CAN YOU FORCE CREATIVITY? BY ALAN RICE
I can sit in one place with a pencil, paper, and silence.
If I focus on nothing but plausible, creative ideas they’ll come…right?
All it takes is abstract thought and focus.
Often times people implicitly believe things similar to this. They can be original, they just choose not to most times due to social and institutional expectations. Unfortunately, I don’t believe it’s that simple. I’m sure if one sat and tried this activity they would come up with many viable ideas, and creative ideas as well, but very rarely will they come up with something that strikes the perfect balance between originality/creativity and pragmatism.
To be completely honest I can provide a little insight centered around this dilemma, but I definitely don’t possess a universal solution to pumping out perfect ideas. Ideally I would like to be an entrepreneur so I’m constantly trying to come up with innovative ideas and develop a viable business model around them. I’ve noticed two things that, at least in my experience, have remained true consistently.
- Creativity is not a process or model. It is a mindset.
You can’t just do x, y, and z in that order and suddenly become creative. What you can do however is nurture a certain paradigm, or lens in which you perceive problems, ideas, or even the world that will lead to innovation. I don’t want to speculate what that mindset entails because I’m sure it differs between individuals.
- The best ideas (in my experience) come from spontaneity.
All of my best ideas have arisen from a particular moment in life in which I’m going about my day to day and say to myself “Man, would it be nice if _______.” At that moment it hits me, damn, I can make that a reality, and I think the world would love it. The only real step is grabbing on to that insight rather than letting it slip away. On the contrary, at no point have I ever been able to sit down and force a breakthrough.
Again, this holds true for me but I’m not working under the assumption this is true for everyone. The point of this is for those of you reading to test my claims. If you have an experience that contradicts my claims then sorry, this article was probably a waste of time. But if not, seriously consider the way about in which you attempt to derive your originality.
