Creativity is now a survival skill, here's what it means for "uncreative" people

We're living in a world that, for the first time ever, is changing at an exponential rate.

But we are used to linear change, and cannot fathom what it means to make more progress in a year than what all of humanity has done in an entire century. We cannot fathom what exponential progress means for us as individual humans.

Here is a graph that shows what exponential growth looks like, if you're not familiar:

This rate and pace of unprecedented change means that:

• The rules have changed.
• You don't know anything.
• No one else knows anything, either.
• The goal posts are always moving.
• The future is abstract and can go in a lot of unpredictable directions, some positive, some negative.
• We are building our future using 30-year-old brain software that was programmed for a static, linear world that no longer exists. 

Our 30-year-old brain software was trained to follow the rules, memorize information, get good scores and grades, and land a good job that would set us up for life. Thinking outside the box did not help you in this game.

That was OK a linear world. In today’s exponential world, pretty much everything you've learned is or soon will be irrelevant, and anything you will learn in the future will only be relevant for a blip in time. Creativity is a survival skill. As the rules change, you have to be able to think out of the box to adapt.

Research says we were born innately creative, but our education model trained it out of us because thinking in abstract, novel and different ways wasn't useful in a world where following established norms was how you succeeded. Our brains need to be reprogrammed in order to thrive in an exponentially changing world. 

Education models and research methods tend to look through the lens of what already exists, what's been done before. Art and creativity look through the lens of imagination, how to bring abstract things into existence, and create the future.

I'm obsessed with this idea of how to cultivate human brains in new ways so we are not just iterating on what's already out there and getting left behind, but morphing the future into something better. And in a world that is changing faster than ever before in human history, we needed to be all over this yesterday.

I am so obsessed that I took a pay cut to do a six month sabbatical research project focused on this question: "How might we reprogram an adult brain to be more creative?" This is not a new question, by the way, but there are significant economic and social impacts connected to our inability to answer it.

Current research does not have a definitive answer about how to reprogram an adult brain to be more creative. 

In fact, researchers don't even agree what creativity is, exactly. Some say creativity is a moment of inspiration like Sir Isaac Newton had, others say it's a practice of self-expression (like painting or songwriting), and many say it's a thought process like brainstorming.

But there are a few of common threads of truth across the varying creativity research studies and theories:

• That creativity is innate in every human, and is unlearned
• That creativity is affected by our environments and influences
• That creativity is limited by fear, judgment and self-editing 

This is not new, or revolutionary. It simply means that creativity can be learned, and that we might be able to help people develop it by making changes to their environments and habits, and by making changes to their mindset. I wanted to use my sabbatical project to, well, think outside the box and try to take a creative approach to the problem. 

Specifically, I wanted to better understand how we might apply what we already know to real people, building on the available creativity research and exploring if and how:

• Challenging orthodoxies about creativity might help adults develop it
• Changing environments and daily habits might promote creativity in adults
• Engaging with art in an unfamiliar way might inspire creativity in adults

I decided to test these questions using a human-centered method, leveraging a number of creativity research studies including the work of Brian Uzzi at Northwestern University, and Keith Sawyer at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The project was originally designed as a series of workshops at The Art Institute of Chicago, with input from the Ryan Learning Center (special shout out to Nenette Luarca-Shoaf and Sam Ramos) and Ray Williams at The University of Texas at Austin. However, the program was scheduled to start two weeks after the global pandemic came to Chicago.

So, the content was pivoted into a quarantine-friendly email-based challenge called "28 Days of Art." The virtual format had constraints, but allowed a lot more people to participate and generate data.

The challenge was advertised as a simple, once-per-day email for 28 days that would expose participants to art (such as the below image, by Caribbean street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat) and information about creativity, and ask them to complete a 5-minute exercise to boost their own creativity.

Participants were sourced by promoting the challenge through my personal networks (LinkedIn, Instagram, blog, newsletter, colleagues, friends, etc.). About 100 people opted in, and shared data through surveys, email-based feedback and a selection of deep-dive interviews with ~25 of the most engaged participants. 

Here are the observations about how to develop creativity skills in adults that came out of the 28 Days of Art exploratory research study:

Almost all participants had identity-based beliefs about their creativity, which affected how they explored their own creative potential. The observations fell into two buckets based on these identity-based beliefs. 

#1 Participants who identified as “uncreative”:

Participants who identified as "uncreative" fell on a scale that ranged from a fixed view of creativity as a personality trait in only certain people (and signed up for exposure to art, "to become more cultured") to a flexible view of creativity as a topic they did not understand (and signed up because it was important to learn more). 

Here are direct quotes from the group that identified as “uncreative”:

#2 Participants who identified as “creative”:

Participants who identified as "creative" largely signed up for motivation and accountability to make their creativity a bigger priority in their life, with reasons given like "invest in myself," "de-stress" or "find more joy," with the largest segment being people who "used to be creative" and wanted to get back in touch with a creative practice after "losing it" during a life phase (i.e., children leaving for college, approaching retirement after a stressful career). Some considered themselves highly creative and wanted fresh perspective about how to engage with art, develop better creative habits, and overcome blockages. 

Here are direct quotes from the group that identified as “creative”:

Here are the insights about how to develop creativity skills in adults that came out of the 28 Days of Art exploratory research study:

• Sharing creativity research and data was helpful in challenging orthodoxies and inspiring curiosity (particularly in participants who identified as "uncreative").
• Logical thinking and mindfulness training was helpful in managing fears that block them from taking risks (particularly those who identified as ”uncreative").
• Introspective exercises were helpful in opening their minds and thinking outside of the box, across all segments.
• Providing context and stories about individual pieces of art was helpful for remembering and applying concepts about creativity to daily life, across all segments. 
• Tiered exercises for varying levels of comfort (i.e, beginner), and an easier format to self-pace through the content and capture notes (i.e., a workbook), multiple modes for how to consume the content (i.e, audio, video) were feedback themes from participants who identified as "uncreative." 
• A community model to drive accountability, recurring weekly or monthly content to continue providing exposure and commentary about art, and exercises to practice concepts were feedback themes from participants who identified as "creative.”

This project is continuing on to further explore these observations and insights, by continuing 28 Days of Art on a monthly basis to support the people who participated (if you want to join, you can sign up here).

In addition, in partnership with MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, I'll be looking at how group dynamics and collaboration models can promote creative thinking. If you have thoughts, feedback, ideas or are interested in connecting on this topic, you can find me here.