What is creativity?

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” — Albert Einstein

This is one of my favorite quotes about creativity.

It is a thing that we can’t touch, watch, and eliminate, but we can control and stimulate it.

A good creative can find new ideas or solutions,

combine the available elements into something new and solve problems in an original way.

There are tons of types of creativity.

What for me is creative, doesn’t mean that even for you it is.

Joy Paul Guilford, is a psychologist, who identified some aspects that characterize creativity.

Fluidity, or the ability to produce abundant ideas, without reference to their adequacy to solve the problem.

Flexibility, that is, the ability to change ideational strategy, therefore to pass from one succession of ideas to another, from one scheme to another.

Originality, which consists in the ability to find unique, particular, and unusual answers.

Elaboration, or the pursuit to the end of an ideational path with a wealth of details connected in a sensible way to each other.

Sensitivity to problems, selecting ideas and organizing them into new forms, understanding what is wrong and what can be perfected in everyday objects.

“ The studies nowadays tell that creativity is a sum of intuition and deduction, between reason and imagination, between emotion and reflection, between divergent thought and convergent thought. “ (Ilaria Biasion, 2017)

Creativity and myth

“Creativity is only for a few bunches of people, the big rest, or is not creative or isn’t enough”.

False!

We all have a creative mind, depending on whose eyes you watch that thing.

For me that house yellow, blue and green might be weird, for you, maybe it’s a fantastic graphic.

“Only the artist has a creative mind”

Ah, so when we are born, we all have a label with the name of the work we are gonna do 20 years later?

I don’t think so, at least, I didn’t have one, fortunately…

We can all grow our creativity, don’t listen to the people who say “If you are not creative now, you’re not gonna be even in the future”.

It’s false, I have some tips for you to grow and develop your creative mind.

How to develop your creative mind

There is tons of advice to develop our creativity.

Now I will tell you some, but you can find a lot more with a little research, on the internet.

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (a doctor) in 1997 tells some studies about the development of creativity.

Here is some:

Surprise and surprise: discover every day, we are invited to discover the ability to surprise others and find something that can surprise ourselves.

Go deeper and get passionate: if we discover an interest in something, we should pursue it and try to delve into the subject.

Also, we should spend more time doing what is in line with our aspirations and less time doing what we don’t love.

Commit and seek challenge: if we undertake a project, try to carry it out in the best possible way: it is doing things well and always having new stimuli.

Relax: take the time to relax and reflect.

Open your mind: try to consider the same problem from as many points of view as possible.

Another tip from the verywellmind blog :

• Explore multiple solutions: “The next time you approach a problem, try looking for a variety of solutions. Instead of simply going with the first idea you have, take the time to think of other possible ways to approach the situation. “
• Make time for creativity: “You won’t be able to develop your creative talents if you don’t make time for them. Schedule some time each week to concentrate on some type of creative project.”
• Overcome a negative attitude: “Focus on eliminating negative thoughts or self-criticisms that may impair your ability to develop strong creative skills. “
• Brainstorm new ideas: “ Brainstorming is a common technique in both academic and professional settings, but it can also be a powerful tool for developing your creativity.

Start by suspending your judgment and self-criticism, then start writing down related ideas and possible solutions.

The goal is to generate as many ideas as possible in a relatively short period. Next, focus on clarifying and refining your ideas to arrive at the best possible choice.”

• Challenge yourself and create opportunities: “ Once you have developed some basic creative skills, it is important to continually challenge yourself to further advance your abilities. Look for more difficult approaches, try out new things, and avoid always using the same solutions you have used in the past. “
• Try the six hats technique: The “six hats” technique involves looking at a problem from six differing perspectives.

By doing this, you can produce more ideas than you might have had you only looked at the situation from one or two points of view.

• Black Hat: Use a negative perspective. Which elements of the solution won’t work?
• Blue Hat: Think broadly. What is the best overall solution?
• Green Hat: Think creatively. What are some alternative ideas?
• Red Hat: Look at the situation emotionally. What do your feelings tell you?
• White Hat: Look at the situation objectively. What are the facts?
• Yellow Hat: Use a positive perspective. Which elements of the solution will work?

The creative process has different phases and there are more in front of all the studies and work that the scientist did, in general, The phases that most people have in common are : (pensarecreativo.com)

• Preparation: It is a time of careful observation and research through different sources, including the analysis of previous theories, similar products, failed attempts, and imaginative hypotheses. We analyze data, ask ourselves questions about how to use them, and start experimenting.
• Incubation: It is the moment of profound reflection on everything that has been collected and developed in the previous phase. The brain, sometimes unconsciously, is assembling everything, reorganizing information, looking for meaning and direction.
• Illumination: It is the light that turns on the bulb and gives us an unexpected order of the elements we have worked with up to now. It is the instant that changes the course of the process. Among all the hypotheses and alternatives we have in mind here suddenly emerges the one that works
• Realization: If the idea holds up and surpasses the initial enthusiasm, then we move towards the closure of the process.

In the end, I want to give you some books that can help your creativity. I haven’t read any of them, but I read on the internet that they are good, so I will read them with you in the future.

• Creativity Inc., by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
• Steal Like An Artist, by Austin Kleon
• The War of Art, By Steven Pressfield
• Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be, By Paul Arden

Personal thought

I think that all of us have a creative mind.

Maybe for you, my creativity isn’t that, and for others it is, but for me, creativity can be bad or good, depending on what point of view you see it. (in the most of the case)

I am not a big creative person, but I think that in the future, probably, I will become a good one.

For now, I’m satisfied.