Creativity
From HowTo.Lifehack
Creativity can be broadly defined as the ability to create something that is not just a derivative of other works. This can mean solving a problem in a novel way, finding a new technique, or inventing a new design or product. Although creativity is spontaneous and unpredictable, there are several elements that can help stimulate it:
- Technical Expertise
- Broad References
- Positive Belief Structure
- Growing Ideas
- Experimentation
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[edit] Technical Expertise
Often what is perceived as a lack of creativity is really a lack of skill. Painting, drawing, designing and playing an instrument are all technical skills that require practice to hone. If you lack the expertise to use the tools required to create, then it won't matter how vivid and imaginative your imagination is.
If you have trouble drawing anything more than a stick figure, you may have assumed you aren't creative or artistic. But just as it would be impossible for even the most creative beginner programmer to design an operating system, you may be creative but just lack the instruction to take your imagination and translate that onto the paper.
A beginner mistake when drawing faces is to mix up the proportions where eyes should go on the head. A bit of instruction (eyes are normally halfway between the top of the head and the chin) and practice can usually lead to much better results.
The same is true of almost any creative act:
- Writing
- Art
- Music
- Programming
- Speaking
- Design
[edit] Broad References
Once you begin to improve your technical expertise, creativity can be sharpened by having a broad base of references from which to draw inspiration. This means having slight to adequate understanding of a larger group of ideas. This way when you are designing an interface you can draw upon your knowledge of psychology, artistic styles, programming, history or language to get ideas.
Combined with technical expertise this is often called the "T Model." Where a narrow focused area of understanding is combined with a broad but less detailed understanding of many things. This combination seems to enhance creativity.
How can you form a larger base?
- Read more books from different fields.
- Take up new hobbies. I've found side hobbies in painting, programming, speaking to be invaluable in giving me a creative edge in my primary interests.
- Distinguish between your focus and your periphery. Emphasize mastery in the narrow column of your "T" but don't spend too much time in one field if it is only in your horizontal top of your "T"
- Meet and interact with more people from varying backgrounds. A diversity of people can be one of the fastest ways to connect with a diversity of experiences.
[edit] Positive Belief Structure
Most authors on creativity will tell you that the surest way to prevent coming up with original ideas is to dismiss them as soon as they come up. A positive belief structure doesn't just mean thinking your creative, but actively fostering new ideas even if they later turn out to be duds.
Creativity also requires cycling between phases of generation and cutback. People who struggle with creativity, often try to blend these distinct phases, by trying to weed out bad ideas while they are generating good ones.
Imagine your creative faculties like water flowing into a bucket. When you get new ideas, they pour into the bucket, along with pieces of dirt and impurities. In order to filter these impurities out, however, you need to stop the water. This is why getting new ideas should be a separate process from filtering out bad ones, to keep from having to constantly turn the water on and off.
[edit] Growing Ideas
Another way to improve creativity, is to grow out ideas to see where they lead. Once you get past the initial idea generation phase, you should tinker with one idea until it becomes more mature. From this perspective, new ideas are prototypes that need to be refined before they can be put into action.
Let's say you think you've stumbled upon a new method to run the interface of your program. The idea to begin with is fairly small and underdeveloped. The best way to utilize this creative aspect would be to grow out this small idea and build upon it. You could build a small test program that would illustrate the key concepts of your interface. If this worked, you could integrate it into a larger program and flesh out the details.
Growing ideas also works with writing. You could start with a vague concept in your head and then write out the general idea, and continue writing until the idea becomes more solid. Once your done you can clean up the piece or even completely rewrite it with the new thoughts in mind.
[edit] Experimentation
Experimentation is constructive randomness. Unlike growing ideas where you are starting with a specific mental design, with experimentation you are testing many different potential solutions at once and seeing what sticks.
If you wanted to improve your creativity when drawing a picture, you could do different areas of the picture with different techniques and see which produces the best results. If you were designing computer graphics you could try using an airbrush for one effect, preprogrammed filters for another area or Bezier curves for another. From these different tests you could then create a solution that would work best.
Experimentation works best when you have many ideas but little advanced knowledge on which potential method would be suitable.
