Creativity is just putting things together
Being a ‘creative person’ doesn’t mean I sit around day-drinking in a kimono until the magic of inspiration hits, then rushing to my desk to let the creative genius pour out of my soul onto the paper.
A couple years ago I made a change in my career from visual design to user experience design. After this change I got some comments like this: “But you’re such a creative person! Don’t you miss that?”. Creating pleasing images, choosing colours and typography, visualising ideas — this is clearly seen as creative work. But since my current work is a bit more conceptual and research-y, I found hard to explain that it actually is very creative. I ended up babbling about how I feel the creativity has different outlets and I was never really in love with the way I applied it before. Being unable to express what I mean led me to look into demystifying creativity. So, this is me sharing what I’ve learned so far, and what my favourite practical exercises for sparking creativity are. In this article I write about creativity as an act, a person coming up with ideas, and not innovation, where those ideas are put into action for a business purpose. You can’t have innovation without creativity first — let’s focus on that part.
There are no new ideas
Let’s start with defining what creativity means. I like to use Koestler’s definition (1964). He states that something is not created from nothing. Creation doesn’t appear from thin air but is an act where already existing things or ideas are selected and combined or shuffled in a new way. Previously hidden similarities or connections are revealed. When this is done with very familiar things, the new creation can be even more impressive, as it is unexpected. Sanders and Stappers (2014) define creativity as “the ability of seeing or making new, appropriate things”. Their basis is that all people are creative, they just might need tools and techniques to help foster that creativity.
These definitions already debunk some creativity myths that people hold onto. Many people like to think they are not creative, that they just don’t come up with ideas or they don’t have artistic talent. Did you notice that the definitions didn’t mention anything about being good at painting or writing or music? Those are just outlets.
First of all, one doesn’t need to have traditional (or any kind of) artistic talent to be creative, as creativity is not medium-specific (more about this later). Secondly, the thing that one needs to understand is that almost everything has already been done, and be liberated by that thought. It’s just about seeing connections between things. All I can do is make my own interpretation of something, and what is creative and unique is that fact that it was me who made it!
So how do I embrace that thought? The problem is that we, adults, usually have a lot of self-criticism and and that hinders us from creation. Self-criticism leads to self-censorship, which is “the conscious choice to withhold or the unconscious inhibition of one’s creative ideas” (Williams, 2002). So it can be conscious (you’re too embarrassed or afraid to say your ideas out loud) or unconscious (you never thought you could have creative ideas, so you don’t even let yourself try). Dropping this is easier said than done, but luckily we can approach creativity as a skill. As with any skill, some people are naturally better at it than others, but the good news is that ANYONE can practice and get better.
Try this: Morning Pages
As mentioned, creativity is not medium specific, because it is about mindset. Of course writing exercises won’t make me a brilliant painter. They might, however, make me experiment more to find my own style of making brilliant paintings. Or songs, or product ideas, or podcasts, or dance routines… You know what I mean. It’s cross-training your brain.That is why I like to recommend this exercise for anyone, even though it was originally coined for writers who suffer from writer’s block. The exercise is called Morning Pages, and it’s from the book Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (1992).
The exercise is very simple. Every morning, as soon after waking up as I can, I write 3 pages (a4 or letter) of text longhand. That’s it. There are no other instructions.
Morning pages are about producing stream of consciousness content, with your guard down as you have barely woken up, so you are at your least critical. It’s not important what the text is, it’s just important that you do it. We tend to think that when we create it needs to be something useful, or good, or at least Instagram-worthy. This is not. It’s just about making something for the sake of making.
The morning pages can be approached as a diary of sorts, or to process things on one’s mind like goals, dreams and worries, or it can just be putting any words on a paper. The texts are not meant to be read (at least not very soon after writing, minimum a few weeks) or shown to anyone. If ideas pop up, they can be noted in another place to keep them at hand. In addition to fostering creativity, this exercise has helped numerous people in their lives in different ways.
The text that comes out of me at 7 in the morning is mostly just horrible babble in shaky handwriting with no literary standard whatsoever, and that is just wonderful. Getting through 3 pages takes me around 30 minutes, and I have already created something before even having my coffee. Before, I used to pick up my phone and mindlessly scroll through social media in the first minutes of being awake — huge difference, I tell you.
Creativity is essentially play
Some people who approached creativity through stream of consciousness were the artists of the surrealist movement. They coined a bunch of exercises that are very helpful for creation, and they are FUN. Creation is essentially play, and we should approach it that way!
Let’s debunk another myth: some might think it is not creative work if there are constraints. Löwgren & Stolterman (2016) state the opposite “when everything is possible and nothing is given, creativity has no friction, nothing to work with, nothing to build on”. If I am given the task to make anything, I’m overwhelmed — where to even start? If I have limitations or rules, creation is easier. The creation turns into a game.
In game theory, this is one of the definitions of what is a game, or playing: it is free movement within a set of rules (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003). Approaching creation like a game could mean asking things like: What are the rules that I can work within? Can I find strategies within those rules? What are my options for movement within those rules? The surrealist techniques provide just this, the limitation within which the creation appears.
Try this: Surrealist games
The artists of the surrealist art movement fought the notion of creation being an act of wisdom. Instead they wanted it to be random and emerging from the subconscious and dreams. The book Surrealist Games by Gooding & Brotchie (1991) presents a manifold of different techniques in varying mediums. These are my favourites:
Exquisite corpse: Most of us have played this as children. It is when you fold a paper in 3 parts and make a collaborative drawing. You don’t show the next person what you drew but only give them some lines to continue in their part around the fold. Hilarity ensues when unfolded! This can also be done by writing a collaborative sentence one word at a time.
Automatic drawing: This is another stream of consciousness exercise, but with drawing. You draw a picture for 5 minutes without lifting your pen from the paper. No thinking, just letting the pen flow on the paper.
Collage: Cut out pictures and words to create new ones. Easy and fun, and the perfect example of setting limitations and being creative within: what can I make from a pile of old magazines?
Perfectionism is your enemy
Sometimes people think that they could make amazing things, if only they could have that great idea first. When they finally have it, they can write that novel or create that app.
What helps me, is thinking the exact opposite: I need to start making and that idea will come if I trust the process. Perfectionism is my enemy, so I just toss that out. I don’t believe in waiting around for inspiration to hit me.
Try this: Shitty first draft
This is actually no so much an exercise, but more of an instruction. Now that we’ve covered some methods that can spark creativity by reducing self-criticism, I might want to actually get a creative project done. Maybe I even have an idea set. Great! Starting is the hardest part, and this is where the new skills I’ve been practicing come in handy.
“For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.” Anne Lamott
In her book Bird by Bird (1994), Anne Lamott writes about shitty first drafts. Again, she is writing about writing, but this applies whatever the medium of choice is. The most important thing is to get something down, anything, no matter how shitty. All good writers/poets/painters/designers make shitty first drafts. The point is that it’s for no one else’s eyes. I just start making, allowing the first one to be shitty, taking a break, then coming back to it and maybe the second draft is decent. The third one might be good enough to show someone else. There is no magic moment of inspiration where one just sits down and and amazing things flow out of their pen. It is persistent work of making and re-making.
“Getting started is more important than being right” Jake Knapp
Putting things together
The thing with creative people is that they are good at tolerating uncertainty. In creative work, you don’t know where you will end up, and that’s the beauty of it. But it is easier to understand the act of creation if we simplify it to what it actually is: putting things together. You take a thing and you make that thing with another method, or in a new context, or combine it with a new thing, or use another angle to look at the thing. That’s what making stuff is.
Combining things to make new things: S.C.A.M.P.E.R.
Be vary of falling in love with the first idea and not imagining further. The S.C.A.M.P.E.R. method is basically about just taking a thing and combining it with another idea. Creativity in its basic form! Putting things together! It is essentially for expanding an initial idea or project to see potential in new directions. The abbreviation stands for 7 different angles:
- Substitute: What would happen if you exchange something in this idea to another thing?
- Combine: What would happen if you combine this thing with another thing?
- Adapt: Imagine this idea in a completely different context. What would need to be adapted?
- Modify: What could be modified to improve the idea?
- Put to another use: Can you use this idea for another purpose? Can another group use it?
- Eliminate: What could you take away to simplify the idea?
- Reverse: What could be reorganised in the idea?
This method forces me to think of my idea from different angles and see new possibilities.
Tame that creative mind
People often have this romantic idea of a creative mind being that can not be tamed, when actually for me, to become more creative, I need processes. I can’t tell you what processes work for you, but maybe some of these exercises can help you in creating your own. The reason I feel more creative after my switch from visual design to UX was just that: within the discipline of UX I have found more processes that help me be creative within the realm of my work. I’ve learned ways to keep the creativity going through exercises. This affects my free time too, as creativity is not something you use up. The more you practice it, the more of it you have!
The last thing I want to debunk is this: creativity doesn’t mean I have brilliant ideas all the time. It means I have ideas, period. By having a big quantity there is a bigger chance that even one of them has even a tiny bit of brilliance to it. People who do creative work are good at tolerating uncertainty, because the thing with ideas is that they are just that — ideas. They might not work at all in practice. We don’t know where we’ll end up, so we embrace the uncertainty, and just start making stuff.
