On Creativity.

Ahh creativity… that elusive magical unicorn that some folks think other folks are blessed with while the other folks are doomed to a life of boring sameness…

You wana know something funny? I never considered myself a creative guy. To me a true ‘creative’ is that gal that can seemingly pull the wildest, out-of-the-box idea in the middle of her sleep. Or the guy that comes up with 37 insane ideas within 3 minutes into the start of the brainstorm session.

Yeah, you know who you are.

We all hate you.

And then love you.

And then hate you again.

This is SO not me… clients will always want me to come up with the idea for a scene and I can rarely ever do it.

“Oh common you’re the creative guy” they say. That drives me nuts.

I usually need someone to start me off. My response is “I’m the get it done’ guy, not the ‘idea’ guy. You come up with the rough idea and I’ll make it happen better than you even dreamed possible!”

Or in my music days – “I’m the jukebox. Drop me a quarter, tell me what to play, and I’ll bang it out for you.”

But seriously, is it possible to be creative on purpose? Could there be a process to generating creative ideas?

I did extensive research on this. I read a number of excellent books (will list at the end) and read biographies and studied the methods of famous creative ‘geniuses’. And I’ve put into practice what they’ve done. And guess what – it friggin works! You can actually set yourself up to be creative, as crazy as that sounds.

You may not have the super fast, hyper-speed brain-to-mouth-no-filter power that our love/hate guy has, but you can definitely up your game. And like any other learnable skill in life, the more you practice, the better you get and the more confident you become

Here’s how it works. As always, it’s a process.

#1 – Routine. It all starts with a healthy routine. When you have a schedule or routine that your brain can automate without paying conscious attention to, that frees you up to ‘just think’. You know how your best ideas always seem to come in the shower or at the gym? Yea. Mine too. I think I wrote half of my LinkedIn posts at the gym between sets.

Setting yourself up for creativity to flow is the ultimate procrastination killer.

“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.”

                                                                   - W. Somerset Maugham

Maugham for president! (Except... he’s been dead since 1965)

#2 – Processes. Although it may seem that way, even the mastermind guy doesn’t just come up with ideas out of a hat. What’s really going on is he’s just really quick at the associations game.

Here’s how it works:

Red makes you think of a rose

Roses make you think of flowers

Flowers make you think of a garden

Gardens get you to that trip you took last year to Miami

Miami makes you think of the beach

Beaches makes you think of relaxation

Relaxation makes you think of…

And all of those ideas can work off into different topics of their own! The paths are literally limitless. The more you do this, the faster you get at it.

More on processes later.

#3 – Create limitations. If I tell you to think of a song right now, you may have a rough time coming up with a tune. But if I tell you to think of a song from the Beatles album Abbey Road, you’ll instantly have a few tunes ready to go immediately (assuming you’re a Beatles fan).

When we are overwhelmed with possible choices, our brains freeze up. But put a frame or context, and BAM! Ideas flow like water.

If I tell you to ‘Write a story’ um… ok. About what? How long? It could be anything! But if I tell you to write a short story about a bear chasing a guy through the forest in the winter - and he’s only got one leg, all of a sudden pictures and ideas come flying in from everywhere and nowhere!

If you can figure out how to limit your concept to a specific path, the creativity and idea riffs will gush effortlessly like a flurry of notes from a Joe Satriani guitar solo. (You should totally Google him to hear what I mean.)

#4 – Steal like an artist. Call it inspiration, call it riffing, call it borrowing (love that one). Ein kol chodosh tachas hashemesh – There’s no new ideas out there. Everything is a play off something else.

Even ‘our’ ideas are not really our ideas. They are borrowed and riffed upon in our brains. Sometimes slowly, sometimes fast. Sometimes so fast that we even fool ourselves into thinking they are our own!

But they are not. They are remixes and mash ups of our life experiences. Everything and anything we have seen, heard, experienced, smelled, saw and felt.

Especially felt.

The creative genius superhuman has these experiences laid out in his brain as if he’s flipping through his iPhone gallery. For the rest of us mortals, it’s like flipping through a manual picture album, and there’s only two pictures in each album.

And each album is on a different floor in your house…

This is why (stereo)typically creatives are often very emotional people and are extremely self aware. They see the world through a different lens than many of us. We can pull that lens out also, but it takes a longer process and deeper thought.

So to ‘steal like an artist’ means taking a little of this from here, and sprinkling in a bit of that from over there, and then adding a touch of something from a completely different discipline, and coming out with a new design that you can call your own.

 Well, kinda.

#5 – Garbage in, garbage out. Feeding off #4, if your output is a sum of all your inputs, then it stands to reason that you should super vigilant about what you feed your creative brain for breakfast!

No examples here because what fuels you is very subjective. To me heavy metal and rap is pure garbage and not even deserving to be in the category of music, but to you, they may be uplifting (somehow) and be the best creative fuel you’ve ever experienced. Whatever bro. To each their own!

This, again, is in the category of inspiration and process. It’s kind of like creating a back log of memories and ideas to draw on at a later point.

This includes relationships and team members. You want to build your team around other people that jog your creativity. When there are negative people in the room that sap your energy, your creativity levels drop like the ball at new years.

Besides for coming up with ways to get rid of them… for that there is always room for infinite creative variations (insert evil villain snicker here).

Now - I want to come back to processes, because I think that’s where most people get lost. If divine inspiration doesn’t strike like lighting while they lean back in their favorite chair with a coffee, then it’s no go. Especially if they were wearing their lucky underwear! Ugh. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

There is a better way people!

I’m going to use David Szeggedin’s scenario as an example because it was his post that I drew the inspiration for to finally bang out this article. I’ve been wanting to write it for a while.

Read his post here:

 https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/davidszegedin_creativity-naming-brandnaming-activity-6599780009244717056-GMKJ

His process was great!

“A few days back, I was head-deep into a naming project, browsing through images and lingo glossaries, etc.”

So far, so good. A specific process to get the desired creative result.

“As I opened my Google Play Music app, there it was, a song jumped out at me, its name was the perfect name for the product I was in the middle of naming.

 Was I doing systematic tasks to come up with the name? Yes. Was the name the result of these efforts? Absolutely not.”

Aaaand that’s where he went wrong. Well, imo of course.

“There is no process, but there is another creative tactic that really works, and that thing is called ‘Faith’.”

Oh boy… How about this. Imagine if he had started his process without racking his brains for a few hours an d “browsing through images and lingo glossaries” and instead, just opened that same playlist. That same song could have come up a dozen times and I bet you that it would not have resulted in a win!

It was his original process that started the creative juices flowing and it just happened to end with an unexpected outcome from an unlikely place.

Once you turn on ‘creative hyper-sensitive search mode’ in your brain, your subconscious kicks in to assist with the task at hand. You start to notice things in your surroundings that you never noticed before, and they are there to assist you in your journey. All because you activated your subconscious mind that is normally only feeding your conscious mind information it actually needs to get you through the day.

Like when you are in the middle of looking for a new car - say, a blue Camry - and all of a sudden you start noticing blue Camrys everywhere!

They were always there! But you told your subconscious to be in active mode and it started informing you about all the stuff it noticed in regard to what you need.

How powerful is that! Imagine if you could just turn on and off that hyper search mode at will!

Well, you can! It’s called ‘process’.

 A.K.A. Due diligence.

A.K.A. Hard work.

And that’s why most people are not called ‘creatives’ (I despise that word btw). Not because they are not actually creative – we all are! It’s simply that most people don’t believe they can or don’t want to do the hard work to get the desired outcome. ‘I’m not creative’ is the same lame excuse as ‘I’m not good with people’ or ‘Sales is not my thing’.

The faith, then, is the process itself. Whatever quality inputs you can throw at it, the faster the output has a chance to reveal itself. Be that Pintrest (for me as a photographer), or actively Googling for ideas, taking a walk outdoors for a change of scenery, a workout, reading a book… Then sitting down and jotting down ideas. Mind mapping. Word association games and more relevant searches.

In other words, doing the work.

Do ideas just come to us sometimes in a blur of divine inspiration? Absolutely. But the good news is that you now know how you can induce more of those mystical 'aha' moments. Not so magical anymore, is it (sorry about that).

Or maybe - its even more magical than ever, because you can incubate it!

So am I ok with calling myself a creative? I guess by my definition, yes. But it’s nothing special that I have that you don’t! I just taught myself how to activate it when I need it - and now so can you!

And I must end with a quote I’ve repeated many times before from Scott Adams:

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art, is knowing which ones to keep.

Rock on.

       -Hudi

Book recommendations:

The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp

The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield