INTROSPECTION | Protecting your creativity

Lockdown has been an opportunity to take a pause and re-look at life. There is so much we take for granted.

We achieve so much and are still unsatisfied! In this unending journey of learning so much, are we losing ourselves [and our mind?]?

“There is a reason why experience is no more linked to age these days”

To quantify this, try and visualise; What Bobby Fischer, the chess genius and grandmaster, knew in his entire life about chess, is something that a 20year old international chess championship participant already knows. The advancement in technology, access to information at finger tips and knowledge passed through generations, are major reasons that experience can be gained faster and easily. The access to this is also getting easier by the day.

“How do you retain your ‘edge’?”

We have access to almost everything that we need to know about anything. Does that mean we understand the subject well enough to apply what we learn and then just get better at it? That is the best way to start, if you ask me. But you will then be one of the millions learning the craft. Also, if you remember the time where age and experience were more closely correlated, you will realise that the more the experience, the lesser the ability to change or think creatively, especially due to superiority bias and inertia. Imagine that happening to you early on!

There is an easy way around it.

Use learning resources as a confirmation/validation in your journey of discovery.

When you learn something, first think and develop your point of view/your own hypothesis, before you even start understanding the subject. It trains you to ‘think’also develop an instinct which can be applied to all walks of life. This learning will be personal to you. Utilise your own imagination, style and thought process, which is more important than what you actually learn.

“Is it what you do that develops your character or your character drives what you do?”

It is both, your habits and actions start changing your instincts and decision making process which in turn leads to choice of actions and nature of work you do. This cycle continues building a stronger character and fine tuning your craft and that is the journey one must enjoy life long, one day at a time.