The 4 Laws of Infinite Creativity
Your guide to being a better tinkerer and bolder creator
Some of the greatest minds of the history of the world were tinkerers. Arguably, many great creators and inventors today are of a similar nature. I certainly would consider myself a tinkerer, and find the skill one worth developing every day of my life.
A tinkerer is simply defined by vocabulary.com as:
“a person who enjoys fixing and experimenting with machines and their parts”.
I would expand that definition to include experimenting with anything — it doesn’t have to simply be mechanical.
People who wish to create, invent, and put new things out into the world need, more desperately than ever, the skill of tinkering. They have to know how to get into the nitty gritty details of things.
They also need to know how to boldly experiment and manipulate the things that they have in front of them, whether they be parts to a machine, words on a page, or paint colors.
After much research into tinkering, inventing, and how to create best, here are the four laws of creativity I’ve surmised:
#1: Get familiar with your tools
People who are good creators get familiar with the things that they’ll be doing work and tinkering with, whether that’s words, a camera, a paint brush, or a socket wrench.
“The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.” — Paul R. Ehrlich
One thing I love seeing in a car person is how they’re so familiar with tools that they intuitively know which one to grab to figure something out. They’re intensely familiar, and don’t shy away when they need a particular device to get something done.
In a similar fashion, writers are aware of literary devices and styles, just like filmmakers know about angles, different tools, and styles of shots.
Good artists and tinkerers mess around before they need a final product, getting to know the ins and outs of what they’ll be working with.
To be a great artist, know your tools. After all, how will you create good art or solve any problems with them if you don’t know what they do?
#2: Consume good materials
Good writers read. Good filmmakers watch. Good inventors take things apart. In order to be a better creator, you have to tinker around and study things maybe out of the beaten path for you.
This can look like reading books outside of your genre or from a different time period, studying a type of painting or drawing outside of your discipline, or entering into a new area of film that you don’t work in specifically.
However you can — get away from what everybody else consumes (often cheap stuff made for the masses) and give yourself your own curriculum in good art consumption.
I’ll give you my own example: This year, I’ve set out with the rather obscure goal of watching every Tom Hanks movie.
I figured it was a silly and specific enough goal to get me to watch some good films with only one similar thread tying them together. The man’s in a broad range of types of movies, and many of them are incredible.
While my discipline is in no way filmmaking, I’ve always dabbled in visual storytelling. Simply ingesting several of his films over the past couple of weeks has improved my knowledge and visualization of film, and has me more inspired to create film stories of my own.
“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” — Thomas Edison
In a similar fashion, I can always tell when I’ve been reading something good based on the quality of my writing.
This goes the same way for actual tinkerers who work with machines. They can fix a car or rebuild an engine because they’ve seen what a functioning one looks like. They’ve studied the ins and outs of it, and taken it apart and put it back together dozens of times.
What kinds of artists do we claim to be if we haven’t done the same thing with our source material and inspiration?
#3: Stay confident
Maria Forleo has an amazing book titled Everything Is Figureoutable. She makes that argument for the entire book, and rather well I must say.
She makes the point that no matter your problem or the sticky situation you find yourself in, there’s a way out. All you need at the end of the day is a perspective shift and the right tools.
“If we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance.” — Orville and Wilbur Wright
I cannot imagine how concerned the friends and family of the Wright brothers were. I had a conversation with some of my family members after seeing a model of the first successful plane, crafted by the Wright brothers.
We were trying to figure out what their life must have been like, and how concerned those around them must have been both about their sanity and whether they would ever have anything remotely considering success.
“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” — Albert Einstein
Because of their persistence, mankind was able to fly.
They assumed that it was possible, and didn’t stop until they did what no one believed could be done. I like to think that all artists, whether they risk their lives in the sky or not, are in the same camp.
We have to hold our audience in the suspension of disbelief until we can sell them, through whatever artistic medium we communicate through.
When we’ve done our job well, they sour off into the sunset without a hitch, none the wiser to the feat we’ve just pulled off, with them craving for more.
#4: Don’t stop
It’s cliche, I know, but it lands a point — Thomas Edison tried hundreds of renditions of the lightbulb before finding the one that works.
“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” — Henry Ford
Truly employ the “everything is figureoutable” and don’t stop until you’ve figured something out.
While the details of that are nominal to the point, it’s something that I think is key to remember. It took him over a year, somewhere near fourteen months of concerted effort to achieve a goal he’d hoped he’d have accomplished in 3 or 4 months.
“The difference between genius and stupidity is, genius has its limits.” — Albert Einstein
Tinkering takes time.
You won’t instantly know how to use the tools, or where good inspiration comes from, or possess the courage to continue boldly even when you need it most. But if you don’t stop, you will arrive one day — amazed at how far you’ve come.
You’ll look up and realize the work you’ve been putting in is paying off. You’re learning skills and a craft that you didn’t know before, that you’re finally able to put to good use in your creative work.
Brilliant creativity is in us all. We simply have to be brave enough to cater to it and cultivate it inside of ourselves, and bold enough to let our projects and our half-baked ideas into the world in little ways.
I hope that after reading this you’re a little more emboldened to try the lovely art of tinkering, and that you might be able to employ it more in your own creative life.
I wish you the best of luck, and happy creating.
