Few words about creativity

Photo of graffiti taken at Moritzplatz in Berlin

Creativity seems to be something that everyone is looking for. It's easy to say this is creative looking at the piece of art. We say Mozart was a great artist but we don't quite realize that we are all creative creatures. In fact, different people might have same ideas at the same time. Let's take as an example invention of a light bulb. Many people work on the same idea, but it was Edison that is well known for it. The environment and state of knowledge at that time allowed this creative process to be possible for many people. If we now look on the FinTech sector we will notice as well that many companies such as N26, Revolut, Monzo, were set up more or less at the same time. The initial idea behind them is the same. Provide customer centric, smooth banking experience. The question is why some are succeeding and others not? Apart from having an idea, we need to grasp it. Not only that, we need to work on its development and have to courage to share it with the rest of the world. Not only idea, but persistence matters. How does that impacts our private and professional life you might ask. We might have a lot of brilliant ideas at work or in our private lives but we are not pursuing them, since we think someone else already had similar idea or we are not ready to show people our work. That's why not only having idea matters but also being bold to show it and being ready for critique.

How to get to the stage of having an idea? Stay curious. Have a hobby, have a passion. When Michael Jordan first retired he went to play baseball. His mind change the direction to different game but that was still his passion and sports. He was seeing things from different angle, taking different perspective. Take a rest. Archimedes "Eureka" happened when he was taking a bath. Resting and having moments of boredom boost our minds in the end.

I think that there is a pressure to be creative. You need to provide solutions, think outside the box, deliver 5 ideas how to improve something etc. Rather than creating a pressure let's look for a new hobby, things we enjoy doing. Surprisingly, that may bring us counter effects in getting great ideas and if not in making our lifes richer.

This article is a part of "Developing my talents: Ideation" series. It was inspired by the book Big Magic: Creative Living beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert that I highly recommend to read. The idea for this series of articles came after reading the blog (in Polish) https://dominikjuszczyk.pl/ where the author recommends books to strengthen you talents (as defined by Gallup Institute). He does an amazing job and I'm really grateful that I found it.

#creativity #ideas #ideation #Gallup