Better creativity comes from being in over your head.

There is nothing more terrifying and invigorating than the feeling of being out of your depth. Some fear it, but when it comes to creativity it is a fear that should be welcomed.

David Bowie once said in an interview – “If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in, go a little bit out of your depth, and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom you’re just about at the right place to do something exciting.”

Playing it safe and not pushing yourself will never produce great work, instead mediocrity will abound.

If you’re starting out in a creative career you should stay just as energetic and enthusiastic as you hopefully were from day one and keep that up throughout your career, never get comfortable or complacent.

And if you’re a seasoned professional and you’re not getting the kind of ideas you used to, that’s most likely due to you not pushing yourself any more and getting far too comfortable or dare I say lazy. You’ve lost that creative spirit and curiosity; and no, age isn’t an excuse.

Being adventurous, daring and risky in your creative thinking will always be more satisfying. Of course not everyone will love every idea you come up with, but you should be mindful of trying to please everyone.

Great creativity is not one size fits all.

To quote David Bowie again (the man did live an amazingly creative life) from the same interview mentioned above – “Never play to the gallery, but you never learn that until much later on, but never work for other people in what you do, always remember that the reason you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society. I think it’s terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people’s expectations, they generally produce their worst work when they do that.”

Now some may argue that this is impossible if you’re a commercial creative person, working in say an ad agency, design firm, or the like and only possible if you are an independent artist.

I disagree.

The sentiment is about being true to you as a creative person, not succumbing to doing mediocre work. You have choices. Sure not everything you touch will be gold, but it doesn’t have to be. Not every piece done by every artist is great either, but they keep pushing themselves.

If your creative job is not giving you enough opportunities or creative satisfaction you have four choices:

1.  Make a difference where you are, look for even the smallest opportunities. I have been in situations in ad agencies where I was told there was no hope of doing any great creative work. That wasn’t the fact at all. It was just what too many had come to accept; they had given up.

2.  Quit and find another job. But as the Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade told Indy when he had to choose a grail cup – “You must choose. But choose wisely.”

3.  Quit and do what you truly want to do. Be it in the same industry or make a change and find the creative outlet that will make you happy and creatively content.

4. Stay there, do nothing, accept it and be creatively miserable.

I hope you don't opt for #4.

That’s it for today; see you tomorrow.

Rodd

P.S. If you are in New York and would like to attend a small talk I am moderating called ‘Where do ideas come from?’ on September 13 you can see the details here.

Rodd Chant is a Creative Director / Writer / Strategist and a bit more. He also teaches creativity to groups and individuals and makes a mean Thai red curry, or so he says. He also has a penchant for talking in the third person. You can read more of his LinkedIn musings here. You can also find him on Twitter and on Instagram. His official blog can be found here. Or drop him an email – [email protected]

Oh, and if you'd like to see the video of David Bowie speaking about what is mentioned above you can see it here.

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