Hey Friends,
I have been hearing the word ‘Creativity’ for a very-very long time. How to be more creative is the most frequently asked question on the web..?. Over the years creative people are seen as someone special who have descended from a different planet for a limited time. This thought has always intrigued me and I took a deep dive into it, especially this Quote really resonated in me;
“Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If in your bold creative way you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.” —G.K. Chesterton
To me creativity is something where you need to permit the making of mistakes if you want to foster creativity, because that often ends up leading to new discoveries. Most accidents never end up being profitable or valuable in a measurable way. But they’re necessary because they’re part of the process of developing something new. Accidents fuel creativity.
Limitations are essential because they give us a starting point and a shape to work against. If you try to start a creative effort from nothing, you’ll end up with mere chaos.
Dennett writes, “The exploitation of accidents is the key to creativity, whether what is being made is a new genome, a new behavior, or a new melody.”
To most of us, Creativity can seem like a mysterious process. But many of the most creative people understand that you can actually break it down into a simple formula.
In Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, philosopher Daniel C. Dennett describes this process of understanding a system in order to step outside of it as “jootsing,”. Understanding systems can help us think more creatively. The concept of jootsing shows us that constraints and restrictions are essential for creativity.
“Jootsing” means “jumping out of the system.”__ Daniel C. Dennett
Kevin Ashton, in How to Fly a Horse, explains why. Teachers favor less creative children “because people who are more creative also tend to be more playful, unconventional, and unpredictable, and all of this makes them harder to control. No matter how much we say we value creation, deep down, most of us value control more. And so we fear change and favor familiarity.
As an individuals, if we want to be creative, we need to give ourselves space to play and experiment without a set agenda.
Amos Tversky famously said that the secret to doing good work is being a little unemployed so you always have hours in the day to waste as you wish. During that wasted time, you’ll likely have your best, most creative ideas. If your schedule is crammed with only room for what’s productive in an obvious way, you’ll have a hard time seeing outside of the existing system.
Find out some free time each day to waste ( contrary to the worldly definition of it which is truly in a mechanical sense) and be more creative on few random things.
JOE
Do follow the ‘JOE’s Life Skills Lab‘ and get yourself enrolled in my E – Mail Newsletter “ SUNDAY RETAZOS” sent exclusively to my subscribers with weekly updates on Mindful Productivity, life lessons and interesting articles I discover during the Week. I AM SURE YOU DO NOT LIKE TO MISS OUT ON THIS .
Main Image Credit :Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
Get in touch… — JOE’s LIFE SKILLS LAB/Joe Sehrawat
Take Care
