Steve is probably over-quoted by anyone who writes about creativity but this is really good. A friend who went to art school told me she was not taught to draw and paint so much as to see things. Try standing in front of a painting for half an hour really looking at it, trying to see everything. Not done it before? Well it’ll probably give you a headache and it’ll also show you just how little you normally see or how casually you look at things.
But here’s the trick. Seeing things isn’t something you can force. Let thoughts and observations come to you. And when they do come to you relish them. To get the most out of great food you need to chew gently quite a lot.
Seeing things and making connections is the essence of all great creativity. But creative thinking requires two other things:
- Great memory
- A bit of rebelliousness
The memory allows us to make better and more enlightened connections more easily. The rebelliousness allows us to break the mould or do something utterly surprising and ahead of the herd. There was I recall a Levi Jeans ad which said “when the others zig, zag”.
Be zaggers if you want to make a bit of impact.
Jefferson said that a little rebellion was a good thing - having just help drive the British from America we can see why he might say this.
As a brief formula for successful creative thinking this isn’t bad but of course it slips into the standard thinking fallacy of oversimplifying. Being an accomplished creative thinker takes time and experience too. Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘Outliers’ reckons even the greatest creative minds take 10,000 hours to attain mastery.
That means a lot more learning, looking, listening and reading for most of us.
How to solve problems and make brilliant decisions. (Business Thinking Skills that really work) published by Pearson is coming out on November 12th 2014
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