ATOMIC ESSAY #22
‘Creativity Happens In a Flash’ Is a Myth You Need to Stop Believing Right Now
The ‘Eureka!’ myth
We like to think of creativity as something that happens in a flash. When we’re stuck on a problem, we might imagine that an epiphany will lead to a sudden solution.
And, we have all had moments of sudden insight or flashes of creativity.
Sometimes these ideas seem to appear as a flash of insight. But new research shows that such insights are actually the culminating result of prior hard work on a problem.
Insights don’t come on their own.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found that almost everyone he studied went through a similar creative process that consisted of five phases:
- Preparation
- Incubation
- Insight
- Evaluation
- Elaboration
As James Clear puts, “While we often think of creativity as an event or as a natural skill that some people have and some don’t, research actually suggests that both creativity and non-creativity are learned.”
Creativity isn’t something that happens suddenly. It’s something that happens over time.
Creativity is a process like cooking, painting, or inventing.
We create our creations in the same way that we create sentences. It’s not something that naturally happens in a moment. Instead, it’s a process of trying out ideas and experimenting with the alternative, and testing the results against one another.
Just don’t forget, creativity and the ability to innovate are like muscles — the more we use them, the stronger they get.
