Much of our life is routine – and this is usually a good thing. We don’t want to chew our food much differently to how we did yesterday, we’re happy that the same path gets us to where we want to go – and we walk along it with much the same gait. If we had to do everything we did in a new way, this would be incredibly tiring.
Sometimes though the usual comes to dominate us. We get stuck in a rut and we need something new. This is where creativity comes in.
I’d like to introduce you to two approaches to creativity. The first was put together by Chris Neild, an Australian artist from his reading (Jacques Maritain’s Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry and Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right of the Brain amongst others), his art practice and his experience of teaching others. The second is from a recently published business book called Borrowing Brilliance by David Kord Murray. Chris’s is the simpler approach so I’ll start with him.
Chris Neild’s Approach to Creativity
Creativity is the alternation of work and play. Work means focused effort (doing the analysis, hammering the thing together, or making marks on the canvas), play means absorption with the medium – the stuff being used (these ideas are so interesting, wondering about how these bits could fit together, or this stuff is liquidy-soft-coloured).
Our culture tends to value focused effort and working hard. For creativity it is necessary to emphasise the play part. To snap ourselves out of being focused and effortful we can do something at too great a speed to permit analysis.
In one workshop on painting and drawing Chris got us to take turns making marks on paper – each person in turn made a mark in response to the previous person’s mark: and they had to do it too quickly to think. After a while we got into the flow and we began work.
The creation (a philosophy or building or painting) comes out of fascination with the medium – the stuff. As we play, focus arises and we work to create something.
After the creation we can use analysis – we may compare this drawing done quickly with one done with great effort for instance (we usually find the quicker one has more life). This is an extremely important and useful step to direct our practice. However it is not about creativity, it is analysis, which is a whole other subject.
David Murray’s Approach to Creativity
David lays out a six step process for developing creativity ideas to solve problems. (The last step is to actually go back and revise the other five as necessary.) The book is a business book but the process can as easily apply to other things
1. Define the problem
At this stage it is helpful to try out different definitions of the problem. Is my problem needing more money or living too expensively? Is my problem competing visions of the task or that these people don’t listen to each other? Is my problem reading too slowly or needing a way to find the few books worth reading?
2. Borrowing
How have others solved your problem or a similar one? David advocates borrowing from near and far and from the similar and different. If a meeting is regularly dysfunctional: there are various guides to running meeting, there are ideas about communication, there is systems theory, and there are ideas about team performance. Semco insisted that reports be only one page long and have a headline. How do animals communicate across species (one species alarm call is responded to by other species)? What ideas would make the situation worse? Where is the most chaos? Where does communication not happen at all?
3. Combining
Play with the ideas and see what fits together. Find a metaphor for situation and see how it applies to your situation (it won’t be a perfect fit probably – so then you play with mixing different metaphors).
It may help meeting run more smoothly if: each participant sees themselves as contributing to a greater project (“We’re not laying bricks, we’re building a cathedral); if we have an agenda and concise reports; if we have some kind of alarm system to let others know when something has gone wrong (some kind of signal to signal that it’s time to pause and reflect).
4. Incubation
Sleep on it, go for a walk, see a movie, whatever – do something so that you aren’t thinking about your problem and its solution any more.
5. Judgement
Some ideas work, some don’t. Some things are more useful than others. Some results are more elegant and simpler. Some art works more beautiful or affronting than others. Some give us a way of responding to our problems, some don’t.
For making meetings more functional the judgements might be: communicating that we are part of something bigger didn’t seem to take (need to work on breaking down the silos? Cross-department consultation?), the agenda and brief reports really helped, and the alarm system is OK but it needs to be emphasised that it is not just a way of taking a break (schedule a minute or two off every fifteen minutes? More education about the intention?).
6. Enhancing
How can I eliminate the weaknesses and improve the strengths? That is going back to defining, borrowing, combining and judging.
For our meeting example: Is it a communication problem? Is it a problem of people getting on together? What if we expressed appreciation for each other’s work?
Semco decided to make a work place that people would be happy to come to each day. What would it mean for us to do this? How could we have people leaving meetings happy and enriched?
What does an organism require to thrive? What would nourish our meeting?
And so on.
Creativity means trying one thing after another and seeing what works. Creativity is not magic; while fun it can be hard work too. It means learning and tweaking and trying stuff – and then doing it again and again. A life that includes creativity is far more satisfying and it is certain that it won’t be boring.
Do you pursue some kind of art or craft? Does creativity play a role in it? What have been the creative times in your life? Are there areas of your life where you are creative and others where your not? I’d like to hear about your experience of creativity in the comments to this post.
If you liked this post you might also like:
a post about the Creator and Destroyer in our relationships
Creating and Destroying
Creating and Destroying leading to Elegance
Would you like to feel less stressed?
Could you do with more joy in your life?
The answer is living authentically. Buy the book or sign up for the course now from my Living Authentically website.
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Tags: creativity
Your first description resonates more with me. I love getting absorbed in the process and just playing around to see what happens.
Hi Jean, I find the first approach more pleasurable too. But the second one is more structured and probably appeals to some people more. Thanks for your comment.
Hi Evan!
I think I resonate to both…and have required both ways in my own personal experiences but I am most in tune with play as it frees me up to see more ideas and values and useful ways to go about a project or art. And of course just experience more joy surrounding the process of it! I guess its because I have taught that I see them both as equally important.
Hi Diane, Chris pointed out that the interest in creativity didn’t come from the ‘creative arts’ but from education (and business too). So your teaching may well have soemthing to do with it. Thanks for your comment.
Hi Evan,
I agree about routine being both necessary and mundane or the appearance routine is lacking creativity due to the repetitiveness, kind of running on autopilot. However, I do also believe those activities/experiences are peripheral as well as foundational.
Maybe, what I’m trying to say, the routine provides a framework so the creativity can and does flow without too much interference. Hence, I believe creativity is always present, at least for me, but I do also think it is universal.
If anyone would have told me recently I actually could see this or believe it, I’d be the first one to argue for exactly the opposite. My recent experience has included very hard work, work at times I thought I really didn’t want to do, still some days feel that way. I get stuck and stopped dead sometimes. So where in all this is could I see creativity, I’ve asked myself. I saw myself continually returning to the work, even though it seemed impossible. If I hadn’t had a new idea or approach, some sort of opening, maybe help from someone else with their ideas or knowledge, I wouldn’t have been able to try again. Must be creating something it seems.
So, no, Evan, I don’t think there has been a time when creativity wasn’t present in whatever I’ve done. I also see this is probably a broader view than you were asking. I do think what effects my perception of lack of my own creativity is ultimately failure, unresolved situations or maybe being uncomfortable or not accepting of a result. I can see now I used those things as criteria for my own feeling creativity was absent. In other words self admonition, if only I knew this, had that, etc., then equating me not doing anything further because I maybe wasn’t somehow equipped. More likely I went on to something else.
Another thought provoking article, even as it seems you intended more instructive or helpful ideas to those wanting alternative ways to create. Thanks for both, Evan.
Barbara
Hi Barbara, I do think routine can serve creativity in the bigger picture. Chris always has his paints organised in the same way for instance – this helps him to not worry about anything other than the painting. I do know that creativity can be hard work too, especially when we’re feeling stuck. I think it would be very valuable if people could see how they are creative in their lives – in small ways as well as big. Thanks for your comment Barbara.