Dissecting Creative Thinking

So you’ve been asked to come up with the next big thing and the last creative thing you can remember coming up with was a macaroni picture of Mickey Mouse you made in 3rd grade. Where do you turn?

There are hundreds upon hundreds of publications with creative tools that dive into theories and methods. Some of the most searched words out there today are, innovation, creativity, and design-thinking.

Every one wants to be ahead of the game when it comes to creativity, after all, it’s the most creative and artistically inclined that are the ones that envision interesting and progressive solutions. The problem is that few understand what it actually takes to BE creative!

When asked who were the artistic ones in a third grader class, each and every child raised their hands. In fifth grade the children were posed the same question and about half of them raised their hands. By the time you get to 8th grade approximately, 1 in 10 raise their hand.

What’s going on here?

I could go on about how we’re losing creative problem solving by taking art and music out of school and replacing them with some measured political panacea to education called, STEM, but I won’t.

I will however outwardly state that it is a miracle that when I got out of school my ability to think was still in tact. Attributed to nothing more than a continued level disbelief and questioning that offered me a concurrent sidetrack minds eye to behind the scenes exploration beyond what I was given or taught…

…The short answer to having true creativity to me is to unlearn what you’ve been taught.

What the hell does that mean?

Are you caught in the monotony of your days? Do you actually stop and smell the roses? Can you recall the last time you went outside and just sat and forced yourself to be present? How about a random journey on your bike with no direct concern for destination? When’s the last time you made a paper airplane and threw it off your deck for no reason other than to watch it fly? Or sat still and watched how a tree bent in the breeze and the patterns its leaves made as it did?

These seemingly innocuous things, coupled with intentional experimentation without end goals or outcomes, like a hobby can all add up to your ability to unlearn the forced cartesian grid, logical, strategic pathways of thinking we have all been fed. Further, the continued attachment to a belief that structure and strategic rigid implementation of nearly everything in your life should be addressed hinders creativity. Think about it. It removes all necessity for on-the-fly thinking, or instant work-arounds to things that just happen to pop up unexpected.

Escaping your comfort zone of routine can do amazing things for your ability to think creatively and can also increase self-identification, and not surprisingly, personal confidence.

It is well documented that nearly every single thought-leader of yesteryear to now have had and have secondary hobbies consistently engaging their mind in patterns of thought that strengthen creative connectivity, experimentation, and solution-way-finding.

Don’t have a hobby? Get one. It could be painting, drawing, playing a musical instrument. Anything that takes learned skill. It doesn’t matter that you don’t THINK you have a talent. It only matters that you experiment and stick to something you’re interested in ONLY for the sake of YOU being interested and the magic will happen.

I was blessed to have a very sympathetic mother who encouraged me playing in mud, but she also encouraged me to draw, sculpt, and paint. I now have played the guitar for over 16 years, and have recently gotten in to composing electronic music, which I would contest offers me continued way-finding to questions that come up along my journey and profession as an industrial designer.

The path of creativity is filled with open-ended experimentation, objectivity, sense and sometimes senseless acts.

Remember, anyone can pick up a How-To book on creative thought, but to be a linchpin of creativity, understand that creative thinking is something earned through consitient experimentation and exploration.

…you’re going to have to step outside your routine, or whatever loop you identify with and reinsert yourself into unfamiliar territory.