Creativity
basically means using our imagination and inventiveness to create something
which is of use and fulfils a purpose. Just being imaginative is not enough,
acting on the ideas that crossed your mind to create something of value is what
creativity is. Being creative is all about venturing into uncharted
territories, delving into the unknown, finding hidden patterns and deriving
relations between seemingly unrelated things. We do not have any predefined set
of steps that can be followed to inculcate creativity. It cannot even be
measured. But, believe it or not lack of creativity can act as an impediment in
your way to success, the reason being it drives something called as innovation
which has now become the backbone of any organisation’s success. If you are
creative, you can formulate solutions to any conundrum that you may encounter
in your life, be it professional or personal. This also highlights a fact of
paramount importance, creative ideas do not pop into your mind out of the blue,
they are not abrupt inspirations, in fact, such ideas are consequences of your
attempts in trying to solve a problem or achieving a specific goal. All the
creative minds from Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison to Steve
Jobs, Elon Musk and Sir Jonathan Eve, they all have followed the same approach,
which has been formalized as Creative Problem Solving (CPS), which involves
breaking down a problem, generating various ideas to solve the problem and
evaluating these ideas to find the most efficient and effective solution.
Creativity
is akin to any other skill, so undoubtedly, there are some factors or habits
that can thwart your creativity from flourishing. And the principal among
these, paradoxically or ironically is logic or rationality. Jonathan Eve, the
Chief Design Officer of Apple Inc. has said,” What I love about the creative
process and this may sound naïve, but it is this idea that one day there is no
idea, no solution but the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly
exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.” Creativity is all about the
unknown and untold. You do not have a fixed solution for the problem at hand.
Logic does the exact opposite. Rationality or logic or reason is always applied
using the knowledge acquired over time. On the other hand, creativity flows
from your experiences. A different interpretation of your experience can give a
whole new perspective to your idea. Logic depends on availability of information;
creativity can flow without any prior knowledge. Thus, an environment which
lays extra emphasis on reason and logic is not at all conducive to creativity.
This becomes
evident, when Jonathan Eve said, “To design something really new and innovative
you have to reject reason.” Logic stifles your creativity because you cannot
apply new thinking. Human brain generates creative ideas by processing even
illogical data such as emotions and dreams. In such a situation using logic
won’t make you feel creatively stimulated. And in your quest of boosting your
reason, you tend to acquire too much expert knowledge and become burdened with
unnecessary data. If you know everything there is to know about your field or
profession, you cannot think out of the box and you become limited to just one
dimension of your field. The takeaway here is that creativity can be cultivated
into an everyday habit and a sort of an attitude toward life provided you break
out of your barrier of logic and reason and respond to opportunities and
problems in new ways. You become creative as you grow up, imbibing new
concepts, experiencing new things. The important thing here is you have to keep
your mind open and keep perceiving things around you through different
perspectives.
it`s fact...
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