6 steps to get creative
Flavian Hautbois3 min read
I find the joy of the ‘doing’ increases. Creativity increases. Intuition increases. The pleasure of life grows. And negativity recedes. David Lynch
Hello there! Are you a creative person? Yes? No? Actually, the question is misleading, because creativity is not a personality trait, it’s a skill. It is something you can train. Sure, some people are born more creative than others. Some have a better aesthetic sense. But that’s just a baseline level. Do you think that creativity is limited to artistic endeavors? You’d be dead wrong and I’ll bet you that you use your creative skills every day, far from all the glamour you may have in mind. Whether at school or at work, or even during your vacations, you must have had this moment when an idea kicks in, and you find an efficient way to optimize a repetitive task so that you do it faster or get rid of it; or maybe you devised an elegant plan to visit the three monuments you absolutely wanted to see in one day. Getting more creative can help you in your everyday personal “projects” as well as in your work life. And I’ll tell you what: just like a muscle, the more you use your creativity, the more you can develop it.
Why should you train your creative muscle? Well, creative thinking will be one key skill of the 21st Century (find more here, or here). As for any training, you’ll benefit a lot from following a program. The program I’ll detail here is not a definitive answer and is surely incomplete, but it has worked for me so far and I invite you to try it. My personal experience involves creating music, building a (failed) startup whose name was TraxAir, and working for Theodo. Also, I recently started writing articles (hey there!).
This program hinges around training your creativity by doing. The act of doing is what will drive progress in your life. You will be put in front of real problems that you have to solve quickly. Solving problems obviously requires creativity, so doing it more will make you flex your creative muscle. I certainly hope you will be able to apply it to whatever your favorite domains are (is it research? Business? Cinema? Writing? Painting?Music? Pet stuffing?). Before reading further, think about a project of interest to you and imagine yourself going through the workout.
This creativity workout is called STRESS, and it should enable you to do more with_less_ stress. STRESS stands for 6 steps:
- Small is the way to start
- To-do lists make you work faster
- Reproduce parts of work you like
- Evaluation is the fuel for greatness
- Share your work
- Start over and repeat
