I would come up with three points that I did believe were true.
(Note that I work hard not to use the ideas of others and claim them as my own. If I know a source for a quote or idea, I always give credit. And for my books especially, my writer and I spend hours tracking down sources and obtaining permissions to quote others. If you’re unclear on what exactly plagiarism is, see this helpful article from Purdue University.)
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Read what’s out there. Ask yourself why you like what the author said. Or why you disagree. Come up with what you would say to disprove their point. Or to further prove it.
Learning from others and applying it to your own situation is a big inspiration – and the first major step – toward thinking creatively.
In Part 2 later this week, I’ll share the ways I’ve found to schedule creativity, along with how collaboration can make a good idea great.
