What is creativity? Am I creative? What does it mean to be a creative person? Why should I be creative?
As a designer, creativity is a skill I practice every day. When my non-designer friends see my work, they say things like “That’s so creative!” or “I wish I was as creative as you”. I have to admit, I love hearing that. As a designer, there’s a sense of accomplishment that comes with that compliment. But the curiosity part of me asks, “Why can’t you be creative in what you do too?”
“Well, work is about analysing numbers and writing reports. I don’t design or create like you.”
There are opportunities to be creative in our daily lives. You just got to look for it.
What is creativity?
Creativity is a way of thinking. It is about viewing your situation in different ways and finding hidden patterns. It is about coming up with different ideas, connect the dots and bring ideas to fruition. An important part of being a creative is to act of producing. If you only have ideas but do not work on it, there is imagination.
What you produce is not the benchmark of creativity. Developing a business plan or a marketing campaign can be opportunities for creativity.
What can creativity do for me?
The greatest part of being creative is seeing opportunities where others see obstacles. As a creative, failure is expected. And I embrace it. This makes me a (careful) risk-taker. It challenges me to always learn and improve myself. It keeps me happy, makes me playful and makes me have fun with what I do. Businessman and businesswoman, if you’re reading this, it lets me have fun with what I do while making money.
I don’t have a single creative bone in me. What now?
Part of growing up is to be creative. From a young age, we learn about different subjects and disciplines. This new knowledge helps us understand the world we live in. Creativity helps us connect the different disciplines to form our personal identity. It creates awareness of how our ideas work together for us and influence us on how we go about our daily lives.
When learning stops, we stop practicing our creativity skills. We lose touch of our skill and slowly become uncreative.
How can I become more creative?
Learn something new. For those who are results-driven, learn something new that complements your current work. If you’re a business developer, pick up some skills in marketing. If you’re a designer, try programming. If you’re a teacher, read about psychology. As you go about learning, ask yourself, how can you apply the knowledge in your work?
It will be hard because this is a process you’re unfamiliar with and unsure if it will work. You will fail on the first few tries. As you try them out at work, recognise what works and keep at it
Unfortunately, creativity cannot be described so easily in one article. So stay tuned as I’ll be writing more about creativity in my upcoming articles!
Originally published at Linus Tan. If you got some value from this, recommend this post to spread the love to someone who needs it.
