How to Be More Creative

Creativity is something you unlearn

Most people think creativity is a gift that some people have. The book argues something different. Children build and destroy and build again without thinking about it. Then, as we get older, things get in the way. We learn rules, go to school, get a job, and fit in. Little by little, we forget how to do it.

Evan Williams, a co-founder of Twitter, put it to the authors this way:

I definitely think people can learn how to be creative, but I think for the most part people unlearn how to do it.

If creativity is partly something we unlearn, it is partly something we can relearn. The eight habits below come from the book’s chapters. Do them in order if you like, or jump to the one you need.

1. Play
2. Make room
3. Make lots of ideas
4. Go hunting
5. Question the assumptions
6. See it differently
7. Choose and cut
8. Set the stage

1. Play

The first habit is the hardest to take seriously. The book’s first chapter is about play as the way to switch natural creativity back on, and its closing pages say our creative talents remain and can be brought out to play once more.

Williams remembered what school did to him. His teachers told his parents that he would come up with the right answers but the wrong way. As he put it, “Even if I knew the answer I didn’t want to get to it the way they wanted me to get to it.”

Try this (five minutes). Pick an everyday object on your desk. Invent something silly with it, on purpose, without asking whether it is useful. The Product Idea Generator will hand you an object, a verb and a user if you want a push.

The point is not to produce anything good. The point is to make being wrong feel safe, which is the state where ideas show up.

2. Make room

Creativity does not happen only when you are staring at the problem. The book describes a study in which students were given a creative task, such as coming up with names or uses for a brick. Some answered right away. Others spent a few minutes on a distracting task first. The distracted students came up with less obvious answers.

The researchers’ explanation, as the book reports it, is that conscious thought stays in the spotlight while unconscious thought wanders into the dusty corners of the mind. Giving the conscious mind something else to do lets the other part work.

The book also looks at mood. Music, video games and aerobic exercise all affect how we feel, and mood in turn affects creative performance. The authors admit that doing aerobics next to a colleague on a conference call might be off-putting, but the point stands: when we are in creative mode, we often need to do something other than stare at the screen.

Try this. When you are stuck, give yourself two minutes to state the problem in one sentence. Then go and do something else that fully occupies you, such as a walk, a game or the washing up. Our suggestion is fifteen minutes or so, but the book gives no number. Come back and write down whatever floated up first.

You can see the same effect in the lateral thinking puzzles. The answer often arrives when you stop pushing at it.

3. Make lots of ideas

The Idea Spaghetti chapter is about quantity. Its argument is that the more ideas you throw at the wall, the better the odds that one sticks. That means thinking divergently: producing many different ideas before you judge any of them. The chapter’s rule for a good session is that no idea is a bad idea.

The book is also frank about brainstorming. Coming up with ideas in a group can be counterproductive, and the number and quality of ideas can be lower than when people work alone. So start alone, make a pile, and bring the group in when you need to narrow it down.

Try this (five minutes). Set a timer. Write down as many ideas as you can for one challenge, and set a high target. In the Random Idea Generator, Spaghetti mode runs the timer and deals prompts. The target of 50 is ours; change it to whatever stretches you.

Do not edit while you write. Editing is for step seven.

4. Go hunting

The Scavengers chapter treats ideas as things lying around, if you go looking. It gives you two ways to look.

Attribute listing. Break a product or service into its parts, then rebuild it. A pen has a look, a feel, a material, a type of ink and a way of releasing it. A restaurant has a type of food, a price range, a style and a way of delivering the food. List the options for each part, then pick a random one from each column. The book’s own example comes out as expensive Italian food delivered to businesses.

The bug list. Make a list of what irritates you about a product, a service or a whole industry. The book uses the umbrella, which can blow inside out, break and poke someone in the eye. Each bug is a possible improvement.

One of the authors tells of a stepfather, Julien, who did this literally. He collected things people had thrown away, such as old chair legs, coat hangers and door handles, and turned them into inventions. The book says he “would only eat, read or play with what he found each day and he was a recycling genius.”

Try this. List ten things that annoy you about something you use every day. Circle the one that bothers you most. Then use the Business Idea Generator to see what business you could build around a problem like it.

5. Question the assumptions

The fourth chapter is built on a simple idea: better questions get you better answers. The book tells how Einstein’s mother, when he got home from school, asked him not what grades he got but whether he had asked any good questions. It says Jorma Ollila of Nokia questioned the assumption that Nokia needed all of its unrelated businesses to survive.

The method is to write down the assumptions behind your problem and test each one. The worked example is traffic in Los Angeles. If the problem is reducing congestion, the assumptions include “There’s too much traffic in LA”, “People don’t like being stuck in traffic” and “People need cars to get around”. They sound obvious, but each has a gap. Too much compared with what? Some people may even like being stuck in traffic, as time alone in the car.

The book also suggests turning an assumption on its head. Ask what the exact opposite would mean, and whether it changes anything. If it makes a real difference, keep the assumption. If not, you may be able to drop it.

Try this. Take a problem you are working on and list six things you are taking for granted. Cross out the ones that are not true. See what questions remain. For more practice, read the guide to lateral thinking.

6. See it differently

The book spends several chapters on ways to break out of the angle you are stuck at. Two are easy to try.

Try on someone else’s shoes. The Shoe Swapper chapter warns that getting too close to a problem makes it hard to find new solutions, because we are held back by what we know, or think we know. Looking through someone else’s eyes helps, whether a child or a passenger in a cab. In business, the book says, ask people from different departments or from completely unrelated professions.

Connect unrelated things. The Connected chapter says creativity often means joining two things that seem to have nothing to do with each other. Its exercise is to pick a random word and force a link with your problem. The authors tried it on the Los Angeles traffic problem and drew the word “donation”, which led to ideas they had not listed before. The chapter also says a little humor can change the direction of stale thinking, and that the resulting idea often seems obvious afterward.

Two more habits from the book are worth a mention. Visualizing, such as drawing a sketch, taking photographs or using similes and metaphors, can free up thinking that words alone would restrict. And thinking big, the subject of the Far Out chapter, helps you break away from expected ideas.

Try this. Describe your problem to someone who knows nothing about your field, and ask what they would do. Then open the Random Idea Generator in Connect mode and force a link between its two things and your problem.

7. Choose and cut

Making ideas is only half the job. The Kill the Idea chapter is about choosing which ideas get your time and money. It points to two ways to decide: practical considerations, and gut instinct.

The book also passes on a simple test. Write two or three words on each idea, such as “fit ‘n’ green”. If you cannot remember what it was about a week later, it cannot have been that good, so kill it. The book admits that killing ideas is painful and that they sometimes come back to haunt you.

Try this. Take the pile you made in step three. Give each idea a two- or three-word label and put the list away. Look at it again in a week. Keep the ideas you can still explain.

8. Set the stage

The last chapters are about putting ideas into orbit. The book’s closing pages put it this way: it takes perseverance and self-belief, being surrounded by great people, and a creative culture that encourages experimentation and risk.

A few things the book says about the setting:

• Mix the people. A good mix includes people from varying backgrounds, skills and identities, so not everyone thinks alike.
• Keep it positive. A positive, collaborative environment helps bring out creative ability.
• Set high goals. Groups respond to a high benchmark.

How to be more creative at work

Most of the above works at your desk, but the stage is where work differs. If you manage people, our reading of the book is this: protect the early, messy stage from criticism, bring different kinds of people into the room, and give people permission to try things that might not work. If you do not manage anyone, you can still do the first seven steps alone and show up with a pile of ideas.

Try the tools

Every tool here comes from a chapter of the book, runs in your browser and needs no account.

• Ch3 Scavengers
  Business Idea Generator

  Roll an audience, a problem, a mechanism and a business model, and get a one-line pitch to react to. It is built on the Scavengers chapter of the book.

• Ch1 How to Play
  Creativity Test

  Two parts, about ten minutes: three timed rounds listing uses for everyday objects, then ten questions that point to one of six creative styles from the book. It is for fun and self-reflection, not a validated assessment.

• Ch3 Scavengers
  Product Idea Generator

  Roll an everyday object, a verb and a user, and get a one-line invention prompt. It is built on the Scavengers chapter of the book.

• Ch2 Idea Spaghetti / Ch10 Connected
  Random Idea Generator

  Roll two unrelated things, or an object and a constraint, and work out what it could be. Built on the Connected and Idea Spaghetti chapters of the book.

The checklist

Print this, or copy it into your notes.

• I played with something silly for five minutes today.
• When I got stuck, I stepped away and did something else.
• I made a long list of ideas before I judged any of them.
• I wrote a bug list of things that annoy me.
• I listed the assumptions behind my problem and tested them.
• I asked someone from outside my field what they would do.
• I forced a connection between my problem and something unrelated.
• I gave each idea a short label and looked again a week later.
• I told someone about my best idea.

Questions

Can anyone learn to be more creative? The book thinks so. It quotes Evan Williams saying people can learn how to be creative, but that most people unlearn it. The habits above are ways to relearn.

How long does it take? The exercises take five to fifteen minutes each. The book makes no promise about how long it takes to change a habit, and we will not invent one.

Does exercise really help? The book cites research that aerobic exercise, music and video games affect mood and, through mood, creative performance. It describes taking a break as worthwhile, not as slacking.

Is a group better than working alone? For making ideas, the book says working alone can be more productive than a group brainstorm. For narrowing the pile down, a group is useful.

Where does this come from? From the book: The Creativity Playbook, the revised edition of The Business Playground, by Dave Stewart and Mark Simmons.