Creativity is needed everywhere. If you don’t know you are creative, you should read some of my other posts. Indeed, as a unique individual, you are endowed with creativity. The problem is that you live in a world of manufactured ‘roles’, ‘looks’, and expectations that are more about subservience to the crowd, the gang, society, than about being uniquely you. To find and work within your uniqueness is one of the greatest things you can do in life. Here are a few tips along the way of that journey:
1. Don’t accept the status quo: Whether you’re designing a business solution or writing a play, the status quo is like the F on a term paper in school—it’s to be avoided at all costs, especially at the outset of an idea. If you are looking for a job, try instead to create a new one. If you have a job, try to innovate on your role, bringing your responsibilities closer to who you are as a person.
2. Experiment: Play is a vital part of being creative. Whether it’s a Fortune 500 CEO or the prudish colleague, as humans we like to play. You can indeed have serious play, especially when creating a new idea for a business platform or solution. Experiment with new ideas. Don’t look at last week’s stuff, but try to find something totally different.
3. Be vulnerable: If you aren’t vulnerable, you’re not creative. Try it. Throw something crazy out there in a meeting, prefaced by “Here’s something out of left field, but what if we tried . . .” Many people have a hard time with creativity because it means taking off the masks that protect them from identity damage. The irony is, the mask isn’t who they really are—it’s a fabrication. So people are protecting fabrications with fabrications pretending they’re being real. Vulnerable can burn off those masks real fast, allowing you to be more uniquely you, and thus more creative.
4. Be Collaborative: You can’t solve everything alone—the world’s too complex.You need others—period.
5. Be Reclusive: That said, you also need to spend time alone. You need solitude to reflect deeply on your experiences to find the solutions you need to come up with. If your’e with the crowd all the time, you’ll think and act and even dress like the crowd. I’ve seen companies that are struggling with innovation, and everyone is dressed the same. Being by yourself, having solitude, will keep the crowd from rubbing off on you too much.
6. Learn: As humans we can’t help but learn—we are always experiencing things, making new connections, re-establishing old connections, and building more neural connections. Nevertheless, what you want to do is learn new things—even hard things. Are you looking for a business solution, pick up a volume of Einstein’s theory of relativity, or learn something about architecture. The more divergence, or difference, you can bring to your learning, the more creatively you’ll see things around you.
7. Draw: Don’t know how to draw? Learn. There are all kinds of amazing sketch and mind map books out there. Check out Amazon, and purchase a few—and make sure at least one of them is the Draw Squad! You need to have a few basic skills of taking what’s in your head and being able to represent it on paper or whiteboard.
8. Keep moving: Don’t stop working and trying and failing and getting back up again. The greatest killer of uniqueness and creativity is resistance. Read some of Stephen Pressfield’s books—he’ll tell you what’s up. Whatever it is you’re doing or want to do, you’ve got to keep doing it. If you fail, get back up. As Rocky said, “It’s not how many times you fall down, it’s how many times you fall down and get back up again that matters.” (Or something like that . . .)
The world is changing rapidly. It’s a great time to be you. You have a unique way of seeing the world that no one else has. With hard work, patience, and resilience, you can work authentically in the world. Give it a try. Step one: eat your eggs a different way than you usually do (I’ve been eating mine hard boiled, which I vowed I’d never do—it works.).
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