(39) What I learned about Creativity

This may not be what you’re expecting.

Anyone who knows me personally might assume I am going to write about artistic endeavours. Perhaps waxing lyrical about architectural design, jewellery design, graphics, illustration, fine art or any one of the many art / design / craft disciplines I’ve been into over the years. Yes I love all that stuff and could easily bang on about it as I have before, but it’s not that type of specific creativity I’m exploring today.

I find most people tend to categorise themselves as either creative or not creative. They might think back to the last time they did anything ‘artistic’ which might have been as far back as secondary school (and you know what I think about our paltry education system). But I am on about the wider sense of the meaning of creativity, which I believe we all have.

Something I have discovered is the many ways that we can express creativity, in fact, practically everything we do can be described as ‘creative’. One of the most fun applications of creativity I have come across is the act of doing business itself. Finding a niche product or service, exploring its potential, carving out markets and generating sales. Building on sales, devising additional routes to market through expansion, spotting the growth part of your product cycle and timing your next product or service to maximum effect. Experimenting with different marketing messages and mediums, communication with customers in new ways and seeing the possibilities in the increasingly sophisticated technology available to us all. Just fab. 

Other people get immense pleasure from the creativity of numbers and systems using their passions for diverse rewards as building investment portfolios, programming state of the art software or ensuring their resources are used to their full potential. Luckily for us many others find creativity helping others achieve things, either through formal teaching routes, producing the billions of pieces of free information available to access online networks and blogs or via the thousands of forums and informal discussion boards packed with useful information any one of us can freely access and benefit from.

And, as many people have discovered, there is massive creativity in times of need – when your back’s against the wall and you have to do something amazing to get yourself through a situation. Again – the creativity rises up inside and you find a flow of ideas, solutions and tactics to apply to your problem. And that is when I find creativity at its most fantastic. The human capacity to problem solve is a wonderful, wonderful thing!

(28) What I learned about mulling

In almost direct contrast to last week’s blog about breaking habits and fashioning a ‘just do it’ mentality. I am nurturing another, very useful, little habit of mulling.

I have always been a loud cheerleader for mulling in general. As a teacher, particularly of arts-based subjects, I believe mulling is a very strong creational tool. Put in all the ingredients for creativity and then let it simmer for a while (whilst you go and do something else and let the unconscious mind do all the astonishingly clever work). But more recently I have been putting mulling to work in another field: rational thought.

Actions I wouldn’t think twice about I now – er – think twice about. Pausing to think before dashing off an e-mail reply, or pressing 5 to speak to someone who’s left a voicemail. Pausing to evaluate before purchasing on impulse. Pausing to really think through new ideas and see all angles before launching them on unsuspecting friends and family.

It has actually saved me quite a bit of cash, stopped me from uttering a few inflammatory remarks, prevented me from getting into things I then wish to get out of and most certainly has introduced me to the idea of ‘thinking things through’. Which may sound strange to anyone who knows my creative background – surely I am practised at thinking things through? Ah but I am applying my mulling to my rational, not creative life. In my normal life I like to think through things out loud and with another person. I used to think hearing what I am thinking allows me to understand it better so therefore I can move on. But now (at advanced age) I have begun to really utilise the space of mulling to think through every day scenarios, not just wild projects.

So for the things I usually procrastinate over I now get to it, and the things I usually rashly jump into I now pause to mull for a while. And it took me how long to figure this out . . .

Do what you love

What did you do today?

Meet Tom Kelley – General Manager of the innovations company IDEO.

Today’s food for thought . . .

Tony Buzan – shows how we can educate . . .

The vids are a bit scrappy, but you can see the learning in action here – a joy to watch. If anyone can find part three please tell me! But you get the idea and, yes, the second vid inexplicably stops half way through! Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Education and creativity.

Grab a cuppa because this clip takes the best part of 20 minutes to watch, but will not be a waste of your time. For me, Sir Ken Robinson says it all about creativity and education. If you’re bored of hearing me banging on about how our schooling system is getting it all wrong then see if Ken can change your thinking:

Let me know what you think . . .

Creativity?

Years ago when I was teacher training I was obsessed with creativity. Can it be taught?

This video is excellent for those of us who are creative and need to be reminded, and for those of us who think we aren’t creative at all . . .

Take ten mins and enjoy.