What Adele teaches us about creativity
I originally shared this with the class I’m teaching at Marquette University on creativity. Last week we watched Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” Ted Talk, and their assignment was to come up with an idea that combines their “why” (their personal mission) and “what” (their skills) to solve a social problem.
I’ve talked before about how creativity is combining one idea with another. The individual ideas don’t have to be original, they just have to create something new together. Sound familiar, right?
I haven’t talked much about comedy, but it pretty much follows the same formula. You may have heard that “Tragedy + Time = Comedy.” That’s just combining two elements.
Here’s an example from last night’s SNL. Thanksgiving + Adele = HILARITY. It’s simple.
Take two familiar concepts (family tensions during the holidays, Adele’s new single) and together they make something creative, novel and pretty funny.
Watch it and try to reverse engineer it to see the creativity in it. What problem is it trying to solve?
[Another example: Adele + Adele impersonators = HILARITY]
The lesson here isn’t that Adele + Anything else = HILARITY. It’s that “creativity is just connecting things,” as Steve Jobs put it.
You can think of combining your WHY and WHAT in the same manner. I’ll use myself as an example.
I believe in the power of writing and storytelling for expression, empathy and connection. That’s my why.
But when I was younger, I started with what I did, not why I did it. I thought because I was a journalism major, I should work at a newspaper or magazine my whole life. My resume was tailored to that end.
Then I realized writing could be applied in limitless ways, especially with the rise of the Internet. My “what” could be a blog, a book, an email newsletter, a Facebook status or a syllabus. It could be a hand-written note or 140 characters. It could include sketches or GIFs or nothing but words.
Together, my belief in writing to affect hearts and minds can be applied in any number of ways to solve a problem.
Once you clearly know and understand your “why” and your “what,” the creative possibilities are endless.
So what do YOU do, and why do you do it?
