The Creativity Choice is OUT!

Today is publication day for a very long project; I hope it uncovers what comes between an idea and the finished product, to help you get from there to here.

Today is publication day for The Creativity Choice! Congratulations to me!

I have been doing research, writing, and generally thinking about creativity for a very long time. Two decades since getting a doctorate, longer since I figured out that creativity is THE topic for me. What got me started on this journey is a description of creative individuals offered by Frank X. Barron, researcher from the first big wave of creativity research in the 1950s and 1960s, spurred by the space race between the US and USSR. He remarked that creative people are, “occasionally crazier, yet adamantly saner than the average person.” If that does not sound interesting, I don’t know what does.

I had questions. What is it in creative personality that allows people to embody seemingly contradictory attributes? What is the process by which people come by ideas? And how do they develop them into performances and products? What is in between a hunch of a vision that makes us open a blank document on our computers and something like a published book?

This process made me deeply aware that we learn by study, but we come to truly know through action. I knew a lot of pieces of the creativity puzzle, but now had to put them together and answer why and how each of them mattered. And I faced a challenge of not just teaching about creative work, but also applying the lessons I was teaching. Because if I cannot take my own advice, I reasoned, other people would not be able to do it either.

What came into full relief to me and what I wanted to convey to the reader are three groups of messages:

What gets us started on creative work?

We often ask, “How did they think of that?”, implying that we would never have thought of it or known how to do it, whatever the ‘it’ might be. The flip side of what gets us started on creative work is the question of barriers to making that decision. What is in our way?

Creativity research points to two groups of major barriers. One is about the uncertainties of the creative process. We are doing something new and original and therefore do not have a roadmap. We cannot be sure whether we would be successful (Can I actually write this book?) and we cannot be sure how others will react to our work (Would people think this is the same old story?). Psychologically, these uncertainties are experienced as risks. We do not have to be risk-seekers and eager risk-takers, but creative work requires accepting and tolerating some risks.

The other big barrier to creative work is the feeling we do not have enough confidence. And I get it. I did not always believe that I could write a book. When we say we don’t have enough confidence, we are really saying we want to feel fully certain of our abilities to do something (there it comes again; creativity and dealing with uncertainty). However, what we really need is to have just enough in our tank of confidence to get us to through the first small task. Progress begets more confidence and we can proceed onward.

What keeps us going?

The second big question is about strategies to make it through the long and difficult process of realizing an idea. Behind this umbrella problem are other more specific ones: What drives creativity? How do we identify problems and develop solutions? What happens with emotions during creative work? And how to get out of a creative rut?

I have found that many answers to these questions come across as as surprising:

• Creative drive is based on intrinsic motivation and passion, but also becomes focused by engaging with constraints. Although research shows that approximately 70% of people believe that creativity is most successful when we have full freedom, that is not so.

• Problem finding is key to creativity. More important than problem solving. Problem finding does not mean just identifying a problem worth our attention, but it also means framing and reframing the problem from different angles. Research has shown repeatedly that successful problem solving involves more time spent on problem finding than on coming up with new ideas.

• It is easy to imagine all the ways emotions can come in the way of creative work. Becoming anxious or overwhelmed or frustrated at yet another obstacle. But emotions can also be a source of inspiration (and not just for artists!) and they can help us be maximally effective in what we do.

• We have more agency about our emotions than we think. Understanding the process of how emotions arise suggests different strategies to influence the course of our experiences and help us nudge them in a better direction.

What makes creative work reliable?

All I have said above applies to work on a single project, like writing a book. But doing a single creative thing can make us into a one hit wonder. And chances are we don’t want that.

The not so secret secret to making creativity repeatable is in its social side. Reaching out to those at the edges of our social networks, people who we do not interact with often, will be helpful when we are looking to come up with new ideas. Because we don’t talk often, they are likely to have different experiences and perspectives, and these are helpful in the idea generation stage of work. But when we are looking to elaborate and develop ideas, working with people we are close to will be helpful because they tend to acknowledge our ideas and build on them.

When creativity happens in organizations, something else is important too — leadership and climate for creativity and innovation. Leaders signal with their actions what is accepted and expected. If they shut down ideas (even for seemingly reasonable reasons, like money) or if they have the attitude of “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions”, they are communicating in action that creativity is not welcome. And that colors what those working with them do.

If you found this intriguing and want more, The Creativity Choice is now available wherever you get your books!