I
really enjoyed reading Jonah Leher’s article titled “How to be Creative.” I have more
recently found defining creativity and gauging my own creativity a difficult
challenge. As articulated in the article, creativity seems to have become a
catch all phrase used to describe almost anything new or unique. More recently,
with internship interviews and tackling the question “Talk about a time when
you were creative” I have been forced to analyze my own creativity. I struggled with trying to articulate a time
when I thought was exuberantly creative and whether or not I could even use
that adjective to describe myself. I don’t know if I fully understand if
creativity can simply be learned or if you just need to the right resources
available to you to become creative/ innovative. Growing up, I was always jealous of how easily
my brother was able to come up with creative solutions and or activities. He
has always had a knack for thinking outside of the box, and never seems to
exhaust the same ideas. My family always joked that since he attended
Montessori school his “free spirited way of thinking” has always deviated him from
the norm in terms of approaching problems.
I
have been learning and performing an Indian classical dance form, Kuchipudi,
for the past 14 years. The entire premise of the art form is to take on a new
persona and become the character that you are playing. We wear elaborate
costumes and heavy amounts of make-up in order to make this come to life. I have
incessantly been told that by participating in this art form I am taking on a
new level of creativity. However, my perception on creativity of the dance form
has been altered. On one hand, I have been taught how to wear these outfits,
how to perform this art form and how to better connect with these character
roles. It seems that my ability to dance has simply become a skill set that I
have acquired and perfected rather than a creative outlet. On the other hand, I
also understand that there is a boundary between learning skills sets and being
able to connect with the art form and take a performance or embodiment of
character to the next level of connectivity. My dance skills have helped me tap
into my inner creativity by enabling the use of these tools to portray a
different me.
For
the past four years I worked for a company that constantly hyped creativity and
innovative solutions within the organization, but unfortunately an environment
conducive to that behavior was not promoted. Leher mentions that often focusing
too much can be a hindrance to creativity, and that is a similar situation that
I faced at work. I worked in an extremely time sensitive industry, where
customer satisfaction was always priority. I was always putting out fires and
focused on achieving our client’s goals, rather than having available time and
resources to think creatively and strategically. Each day I was forced to do
the same routine behavior and often felt that I was losing the ability to be
creative at all. One way that I think creativity could have been promoted, would
have been by incorporating a metric for creativity as a part of our performance
reviews. It would lead to a heavily subjective measurement, but it would help
to hold the company and employees accountable for such initiatives.
I
believe that it takes a combination of both individual and group thought to be
capable of achieving creativity. Leher
mentions that diverse experiences are a key to creating or encouraging creativity
and I strongly agree with that assumption. In particular, the idea of having multiple
dots and connecting them resonated with me. I believe that experiencing different
skills, people, fields etc. enables an individual to think outside of their
normal frameworks. By identifying similarities and dissimilarities from
multiple experiential activities, new idea generation and new ways of thinking
can take place. We briefly mentioned in Wednesday’s
class the idea of groupthink, which I thought this was an interesting and
applicable concept. Tying this back to new experiences, learning from your
peers or group members is a prime way in which to shed light on a new ways of
thinking, but it can also lead to a lack of generation of thought.
I
appreciated the way in which Leher describes different creative types of
problems and creative processes. Honestly, I was a little cynical when I first
read through each description, but after some thought and personal associations
they make sense in terms of understanding creativity. I could especially
associate myself with the Get Groggy and See the World types that were
mentioned.
Get Groggy: I am a morning person,
but I have found that I often have my most creative thoughts take place late at
night when I am not the most alert. I feel as though my thoughts are less
tainted by stress and they are not forced into frameworks of thoughts. I am
able to think more freely, which allows for my thoughts to be more open ended.
See the World: I have been extremely
fortunate to have lived and studied abroad in multiple countries. My experiences
abroad had a significant and meaningful impact on my open mindedness and
perception of situations. While abroad I was constantly learning and expanding
my understanding of how different cultures engage with one another. This exposure
has allowed to me to think outside of my personal experiences, and to have a
greater appreciation of the big picture. I am able to look at the same problem from
multiple angles and understand how solutions can be aligned in a meaningful and
perhaps creative manner.
