Creative Hurdles

INTRODUCTION

In this lesson, we will present some obstacles that might avoid enhancing creativity in resolving problems

OBJECTIVES

• Understand seven hurdles describes in those fallacies:
  • Artistic vs. creative
  • Inspiration vs. Motivation
  • Pushed forward vs. pulled back
  • Present vs. aware
  • Effort vs. value
  • Input vs. Output
  • Prevent vs. procrastinating

ARTISTIC VS. CREATIVE

The first is artistic versus creative. It's common for people to say, "I don't have a creative bone in my body." This idea that we are not creative comes from an inaccurate definition of creativity. As we have established in previous lessons, creativity is not artistry, it is problem-solving. Thus, creativity and artistry are entirely separate concepts.

Let’s take an example to illustrate this. If you were asked to draw something that represents a list of words, for example, “pain,” “danger,” “pressure,” and “surprise,” but with the restriction of only using four straight lines and a circle for each.

Source: Mumaw, S. (2020) Creativity. Generate Ideas in Greater Quantity and Quality. LinkedIn Learning.

If you need to draw a pictogram representing each word using four straight lines and a circle, your solution is most likely not very artistic, but your solution is undoubtedly creative. You were presented with a problem, and that problem had purpose and restriction, and, indeed, you solved it in a variety of relevant and new ways.

Artistry and creativity are entirely different disciplines. Continue to view creativity as problem-solving with relevance and novelty, and you will continue to improve the quality and quantity of your ideas.

INSPIRATION VS MOTIVATION

There is a subtle difference between inspiration and motivation.

Inspiration is a conceptual state that creatives have pursued for years. Creative people attribute to inspiration their best creative efforts and most imaginative work.

It's natural to believe that creativity feeds off of inspiration because it is true. But the most habitual cause behind the most unremarkable solutions is not the lack of inspiration but the absence of motivation.

The key to overcoming either is understanding the difference.

• Inspiration is defined as the process of being mentally stimulated to do something, especially something creative

• Motivation is defined as the general desire of someone to do something.

One is defined as an external force, while the other is defined as an internal drive.  Inspiration has us waiting for something to happen, which we can do little about unless it chooses to come over for a visit.

Motivation, however, is under our control. It comes from the inside and propels us to act.

PUSHED FORWARD VS. PULLED BACK

Most of the ideas that we produce have to be hard pushed forward if we want to have something creative or innovative.

SOURCE: Collins, B. (2017) Here’s what Hans Zimmer says about the shameful agony of creativity. In Mission.org 31/08/2017 from https://medium.com/the-mission/heres-what-hans-zimmer-says-about-the-shameful-agony-of-creativity-eb28e00940e4 [13/06/2021]

As seen in the graph, the ordinary ideas (relevant) need a lot of energy to push forward to the “best idea zone.”

If we work in any form of the business environment, we spend most of our professional time generating ideas for approvals rather than innovative solutions.

Most of our regular ideas must be pushed forward to generate innovative ones.

The solutions we create are relevant as they solve the problem, but they usually lack of novelty. It would be easier to pull absurd ideas back closer to novelty than to push up from ordinary to crazy.

PRESENT VS. AWARE

A routine is a regular series of movements or procedures made repeatedly, in the same order.

There are sports routines, repetitions of muscle exercises that don’t require conscious forethought. We are surrounded by thousands of routines in our everyday life. Routines help keep our minds from thinking in each of our daily movements.

Imagine if you woke up tomorrow morning and couldn't remember what to do next. You'd have to evaluate every step, discover every need from scratch, investigate every path, through every room, and that's just to get around your house. Routine allows us to free our minds to focus on more important things until that routine begins to creep into our creative lives.

People spend many hours each day in the same places, day after day. We know these places so well that we don't have to think about where we are or what else. We instinctively know. But that instinctual knowledge can keep you from seeing the creative solutions that are all around you. In short, you're present in that moment and at that place, but are you truly aware?

What happens when we are in a new place? Finally, we are aware of your surrounding. We can investigate all of it, seeing every detail of the place as we are experiencing it. Unfortunately, we stop doing that in environments that we frequent, like our workplaces. Training yourself to be aware of your surroundings will serve you creatively as you search for solutions regardless of the familiarity.

EFFORT VS. VALUE

Creativity is an expense. It comes with the cost of time, energy, and passion, all finite resources.

Mumaw, S. (2020) Creativity. Generate Ideas in Greater Quantity and Quality. LinkedIn Learning.

While we may believe that all problems deserve a relevant and novel solution, we have to weigh which problems deserve our full creative attention and are better left to another day.

INPUT VS. OUTPUT

We already think that creativity is an expense. We have a finite amount of creative energy, and we have to choose which activities to empty our tank on.

People spend a lot of time executing ideas. However, they spend less time generating ideas and even less time generating those ideas.

We must consider that the time used in preparation is what allows us to solve the problems creatively in the first place.

To summarize, creativity is a limited resource that must be used in those things that have more impact. But, how can it be refiled after having used it? The response is with Inspiration.

Inspiration is what helps us to have a continuous tank with creativity fuel. Different things inspire every person. You can be inspired by nature, social interaction, or other activities such as different types of music, movies, books, and games

To help to identify the sources of inspiration, we can fill a table like the following:

These are your creative sources of inspiration divided by distance and effort. Try to make a list as long as you can. Try to visit the sources of inspiration often to energize yourself

The problem is that, sometimes, we don’t realize that we are running out of energy. The so-called burnout could be avoidable if we are mindful of the signs and act on time.

We can notice that we are reaching burnout detecting the routine state. Routine influence our activities and our solutions. The second sign is when we complain that this task is too challenging and start looking for the easiest solution. We don’t want to make an effort to look for the best solution. The third sign is discontent. If you are unhappy, you will have no energy to solve problems creatively.

PREVENTING VS. PROCRASTINATING

Hab¡ving inspiration or not, procrastination is always lurking. There are always excuses and distractions on the way to reach the goals that keep us running behind schedule.  However, some steps can limit distractions and improve productivity in the creative process.

Chaos and disorder have real and adverse effects. They will create distractions and increase stress, and that will damage the creative process while encouraging procrastination. The solution is simple: get rid of unnecessary things, preventing procrastination in many instances. A disorder-free environment removing nonessential things from the workspace and keeping the inspirational ones will improve the effectiveness of your creative process.

Procrastination is usually encouraged by ourselves by limiting beliefs, thinking that we are not capable of reaching our goals. But our mindset can be changed, creating situations that force us to act.

Motivating ourselves to move forward and decrease procrastination is essential in focusing on success. This can be achieved by setting small goals that you know you can achieve. Encouraged by the achievements of the first steps, you will slowly generate self-esteem and build your own success through quick wins until accomplishing the long-term goal. It only matters to believe that it is possible.

The creative process (or any other tasks) does not need to be completed linearly. Instead of being stuck in a difficult phase, we can move to another portion of the project and coming back to the previous one later.

An example to explain this is the writers that could write the chapters independently, with the description of the script and, at the very end, tie all the chapters together. It is not necessary in which order to do a project as long as you can connect the tasks of the project at the end.

CONCLUSIONS

Seven hurdles could rest energy to be creative in resolving problems:

• • Artistic vs. creative
  • Inspiration vs. Motivation
  • Pushed forward vs. pulled back
  • Present vs. aware
  • Effort vs. value
  • Input vs. Output

Those are described and some tips have been given to avoid them

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Courseware (2019) Creativity: Thinking out of the box. Courseware.com

Gray, D.; Brown, S,; Macanufo, J. (2010) Gamesorming. A playbook for innovators, Rulebreakers, and changemakers. O’Reilly Media Eds.

Mumaw, S. (2020) Creativity. Generate Ideas in Greater Quantity and Quality. LinkedIn Learning.

Seelig, T. (2017) Creativity Rules. Get Ideas Out of your head and into the world. HarperOne Eds.

Here you have the contents of this lesson in pdf: