🤯Unknown Unknowns #87 - What is Creativity?
I once told an ex-coworker that I wanted to do something more creative and she asked, "Like, painting or poetry? Pottery?" Creativity is stereotyped into the buckets of abstract expression or the corporate talk of finding “out-of-the-box solutions” or “orthogonal thinking.” Creativity has become so abstract it’s a cliché. When was the last time you thought about what creativity actually is?
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary work, or a painting). - Wikipedia
Wikipedia’s definition sounds right on the surface, but we need to dig deeper. What is “new”? And what is “valuable”?
Let’s address “new” quickly. Who was more creative, Newton or Leibniz? They invented calculus independently. If one was later than the other, was he less creative? Creativity must be novel to yourself.
Now, does creativity need to create something “valuable”? I would say, if no one, not even yourself, values your creation, there is no creativity. But your judgment on whether your creation is valuable shouldn’t be discounted.
In fact, “you” are the best barometer of your creativity. Something has to be valuable to yourself and new to yourself to be creative. Creativity has to be subjective, as value is subjective.
Often, you can't know something is valuable until it's created. You might create absolute shit. Creativity is creating both value and shit and sifting the results.
"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." - Joseph Chilton Pearce
Defining creativity as “creating something that is valuable and novel to yourself” is interesting, but I want to know how you become more creative.
I’ve heard ways of being creative ranging from "following curiosity" to "expressing yourself" to "thinking outside the box." These are still so vague as to be useless. Creativity is in the realm of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography, "I know it when I see it."
It might be easier to define creativity by your state while you're being creative. Daniel Pink in Drive describes the aspects of motivation as mastery, purpose, and autonomy. Creativity comes from these sources as well. I know that when I am missing these aspects, I am not creative. When I'm repetitively doing something, I'm not creative. When I'm bored with what I'm doing, I'm not creative. And when someone tells me what to do, I'm definitely not creative.
When I am pushing the limits of my abilities, intensely interested in the process, and fully invested in an activity, those are the times when I notice my creativity.
Discoveries:
1️⃣
Tim Ferriss shares the epilogue of Mastery by George Leonard, titled “The Master and the Fool.” It has similar connotations as the quote by Joseph Chilton Pearce above. The necessity of “playing the fool.” Only by playing the fool, by not fearing being wrong can you have an original thought. You can’t judge something before it’s created, so you have to risk creating something bad to see if it’s good.
2️⃣
Struthless, on YouTube, talks about how incentives have affected creativity.
As Charlie Munger says, “Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.”
Struthless says,
The label "content" limits creativity. By calling art "content," our art is given a very specific purpose - to serve the algorithm set out by a handful of companies.”
He sees two problems with the way that content is created today
Problem 1: Experimentation is now a risk to their core asset
Problem 2: [Creators] have now trained their creativity to suit an algorithm
Looking back to our creativity definition, the first problem prevents people from being comfortable with being wrong and the second problem makes the authority of value an algorithm.
3️⃣
The development of AI brings up interesting questions about creativity. Ethan Mollick writes about using AI for creativity. It’s interesting reading this essay in the context of our previous discussion.
🔗 A prosthesis for imagination: Using AI to boost your creativity
You can find more of my writing at chr.iswong.com.
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Leaving you in peace,
Chris
> Only by playing the fool, by not fearing being wrong can you have an original thought.
I was just thinking about this today. I see so much fear of being wrong nowadays, which isn't surprising because we live in an age in which people are shamed for being wrong. But the consequence is that people remain in denial and either double down when they're wrong, or worse, hide their wrongdoing, which is a disaster waiting to happen.
Thanks for this reminder!
I could never understood this stereotype of equating creativity with artistic pursuits only, - visual arts, dance, poetry, etc. Most of my professional career I worked among engineers, software developers, and scientists (being one of them), and it is obvious to me that creativity belongs to science and engineering as much as to fine arts.
Great post, thank you!