You Were Born with Creativity. Here’s How to Get It Back (Part 2)

Why creativity in adulthood and business depends on how tightly you’re holding your creative sponge.

In Part 1, we looked at a definition of creativity. To recap, the definition cobbled together from various sources is:

the ability to generate or recognize novel and valuable ideas or possibilities through the use of imagination.

Ability means a skill. Something that can be practiced and developed. Novelty is when something is new to us (not necessarily anyone other than us). Value, again, is up to us.

As children, everything is novel and anything is valuable just because it catches our attention. As we progress through the education system, creativity loses out to the necessity of meeting curriculum requirements and grading standards.

As adults, fewer things are novel to us and our expectations of value are high. They are measured in KPIs and deadlines and happy bosses.

Creativity is a key soft skill that provides us with a unique edge in an AI-saturated world. It makes us an essential member of the team and increases our satisfaction when we see ourselves providing crucial benefits to our workplace.

But if we started out effortlessly creative and we lost the ability in the journey to adulthood, is there any way to get back to that as an adult? And what does creativity look like as businesspeople anyway?

Why We Keep Coming Back to Novelty and Value

The above definition includes words like “ideas,” “possibilities,” and “imagination.” Isn’t that where the secret to creativity lies?

Those are the words that people love to throw around as core aspects of creativity. But they can feel like unattainable concepts. Ideas: you either have them or you don’t. Imagination: it’s either working or it’s not.

But to get ideas (as mentioned in the post Spark Ideas with These Two Elements) you need input and you need connection. You need fresh information coming into your brain and then space in your brain for the information to bounce around and connect.

Which all comes back to novelty and value. Those are two things you have absolute control over.

You can find sources of novel information (you’re probably reading one right now). You can choose to expand your knowledge on a topic or discover a completely new topic of interest. You can talk to people and learn about their interests and viewpoints. You can take yourself to a new café and try the beetroot latte with a pistachio and ginger florentine.

As an adult, your ability and opportunities to discover novelty are actually greater than when you were a child. You have a world of possibilities at your fingertips. Just increasing the quality of your input can make a measurable difference to the creativity in your output. And that is within your control.

The other part of the equation is changing your definition of value. We’re conditioned to see value in things that are actionable and measurable. Creativity doesn’t play by that rulebook. Creativity forms thoughts and ideas just for the fun of it.

That doesn’t mean ideas can’t become actionable and measurable. But it means you need to change the rules. No thought is too crazy, and ideas can come in pieces.

Randomness needs to be rewarded. Remember, ideas come from connections and the more random the connection the greater a potential for an interesting and (wait for it) novel idea.

Find value in connections, in seeing similarities in dissimilar things, in asking “what if” and then running with it. Don’t judge a partial idea. Let it grow and see where it takes you. Don’t worry if something doesn’t work first time. Play with it some more and see if it branches in a different direction.

Is Creativity Effortless?

As a child, we could slap a handprint of paint down on a sheet of paper and, voila! Art! As an adult, the barrier to entry feels so much higher than that. A painting would need to look like something or mean something and/or look good somewhere for it to be ‘voila! Art!’

Isn’t creativity the same? Business meetings don’t run on stories of girls riding dragons rescuing princes, they run on bar graphs and Q&A slides. For an adult to be creative, more effort is required, isn’t it?

Creativity (and this, it turns out, wasn’t in the definition I’ve been harping on) is like a sponge. As children, we had plenty of water and a really relaxed sponge. We’d squeeze the sponge for some creative fun (how many stickers can we put on Daddy’s face before he wakes up?) and then let it soak in the wonder of childhood life until the next opportunity to squeeze the sponge arrived (how far will these peas fly if I use my spoon as a catapult?).

As adults, we have a death grip on our creative sponge. We need a solution or an idea right now but the strain of the adult world and a schedule that leaves no time for exploration means our sponge never relaxes and never fills with possibilities. We want creative results. We need them right now. And when they don’t come, we blame the dry sponge rather than the fist that’s holding it.

Creativity takes effort, but probably not in the place you’re expecting.

Creativity takes nurturing. It takes, as mentioned, novelty. It takes input. It takes plenty of interesting ‘water’ for your sponge to soak up.

It also takes time to soak up all the interesting goodness. Time where actionable results aren’t expected. Where the act of accumulating information and experiences is the result.

And then it takes time to gently release all that goodness in a way that doesn’t damage the sponge. It requires time in our schedule where brainstorming or playing with ideas or staring out a window is possible. It requires opportunities for exploring thoughts and possibilities without the expectation that by the end of this half hour you’ll have a full 18-point action plan. Exploring and curiosity are the value and expectation.

All of these elements need to be done in a gentle, accepting, curious way. Is it effortless? No, it takes understanding and planning as an adult to provide time and mental space for these things to happen. But they can happen in a relaxing and enjoyable way.

Think of the joy and wonder in a child’s eyes as they experiment with something new to them. That’s the mentality you want to capture. And that, when you practice and understand it, comes with a lightness and ease that is addictive and replicable.

Conclusion

You started life with an abundance of creativity. You can find your way back there. The key aspects of novelty and value are within your control to define and search for. 

Find ways to relax your ‘sponge’ and provide your mind opportunities to gather new information. Playing with possibilities without pressure will guide you to the solutions and ideas that only your unique brain can discover.

But how do you do this in simple, actionable steps? The content here is a deep dive on topics. If you want a quick and effective shot of actions you can take to increase your creativity and innovation potential, sign up for The Bright Idea Bulletin newsletter and get those tips in your inbox twice a month.