Often, I see/find people trying to stay busy doing something or the other all the time, but I think somewhere down the line it blocks their creative side.
Try taking a walk through the park, and relax on the grass for sometime. You'll feel more connected to your creative side.
Ask your MIT admissions representative whether music is creative.
Then ask him whether it matters if the music is freestyle rapping or concert violin since the age of three.
Then tell him the rapper was Asian and the violinist was black.
When I am not in school, I live in Colorado. So the skiing there is great. So if I found out someone had been a competitive skier at some level, I would not be shocked. If I found out that someone had lived in Colorado while successfully competing as a surfer, I would be shocked. I think that being able to effectively train as a surfer while surrounded by mountains would show some creativity.
Examples: start building webapps or working on free software, publish writings on your blog, do paintings, record yourself playing music and put it on youtube, tinker with mechanical devices or build your own electronics, build furniture, conduct physical or chemical experiments, publish your cooking recipes... and so on and so forth.
It's not "expressed" if it's all in your head.
Quite literally: make something, and show people.
So yes, it helps to check out cool ideas (e.g., on TED, TechCrunch, etc.) and to think critically about those ideas.
A creative idea is often the result of a novel pairing of two things. So the more things you know about, the better your chances are that you will stumble upon a compelling pairing.
I think that begs the question. How does one find 'inspiration' in something?
Sugar Ray Leonard can pull off dance moves in the boxing ring, I keep my hands up and my jab out or I'll get my head knocked off.
Start where you can grow and then do so.
(1) The tasks becomes so automatic, you no longer have to think about it and "work through it". It sinks into the subconscious. This is important.
(2) When the tasks becomes automatic, you naturally relax. Being relaxed, creativity and inspiration comes out. You cannot force it out. Stress kills creativity. Fear-inspired creativity typically manifests as paranoia.
(3) This is why some people can get oddly-inspired brilliance as a complete n00b in a craft. He doesn't know anything, yet sometimes he is relaxed enough that some randomly brilliant thing comes out. Often, this fades away with more mastery of the craft. It is why children are often perceived as naturally more creative.
(4) Someone who has mastered a craft to the point where it requires no thinking can be far more creative than the complete n00b. A master's inspiration takes advantage of deep understanding of his craft, so not only would it be far more effective, it is much more consistent.
(5) The four stages of competancy: unconsciously incompetant, consciously incompetant, consciously competant, unconsciously competant.
Most people reach the stage of consciously competancy (which requires concentration) and stop there. This is the stage where you've "learned" something and you "get" it. To reach the stage of unconsciously competancy, however, requires an incredible amount of practice and repetition (Malcom Gladwell's ballpark-nice-round-number of 10,000 ... which depending on the skill, really isn't all that much).
An example in the case of programming: I remember when I first learned the Ruby syntax. While I had other languages under my belt, I still had to mentally, and deliberately parse the syntax, and then try to understand the flow. Now, if I look at a codebase I am reasonbly familiar with, I can glance at it. I don't really see the code itself so much as how it all fits together. I have not yet mastered the syntax to the point where I can glance at unfamiliar code and do that.
Another example related to programming: I've seen would-be-programmers struggle to type their programs. For them, they have not reached a stage of unconscious competancy with typing. They have to frame bits of their thoughts and then deliberately type it out. Some touch-typists I know are not that much better. For me, having played so much MUDs back in its heyday, I've learned how to type well enough that it is no longer an interface bottleneck for me.
Example from martial arts: There is actually a ton of material written about this subject of creativity in the "boxing ring", some of the surviving ones written a couple hundred years ago or more. One of my favorite is the Japanese densho, Neko no Myojutsu. A modern (though more obtuse) treatise about this subject is "Effortless Power". Both books discusses the cases about creativity, the newbie, and the master craftsmen.
Nevertheless, I also think creativity can be emergent: when you are focusing on being creative in one area, draw analogies from other areas (interdisciplinary). I knew someone who once determined where to situate a package shipping center by using physics for example.
Book recommendation: The Artist's Way
"The Artist's Way is a workbook for anyone who is creative, feels blocked in their creativity or wishes that they were more creative. The book begins with the statement that everyone is creative and has an artist within them, and the point of this course is to recover that inner artist. It is divided into a twelve-week course, with assignments much like any semester-long college class."
http://www.google.com/search?q=creativity+schizophrenia
Furthermore, there are various drugs that induce schizophrenic-like mental states.
It's been shown drugs can make you smarter, faster, stronger, why would creativity be any different.
In these cases, I would argue the creativity stems from a different brain structure, and I would not be wrong in saying so. To this extent, it cannot be taught. But in the same vein, everybody is creative in their own ways. But it needs to be coaxed. The coaxing is the job of the perceptive teacher, and I think the early years of life are critical for healthy development in this area.
How do you learn to be creative? I would sum it up as "de-inhibit your brain." If you grew up in an oppressive environment where you could be punished for any arbitrarily bad expression, it is imaginable that you would be conditioned to avoid thinking in certain non-standard ways.
It seems like the less I fear failing, the more my creativity emerges.
While it does not directly address "creativity", I have found that the "juxtapositional thinking" state it describes as a required state for creative thinking. Look on the second article for the precise neuroscience.
In summary, the pre-frontal cortex has (at least) two different mode: focused attention, and juxtapositional thinking. The first works well when you have predictable task order. You know precisely what steps you need to do something in. However, it also shuts down any chance you have to be "inspired" or "creative". It is the precise reason when you try to be creative, you stop being creative.
The site lists some easy ways to encourage juxtapositional thinking in people. There are other methods I have found help trigger this.
I do want to point out though, the juxtapositional state will not automatically make you more creative, though it is a pre-condition that needs to be fulfilled before you creative insight pops up in your head.
However, this precondition does show why creativity is difficult to teach. It is something you learn, not something you teach. It requires a state of mind that you have to access yourself, you cannot be simply be told "be creative".
Whatever the case may be, creativity is not a genetic or an edge case.
There are skills you can use to help trigger this that goes beyond the specific suggestions in that linked article. Specifically, you train yourself to increase the amount of alpha-band and theta-band activity in your brain. Theta-band is where you start getting creative; alpha-band allows your working consciousness (the one you use to read these words) to visualize/verbalize it in a form that you can understand and remember. The book I sourced this from and use is Anne Wise's High Performance Mind. Note that I didn't really see any double-blind papers cited in there. I can only offer anecdoptal evidence that the techniques in there works for me. YMMV.
it's a tough sell to imply that any product, any idea, or any thing is creative in the sense that it appeared out of some sort of magical, big-bang of inspiration. your brain works by building connections, so anything you build is going to be an expression of everything you know; it's just a matter of not being afraid to experiment, and of iterating as fast as possible to find combinations of ideas virulent enough to claw their way above the slew and become something special.
and the energy you spend searching, identifying and implementing those combinations of ideas is directly related to the likelihood of their success... however you choose to define it.
don't be afraid to fail. by failing you're educating yourself about what doesn't work, which, in turn, makes it easier to identify what will.
also, when you're trying to be creative, the easiest way to fail is to not do anything at all. it's too easy to cogitate endlessly about what good solutions COULD be, rather than taking real steps to implement and identify what good solutions ARE.
i'd go with nike... "just do it." ...or maybe, "obey your thirst."
One way to do this is to focus on asking questions:
- What if this is the wrong approach? - How can this be made more general? - Should it be more general? - Should I be doing the opposite? - What other uses might this have? - What problem is this a better solution to? - What are the pieces of this idea? - What can I make with each piece? - (Repeat first steps) - How can I implement this idea? - On a budget? - With an unlimited budget? - "Green" - For Red staters - For blue staters - For the third world? - For free? - Why not do this before now? - Why not do this after now?
You get the idea. Just let your questioner run wild and enjoy the process. I recommend asking about 1000 questions and figuring out what makes you most excited or what you think packs the most punch.
I think creativity is more of the absence of a trait (excessive internal "downmodding" of thoughts) vs the presence of a trait.
Oh, and this may be a bit cliche, but sleep on it. Doze off thinking about it and then maybe in the shower the next day you'll get some ideas.
Also brainstorming with a friend can be a fun way to flush out cool ideas.
Thinkertoys (http://www.amazon.com/Thinkertoys-Handbook-Creative-Thinking...)
and
They're both among my fave books of all time, though they are relatively similar in content so getting just one is fine.
They cover a lot of different strategies for thinking creatively and outside the box, provide tons of examples, and have a lot of exercise that you can try yourself (and while it sounds cheesy, the exercises are actually fun)
But if I had to take a gander at answering "How to be creative", It would go something along the lines of... Take initiative. Do something, anything. Then ask "What if this was done differently?" and follow through on the question or modification. See where that leads you and question/modify that. Ad infinitum.
Once you start, don't ever stop doing things or questioning everything about them. If you're stuck, or just need a change in something, talk to other people. Creativity doesn't mean being alone forever.
"Thinking outside of the box" is tough when you're used to living in the box. Maybe it's easier to just get away from things you're familiar with to see creativity expressed.
For instance, take your average boring chemistry student out of a lab, and tell them they've got to make 20 loaves of bread every day next week for the local bakery.. but don't tell them how, let them look it up, or give them the standard equipment. Just give them the ingredients -- maybe even throw in more than is necessary including some that aren't normally used.
I bet you'd get some creative work out of people that weren't considered very creative in their normal work.
and if that fails, this essay is kind of interesting http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/56-creative-thinking-hacks...
Ignore everybody http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000932.html
Brief guidelines for creativity:
1. Get a good system for capturing and preserving new ideas without judging their merits.
2. Challenge yourself. Challenging problems will force you to use more diverse skills.
3. Learn. Become skilled in more than one area.
4. Manage your physical and social surroundings. Get to know a diverse set of people. Make sure your day is filled with interesting and novel things.
Also, as some other commenters have said, expose yourself to as much different stimulus as possible. If you're not an out-of-the-box thinker, this serves to make your box bigger.
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/862en/you_and_your_...
that, IMO, somewhat explains how "creativity" comes about--how seemingly great ideas come out of nothing (or do they?).
It's simple, if you want to write English, then first you should learn the basics of grammar and spelling. Next, depth learning, like reading articles on news papers or blogs. Finally practicing like writing on own blog or on forums.
It's simple, if you want to write English, then first you should learn the basics of grammar and spelling. Next, depth learning, like reading articles on news papers or blogs. Finally practicing like writing on own blog or on forums.
1) Hang around other creative people
2) Do stuff. Just try to build something, don't be afraid of failing. Some people get together for "bad art nights"
3) I am always inspired when I visit museums, galleries, etc. It just makes me want to do something
When was this? Undergraduate admissions?
Keep pushing.