The Skill of Creativity

Do you ever dance to get ready for work? A big meeting? Gearing up for a chunk of deep or creative work? Well I do, or I guess I have been. If it's an especially big interview or client meeting, I am a mix of nervous, anxious about how it will go, and excited to get into the work or conversation. If it's a day that I need to do a lot of writing (so kind of like 5 minutes ago) I’ll put on some specific tunes that get me moving — this one gets me from a small nod to jumping around the room like a weirdo in about two minutes. Finding the right playlist has been something I’ve done for years to find a calm headspace that allows me to focus, dig deep and slip into a flow. What does this have to do with creativity? For me, it is part of my “practice” if you will — one of the many things I regularly do to help access my creativity, and in a way that improves my “skill” of creativity.

When I talk about Creativity as a skill, it is exactly that, something we can learn and spend time practicing to get better at. But it’s important to start to tease out what exactly you would actually practice, and what you would expect to actually get better at. Not everyone needs to do a little dance to get into their creative practice, but there are some common themes that I’ve found in talking to a lot of creative people (that are also supported by academic research). 

Pillars of The Skill 

I’ll start by saying this is not a recipe, a checklist or step-by-step guide on how to be creative. These are guidelines, principals or “Pillars” as I’m calling them that my research and other academic research supports. To varying degrees, the people I spoke with embodied all or some of these things, some more intentionally or and others innately. In a way I think of these Pillars as the equivalent of needing strength, endurance and flexibility to be an athlete at any level. Essentially,I view these as baseline attributes of the skill of creativity. 

Steadiness

Adjacent to mindfulness, this is really all about creating time and space to reduce how much we’re actively thinking or consuming information. This “idleness” allows for ideas and thoughts to arise. In this relaxed state our brain is allowed to stop looking for threats and process, combine and organize the information we’ve taken in recently and in the past. It's also about limiting inputs and taking a break from our  overscheduled and over-stimulated lives. 

Not that you want to keep imagining me dancing in my combo office, gym, closet, library, and bike garage, but that motion is what helps me get into this focused headspace. The laundry list of things people can and do in order to actively find steadiness is highly personal. People go on walks, meditate, exercise, and they sometimes even explicitly seek out boredom (ever heard of Albert Einstein?). 

Increasing the amount of time we spend in this state of steadiness will increase our creativity. When relaxed, the brain generates Alpha waves. In this Alpha state, we are better at creative problem solving, divergent thinking and creative task performance.  It's why things like Psychological Safety and Belonging are so important in the workplace — if people don’t feel safe and are constantly monitoring for threats at work (consciously or not), they are unable to reach this relaxed headspace

Active Curiosity

One thing that always jumped out to me when speaking to creative professionals or working artists is simply how interested they are in so many things. There is this unrelenting search for finding new things, a hunger to always know more, and not  just limiting these interests to their craft. Sometimes it was new art exhibitions, new ways of making art or new thoughts about art, but their curiosity extended to truly everything, in culture, nature, science, media politics and technology. 

Through this research I’m developing a theory that people who are creative or strive to be creative, simply notice more things. As people who create things, they are curious about how it is that things in our world come to be. And it's in that regular discovery of new and old things that expands the field of what’s possible, which in turn creates more energy and catalysts for new ideas. In other words, curiosity begets more curiosity, and in turn more creativity. 

Regardless of my personal theories, one area where it’s been shown that this curiosity leads to original thinking, is the high rate of polymathy (someone whose interests span multiple subject areas) among Nobel Prize winners. Studies have shown that Nobel-laureate scientists are twice as likely to play a musical instrument as their peers, and seven times as likely to draw or paint. They take an active curiosity in a wide range of topics outside of their own specialty which helps them be more creative thinkers in their primary domain. 

Action Bias

I (and several more esteemed researchers) found that creatives are not only actively curious, they're also often active in general. They’re doing stuff.  Whether it is the practice of their primary craft or exploring additional areas of creativity, something's always cooking. New ideas are regularly emerging and being actively expressed. I think this activeness is a distinguishing “marker” I have observed that really sets apart the creative thinkers (of which I think I am) and the true creatives — the people who have the drive, passion or whatever you want to call it to turn their ideas into reality (something I’m trying to grow into). 

Like most obvious truths, this is a fairly simple concept, but hard to consistently execute.It's more important that you’re doing something than what specific activity you’re actually doing. In a way, it boils down to what Master Yoda told Luke, “Do or do not, there is no try.” However, there is also an aspect to all of this trying that is grounded in learning. Many of the people I spoke to went into their creative projects with an overall sense of experimentation. Understanding that they know their skills, and have an idea of what they want to do, but also know that even with those skills not everything turns out perfectly. And that every instance of starting a creative project will make their next one better, and then the one after that better still.

A Skill is Not a Process

While process can be important, it is distinct and separate from building a “skill”.  When I talk about the skill involved in creativity, I’m choosing to focus on the baseline attributes that would improve every other part of making something new or coming up with new ideas. Many different crafts can be used to express creativity — and each of those have different processes, skills and techniques that form an overall meta-process with recognizable steps that lead to a creative practice. The skill of creativity to me is improving the foundational things that help you perform better in any part of the process. 

By finding steadiness, we can access more of our creative mind and be open to new ideas; being actively curious helps us discover the things that inspire the next idea or find that one missing puzzle piece to help us move forward; and having a bias towards action allows us to practice many things, improving craft while also finding out what works and what doesn't. 

To connect back to the athlete analogy, anyone can be an athlete by working to get faster, stronger or more flexible. Within that scope, there are certain aptitudes and attributes that may limit each individual's ceiling or peak, but we all possess the ability to get better. And these three actions, to me, are the things that you can do at any point in time, to step onto the treadmill of creativity.

If you have any questions, would like to chat more about creativity or any of the other topics discussed here, I’d love to hear it. Send an email or a note on LinkedIn and let’s start a conversation. Also, a few folks I’ve spoken to missed the last few posts, so I’ve also added a section below to follow along in your email inbox.