creative in life

Fear is boring, and other tips for living a creative life

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Elizabeth Gilbert shares 11 ways to think smartly about creativity.

Creativity is a tricky word. Consultants peddle it, brands promise it, we all strive for it, often without really knowing quite what “it” really is. Put simply, there’s a lot of snake oil around creativity. But now here’s author Elizabeth Gilbert (TED Talk, Your elusive creative genius ) to cut through the guff with her distinctly refreshing take on the topic. For her, we’re all creative souls already, we just need to figure out how to harness inspiration and unleash the creative spirit within. Here, she shares her best pieces of advice for living a meaningfully creative life.

1. If you’re alive, you’re a creative person.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.” It’s like somebody handed that person that placard to wear when they were nine, and they’ve been wearing it around their neck ever since. But rather than challenging them on that, because then they’ll dig in their heels, I ask them to take the word “creative” out of the sentence and replace it with the word “curious,” just to see how ridiculous it sounds. If you can just release yourself from the anxiety and burden that might be associated with the word “creativity,” because you’ve fallen for the myth that it only belongs to the special, the tormented and the professional, and you insert the word “curious,” you’ll see, in fact, that you are an enormously creative person, because all creativity begins with curiosity. And once you tap into your curiosity and allow yourself permission to follow it wherever it takes you, you will find very quickly that you are living a much more creative life than you were last year.

2. You’re not a genius, you have a genius.

The magical thinking that I use to engage with creativity is this idea that inspiration does not come from me, it comes to me. And the reason I choose to believe that is because one, that’s what it feels like, and two, that’s how pretty much every human being before the Age of Enlightenment described inspiration. Even really rational, scientific people will say, “And then this idea came to me.” They’ll use that language, even though if you were to push them on it they would then deny it and would tell you what part of their cerebral cortex it actually came from. In other words, they would disenchant it, and they would make it really boring rather than kind of Hogwarts-y, and I prefer to keep it Hogwarts-y because I feel like the only realm in our lives where it’s safe and actually beneficial to have magical thinking is in the realm of creativity.

3. Make something, do something, do anything .

If you have a creative mind, it’s a little bit like owning a border collie. You have to give it something to do or it will find something to do, and you will not like the thing it finds to do. So if you go to work and you leave your border collie unattended and unexercised in your apartment, you’re going to come home and find out that that border collie gave itself a job, and the job that it gave itself was probably to empty all of the stuffing out of your couch or to take every single piece of toilet paper off the roll, because it needs a job. A creative mind is exactly the same. My experience with having a creative mind is that if I don’t give it a task, a ball to chase, a stick to run after, some ducks to herd, I don’t know, something , it will turn on itself. It’s really important for my mental health that I keep this dog running. So give your dog a job, and don’t worry about whether the outcome is magnificent or eternal, whether it changes people’s lives, whether it changes the world, whether it changes you, whether it’s original, whether it’s groundbreaking, whether it’s marketable. Just give the dog a job, and you’ll have a much happier life, regardless of how it turns out.

4. Stop complaining and get to work.

You will never hear more complaints than from people who live in creative fields. They are the most whingy, bitchy children that you’re ever going to meet. And the sense of entitlement and anguish that comes out of those people’s mouths makes me insane. You get to try to spend your life engaging with the absolute highest use of the human mind, and all you want to do is bitch about it? Shut up! No one made you do this. To act as though you’re burdened by your gifts, and burdened by your talent and exhausted by your creative endeavors, as though you were committed to it by an evil dictator rather than having chosen it with your free will is also ridiculous. And finally, and worst of all, you’re scaring inspiration away. Inspiration, like all of us, wants to be loved and appreciated, and if it hears you talking about how much it’s ruining your life, it will take its business elsewhere. So whenever I hear creative people complaining about how it’s a battlefield, and how they’re bleeding over their work, and how awful it is, I always want to whisper to inspiration and be like, “Hey, if you’re sick of her, just come over to me.”

5. Frustration is not an interruption of the process, frustration is the process.

I have watched so many talented, creative, and inventive people rage against their work, or even worse, stop doing their work because of the frustration that they encountered along the path of whatever it was they were trying to create. And they speak of this frustration as though it is this obstacle from outer space that is ruining everything. All they wanted to do is be creative, and here comes frustration again, just taking all the fun out of it, making it impossible to do this work, and destroying the entire game. And my feeling is, “You guys, you’re mistaking the whole process, because the thing that you’re in love with, and that you’ve gotten infatuated with, is that moment in your creative process when everything is working — all the cylinders are firing at full speed, and the inspiration is flowing, and it feels really easy, and it’s fun, and it’s delightful.” And that’s the aberration. That moment of smooth, easy grace where everything is going great — that is not the normal. That is the miracle that happens every once in a while if you’re very lucky. The frustration, the hard part, the obstacle, the insecurities, the difficulty, the “I don’t know what to do with this thing now,” that’s the creative process. And if you want to do it without encountering frustration and difficulty, then you’re not made for that line of work.

6. Let go of your fantasy of perfection.

Perfection is the death of all good things, perfection is the death of pleasure, it’s the death of productivity, it’s the death of efficiency, it’s the death of joy. Perfection is just a bludgeon that goes around murdering everything good. Somebody once said I was disingenuous for saying this, because surely I try to make my work as good as it can be. And that’s absolutely true — but there’s a really big difference between “as good as it can be” and perfection.

7. You can’t get rid of fear, but do remember that fear is boring.

This is my fundamental opposition to the mythological dream of fearlessness, and the frustration I feel whenever fearlessness is held up as a virtue. I just feel like that it’s the wrong battle. Because for one thing, you don’t want to get rid of your fear; you need it to keep you alive. We’re all here because we had fear that preserved us. So there’s a little bit of a lack of appreciation for fear when we say that we want to be fearless. But then, fear is the oldest, deepest and least subtle part of our emotional life, and so therefore it’s boring. It’s dull. It doesn’t have any nuance. So have a little conversation with your fear when it starts to get riled up when you’re trying to do something creative. Let it know, “I’m just trying to write a poem, no one’s going to die.” But don’t try to go to war against it, that’s such a waste of energy. Just converse with it and then move on.

8. If something is authentic enough, it will feel original.

I am no fan of the aspiration to do original work. First of all, that creates an enormous amount of anxiety, and secondly, it is an impossible aspiration, because there’s no such thing as original work. If you show me a piece of artwork that everybody heralds as being totally original, I will bring in ten academics and critics who will look at that work and tell you from where that person drew their inspiration, who they had been reading, what painter they had seen … I’m much more interested in the chain of influence than I am in the narcissism of originality. The only way that you can create authentic work is to, with great humility and great faith and great curiosity, follow your own inquisitiveness, wherever it takes you, and trust that whatever comes out of you will feel original. That while other people may have done the same thing, you didn’t do it yet, and as soon as you do it and put your mark on it, it will, by its own right, start to feel original, as long as it has that authentic heart.

9. If you’re in the arts, you don’t need graduate school.

Actually, let me rephrase that: If you’re in the arts, you don’t need debt. In fact, it’s the last goddamn thing you need. So I don’t care how prestigious the academy is, I don’t care how magnificent the professors are, I don’t care what they’re promising they are going to give you; if they’re giving you debt, they are not helping you. If you have an extra $100,000 sitting around that you have nothing to do with, and you want to go to that school, I guarantee you you’ll get wonderful things out of the experience, because there are fantastic experiences to be had there. If they gave you a full ride, and the school allows you to go there for free, again, go. Enjoy it, consider yourself lucky. But if they said to you, “We are going to bestow upon you this tremendous gift of the treasure of what our premier faculty here has to offer, but first you’re going to have to go to a bank and take out $150,000 in loans to become a poet,” then I’m going to lay my body down in front of that bank door before I let you do that. I cannot strongly enough beg you not to do that. So it’s not that I am against graduate school, it’s that I am against crippling debt for people who want to live creative lives.

10. Creative fields make for crap careers.

People often say they want to go into a creative career, and then they try to do that, and they end up in a place where the work that they are doing is not quite creative enough to really stimulate their soul, and it’s not quite career enough to keep them financially stable. In other words, they kind of sacrifice both. My feeling is, stop trying to marry these two things, and separate them out. Choose your creative vocation, try to find the thing that brings your soul to animated life when you do it and do that thing on your own. Do that thing by any means necessary, turn yourself into it completely, and then find another way to pay the gas bill. When I was an up-and-coming writer, I decided very early on that I would be my own patron, my own studio wife, my own sugar daddy and that I would never demand that my writing provide for me in any way other than the only way that I know it always will, which is to please me and delight me and make me feel like I’m more than just a bystander and a consumer in the world.

11. Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living.

Whenever you’re told to “follow your passion,” it can be very intimidating, and it can be very confusing, because sometimes passion isn’t very clear, sometimes passions burn hot and then burn out, sometimes your passion changes, sometimes on a very sad Tuesday morning when you didn’t sleep well, the idea of passion just feels so out of reach that you can’t even imagine ever accessing it. And yet curiosity is this faithful, steadfast, friendly and accessible energy that is never far out of reach. There’s never a day where you couldn’t dredge up some tiny little fragment of interest in something in the world, no matter how modest it may seem, no matter how humble, no matter how much it might seem to be unconnected to anything else that you’re doing, no matter how random. Passion demands full commitment out of you. You’ve got to get divorced, and shave your head, and change your name, and move to Nepal and start an orphanage. And maybe you don’t need to do that this week. But curiosity doesn’t take anything from you. Curiosity just gives, and all it gives you are clues, just a beautiful thread, a tiny little clue from the scavenger hunt that you’re unique here in life.

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert is out now.

Featured photo by Alex Brewer .

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Fostering Creativity: 12 Strategies to Boost Creative Skills

It has also been called “ the skill of the future” (Powers, 2018).

This is partly because creativity helps individuals adapt to uncertainty and solve problems as they arise. Research has also suggested that creativity – as a component of the personality factor “ openness to experience” – is a better predictor of an extended lifespan than intelligence or overall openness to experience (Turiano, Spiro, & Mroczek, 2012).

For our own good then, it would appear creativity is worth cultivating. But can it be cultivated? If so, how? And what is creativity?

In the following article, we explore what creativity is and how personal creativity can be fostered. We discuss creativity in the classroom and workplace. We touch on creativity in art and music. We also note the intriguing connection between nighttime and creativity.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Strengths Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients realize your unique potential and create a life that feels energized and authentic.

This Article Contains:

What is creativity, 6 ways (+1) to be more creative, fostering creativity in the classroom: 3 tips, 3 steps for a more creative workplace, becoming more creative in art and music: solitude and collaboration, the link between night and creativity, positivepsychology.com’s resources, a take-home message.

Creativity can be defined as the ability to bring something original and valuable into the world.

Creativity can occur in almost any field. It happens in art and music, of course. It can also happen in mathematics, engineering, science, business, education. Anywhere there are problems to be solved or the mind seeks expression, creativity can be found.

Is creativity a trait that a privileged few are born with?

Not at all. In fact, research on creativity shows it can be fostered in anyone (Neumann, 2007).

Let’s take a look then at how creativity can be encouraged in any person.

1. Daily walking

Walking is the evolutionary basis for many human abilities. It is also known to foster creativity. As O’Mara (2019) writes, our ability to walk upright on our own two feet (bipedalism) has freed our hands and minds to create in ways no other animal can.

O’Mara (2019) holds that minds in motion are more creative. In one example, he relates that the Irish mathematician Sir William Hamilton had struggled for years with how to perform specific calculations in three-dimensional geometry.

Then one day in 1843, while walking beside the Royal Canal in Dublin, Hamilton made an intellectual breakthrough. He realized how quadrupled numbers or “quaternions” could be used to calculate not only in three but four dimensions (the fourth dimension being time). He quickly carved the formula for quaternions on a stone in the nearby Broom Bridge.

Since 1990, mathematicians from around the world have gathered for a commemorative “Hamilton Walk,” from his home in Dublin to the bridge where he carved his breakthrough formula.

Who knows what further mathematical breakthroughs might occur on this commemorative walk, sparked by minds in motion?

At Stanford University, Oppezzo and Schwartz (2014) compared individuals’ creativity while sitting to that when walking (including walking inside versus outside). Subjects were asked to perform various tasks requiring creativity while walking indoors on a treadmill, walking outdoors, sitting indoors, or sitting in a wheelchair outdoors as it was being pushed.

In one task, subjects were given three objects and asked to think of as many different uses as they could for each object. Overall, creative output was found to improve by about 60% when walking (either indoors or out), versus sitting. So, if you’re looking to boost your creativity, try going for a short walk – or a long one.

2. Set task limits

This idea is borrowed from an entrepreneur who called it “ embracing constraints” (Tank, 2019). This might seem counterintuitive at first. Doesn’t being creative imply being more expansive, letting one’s mind run free? Actually, setting strict limits can also foster creativity.

Tank (2019) cites the example of Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), whose editor bet him he could not write a children’s book using only 50 different words. Geisel rose to the challenge, producing under this unusual constraint one of his bestselling and most memorable books: Green Eggs and Ham (Seuss, 1960).

So, consider setting some unusual limits for yourself. Whatever the activity, you might find that setting limits produces interesting and creative results.

Relaxation is known to enhance creativity. There are various proven ways to put oneself in a relaxed state. These include progressive muscle relaxation, diaphragmatic breathing, walking meditation, and yoga postures.

For example, progressive muscle relaxation has been associated with reductions in heart rate, anxiety, and perceived stress. In addition, relaxed states have been shown to foster thought processes important for creativity. For example, diaphragmatic breathing has been associated with improved attention, a key component in creative problem solving (Ma et al., 2017).

Furthermore, stress – the opposite of relaxation – is known to kill nerve cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain where new memories are formed. These new memories help us make connections with other things, fueling the creative process. Stress management is, therefore, imperative.

So, take a break. Create a relaxed state for yourself by breathing deeply, stretching, going for a walk, whatever works for you. Once relaxed, you might find a creative answer to a problem that has been eluding you.

4. Collaborate

There is a famous image of the solitary genius, working alone in a lab or searching for a melody on a lone piano. But is the ‘solitary genius’ a myth? In a paper on collaboration and creativity, Uzzi and Spiro (2005, p. 447) note how collaboration can boost creative production: “ creativity is not only, as myth tells, the brash work of loners, but also the consequence of a social system of actors that amplify or stifle one another’s creativity. ”

Uzzi and Spiro (2005) argue that many of history’s great creators – such as Beethoven, Marie Curie, the Beatles, and Maya Angelou – were involved in creative networks in which members critiqued, encouraged and collaborated on each other’s projects.

So, if you tend to work alone and find yourself stuck on a project, consider seeking collaboration, for example, by discussing your project with another person in your field. You might find a new way forward on your project, with a little help from your friends.

5. Sleep on it

Artists, scientists, and other creative individuals have often described how sleep, and especially dreaming, helped them create new solutions to persistent problems.

For example, the psychobiologist Otto Loewi had a recurring dream that contained the design of an experiment. This experiment would later prove that brain cells communicate via chemicals or “neurotransmitters.” For this discovery, Loewi would share the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1936 (McCoy & Tan, 2014).

More recently, various experiments have shown how sleep promotes creative problem solving. One set of experiments suggested that in REM (dream phase) sleep, the brain replays memories to extract essential patterns or lessons from them.

In non-REM (deep or dreamless) sleep, the brain then makes connections between these patterns or lessons and other things we already know (Lewis, Knoblich, & Poe, 2018). We can thereby arrive at new solutions to problems that have preoccupied us during waking hours; as when, for example, James Watson dreamed of two intertwined serpents, leading to the discovery of DNA as a double helix (Conradt, 2012).

So, if your mind is stuck on a problem, try sleeping on it. You might wake up with your solution.

6. Genius hour

This tip for fostering creativity comes from a teacher who uses it in his classroom (Provenzano, 2015).

He calls it “genius hour,” but the period spent could be more or less than 60 minutes. The idea is to start a side project, something you are passionate about. The inspiration, ideas, and skills you develop in this labor of love might well translate to other, more routine projects, moving those forward in positive ways.

+1. Your creative tip

It seems appropriate that an article on fostering creativity would encourage you, the reader, to come up with at least one of your own tips in this regard. We invite you to think of something that has helped you foster creativity in yourself or others. Feel free to share any such suggestions in response to this article.

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Allowing kids to develop their creativity from a young age will give them skills for a lifetime.

1. Value creativity

In the classroom, show your students that you value creativity. This can be done in many ways.

Encourage trial and error on tasks. Thomas Edison famously said, of different trials to solve a given problem, “ I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work ” (Daum, 2016).

Sometimes, by finding what won’t work, you are led to what will, as when Edison tried hundreds of materials as microphone transmitters before successfully narrowing the choice to a small carbon disc.

2. Give it time

Valuing creativity also means giving it time in the classroom. Sarah Diaz, a kindergarten teacher in Spain, asserts that adequate time is crucial for creativity, especially for young children (Tornio, 2017). Consider giving students an entire class period each week to work freely on projects and materials they have chosen.

3. Write it down

Lauren Cassini Davis, a second-grade teacher, describes the effect on her classroom of handing out “Da Vinci” notebooks to all students (Davis, 2018). These are empty notebooks in which students are encouraged to write any questions, ideas, or expressions that occur to them, at any time during the day, on any topic, as Leonardo Da Vinci did throughout his long and creative life.

Ms. Davis relates how, within just one week, she was astounded by everything that the students had written in their notebooks. The notebooks were full of questions such as ‘How does your brain work?’ ‘Why do we have music?’ and ‘Why am I not a tiger?’ There were also poems, drawings of inventions, and comments about life in the classroom. These notebooks became a spur to all kinds of creative learning projects.

1. Break boundaries

In 2014, Steve Jobs and Apple unveiled a new corporate headquarters in Cupertino, CA.

According to Johnny Ives, Apple’s chief designer, this headquarters was meant to break down boundaries between offices and occupations.

The new Apple headquarters maximized common pathways and workspaces, allowing people to “ connect and collaborate and walk and talk” (Levy, 2017). It seems to have worked. In 2018, Fast Company recognized Apple as (still) the most innovative company in the world (Safian, 2018).

Fostering creativity takes dedicated time. We noted this above, concerning creativity in the classroom. It also applies to the workplace.

Google, for example, was known for its “20%” program. This program gave software developers and other employees permission to work 20% of their paid time on projects of their choosing. While Google eventually took back this 20% time, it was credited with spawning some of the company’s best products including Google News, Gmail, and AdSense.

Other companies have adopted various approaches to giving creative time in the workplace, with the consensus being that creativity is a business asset, and employees should be given time to explore and develop their new ideas (Subramanian, 2013).

3. Promote trial and error

According to business consultant Deborah Goldstein, creativity in business requires experimentation, and even failure, to be supported. She asserts that “ Experiments never fail. Even when the attempt fails, with the right mindset, teams learn priceless lessons to succeed in the future ” (Forbes Coaches Council, 2017).

In particular art forms, such as painting, work is often solitary. Artists need time and solitude to focus on the act of painting. Yet such solitude can be difficult to bear if not broken by social contact.

Jason Horejs (2020) writes of breaking the isolation that can occur in art. He cites the example of a female painter living in a small town in Montana. This artist speaks of how joining an artists’ group in her area helped her socially and artistically.

The group meets every Saturday to paint together. They regularly hold art shows with constructive critiques of each other’s work. They also have a group website with links to individual artists’ web pages.

Such collective pursuits have helped this artist remain inspired and creative, even when alone in her studio. In the end, it might be some mixture of solitude and collaboration that keeps us creative in art. What of music?

In his autobiography Testimony (2016), Robbie Robertson, guitarist and principal songwriter for The Band , describes how his band was used to creating songs.

Robertson often drafted songs on his own. He sketched “The Weight,” a classic The Band song, by himself in one night. Afterward, he would bring these song ideas to the group.

They worked in close company to flesh the songs out, in the basement of a large pink house in upstate New York. Their group creativity thrived on being able to hear each other’s musical ideas, moment to moment. It was also important for them to see each other’s musical cues.

Robertson then relates how during their first recording session for Capitol Records, band members were separated from each other in the studio. Partitions had been put up to better record the distinct sound of each instrument. However, the band members soon found that without being able to see or hear each other as usual, they lacked the organic sound that had so impressed Bob Dylan and other musicians.

At Robertson’s insistence, the studio partitions were removed. The resultant recordings went on to become the highly creative and acclaimed album Music from Big Pink . The Band had thus found the type of working and studio environment that facilitated creativity for them.

And Robertson had found the interplay between solitude and collaboration that worked best for The Band ’s material. Again, it might be a unique balance of solitude and collaboration that helps us be most creative in art and music.

As nocturnal (versus diurnal or daytime) types, we find the quiet of night refreshing and open with possibilities.

Some well-known “night owls” more inclined to working and innovating after dark include individuals as diverse as Winston Churchill, Christina Aguilera, Bob Dylan, Fran Leibowitz, and Barack Obama (Curtin, 2018).

Giampietro and Cavallera (2007) explored creativity in people inclining toward a nocturnal work schedule. They found nocturnal types scored more highly than diurnals on a task (Torrance Test of Creative Thinking) measuring creativity on dimensions of originality, fluidity, and flexibility of responses.

But take heart, diurnal types.

Plenty of diurnal individuals swear by such pro-daytime habits as rising early and are very creative in their own right. Apple CEO Tim Cook rises at 3:45 a.m., while Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and General Stanley McCrystal are also early risers, who swear this starts their day off right.

In the end, what counts most is finding the schedule – nocturnal, diurnal, or somewhere in between – that best suits your personality, circumstances, and creativity.

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The following PositivePsychology.com worksheets might also prove helpful in fostering creativity.

• Visualize Success . This resilience-building exercise invites individuals to engage their creative thinking to visualize successful performance.
• Career Visualization . This exercise is similar to the previous visualization, and is designed to help individuals imagine in a detailed way how it would look, feel, and be to have the career they would like.
• Social Problem Solving . This exercise was developed to help individuals or groups apply brainstorming techniques when solving problems. Clients generate as many solutions as they can to a problem, emphasizing quantity over quality, then assess each possible solution in terms of effort required
• Designing Affirmations Worksheet . This exercise was developed to help individuals creating self-affirmations that can help them help them build self-esteem.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others develop their strengths, this collection contains 17 strength-finding tools for practitioners. Use them to help others better understand and harness their strengths in life-enhancing ways.

Creativity – the ability to bring something original and valuable into the world – is not reserved for a privileged few artists or intellectuals. We all have the potential to be creative. This potential can be cultivated by finding the specific means for enhancing creativity in a given individual or group.

Specific means for an individual might include going for a walk or engaging in relaxation exercises that enhance thinking and creativity.

Means for cultivating creativity in groups might include providing students or employees with Da Vinci-style notebooks for writing down ideas as they occur, designing workspaces that invite collaboration, or setting aside “genius time” for your students’ or employees’ creative pursuits.

In the end, we need to be adaptive and innovative in finding the means by which creativity is enhanced for a particular person, group, or situation.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Strengths Exercises for free .

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• Giampietro, M., & Cavallera, G. M. (2007). Morning and evening types and creative thinking. Personality and Individual Differences. 42 (3), 453–463.
• Horejs, J. (2020, April 19). Working alone: Breaking the isolation that can surround the pursuit of art. red dot blog . Retrieved from https://reddotblog.com/working-alone-breaking-the-isolation-that-can-surround-the-pursuit-of-art-19-2/
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I’ve found in my own creative career, that any activity that clears the mind of the daily channel fodder, a lot of it worry based, is essential to allow the juice to flow. An example being that if a life stress hits hard, creativity is impossible. Another base philosophy is maintaining the child’s ability to be curious, unattached/open and make it fun always. Through the eyes of a child. I’ve told many people I see they are creative and they always say “I cannot draw to save my life!” So I think what you have laid out is very useful as the first things to know. It takes away this mystery of being born creative. Well done. By the way I’m a night time creator, originally driven by a total fear of ending up in a factory after school, (fact) braved my way into Art College, committed to working my ass off and realizing that to be creative was mostly desire and great teachers taught you all the formulas for improving a scant talent as presentable work. I now “go” with the first idea that comes into my view/head, no matter what, then work it. Always make at least four options. The more you make the better you get, because your brain makes brand new connections every time you stretch a little. You grow confident re enforced by a passion that is FUN. I go daydream/meditate mode for an hour every night and it works wonders for me personally. I also add chats to myself or others, amongst that mode. For me it’s like an natural method of doing a factory mind reset!

Vassudeva (post on 27 November, 2020),

Thank you for your comment!

I agree that walking is a great technique for fostering creativity. I’m glad you’ve been inspired to walk daily.

It also occurs to me that such walks can be paired with journaling, in a “walk journal” that records any new ideas that came while walking. Probably best to write any ideas down immediately after the walk, so they don’t slip away.

Jeff Gaines

My Major Misconception is now Rectified!! Today I realized Creativity Can be Fostered in anyone at any age..Thanks for the Info. I am now starting to walk daily to improve my Creative Thinking. Various dimensions in which we can foster creativity is well explained. Will be trying-out in my work group.

Thank you for the feedback! I agree we are designed for creativity, even if trends in a given society work to keep us doing rote or mechanical tasks, toward someone’s else’s ends. But the creative potential is there, and I do believe can be cultivated.

loved the article…its a common misconception that creativity is the blessing only a few enjoy, I believe humans have been fundamentally designed for creativity….we just have very different expressions. Infact i have found trapped creative energy as one of the issues while working with those experiencing a low emotional state,

This such reach article with ample ideas for adults and school age as well … It just make you think the opportunities on embarking on creativity journey

Thank you for the comment. I’m glad you found the article thought-provoking! Sincerely, Jeff Gaines

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Ten Habits of Highly Creative People

What exactly is creativity? So many of us assume that creativity is something we had as a child but we lost, or something allocated to rarified individuals that we can only admire from afar.

But science has shown that, in many ways, we are all wired to create. The key is recognizing that creativity is multifaceted—on the level of the brain, personality, and the creative process—and can be displayed in many different ways, from the deeply personal experience of uncovering a new idea or experience to expressing ourselves through words, photos, fashion, and other everyday creations, to the work of renowned artists that transcends the ages.

Neuroscientists who study creativity have found that creativity does not involve a single brain region or even a single side of the brain, as the “right brain” myth of creativity suggests; instead, it draws on the whole brain. This complex process consists of many interacting cognitive systems (both conscious and unconscious) and emotions, with different brain regions recruited to handle each task and to work together as a team to get the job done.

The discovery of the “default network” of the brain—the part of the brain at work when we are not purposefully engaged in other tasks—is one of the most important recent discoveries in neuroscience. The default network enables us to construct personal meaning from our experiences, imagine other perspectives and scenarios, comprehend stories, and reflect on mental and emotional states—both our own and those of others.  It should come as no surprise then that the activity of this network—as we like to call it, the “imagination network”—also informs our most creative ideas.

The “executive attention” network of the brain is also crucial to creativity, however. Executive control processes support creative thinking by helping us deliberately plan future actions, remember to use various creative tactics, keep track of which strategies we’ve already tried, and reject the most obvious ideas. They also help us focus our imagination, blocking out external distractions and allowing us to tune into our inner experiences.

When we generate new ideas, these networks—along with the salience network, which is responsible for motivation—engage in a complex dance. Researchers have observed this cognitive tango in action through the brain scans of people engaged in their personal creative processes. Initially, their brain states resemble a state of flow or complete absorption in the task. The imagination and salience networks are highly active, while the more focused executive domain is relatively quiet. However, as creative people further hone and refine their work, the executive attention network becomes increasingly more active.

Creative people are particularly good at exercising flexibility in activating and deactivating these brain networks that in most people tend to be at odds with each other. In doing so, they’re able to juggle seemingly contradictory modes of thought—cognitive and emotional, deliberate and spontaneous. Even on a neurological level, creativity is messy.

So, what can we do to augment this cognitive flexibility? In our book, Wired to Create , we explore how to develop creativity as a habit, a way of life, and a style of engaging with the world. We present many paradoxes—mindfulness and mind wandering, openness and sensitivity, solitude and collaboration, play and seriousness, and intuition and reason—that contribute to the creative process. We encourage people to embrace their paradoxes and complexities and open up to a deeper level of self-understanding and self-expression. It is precisely this ability to hold the self in all of its dimensional beauty that is the very core of creative achievement and creative fulfillment.

Here are the some of the habits of mind we recommend to foster more creativity in your life.

1. Imaginative play

Observing children in imaginative play reveals a wellspring of natural-born creativity. When engaged in pretend play, children take on multiple perspectives and playfully manipulate emotions and ideas.

As adults, cultivating a childlike sense of play can revolutionize the way we work.

Research shows that hybrid forms of work and play may actually provide the most optimal context for learning and creativity, for both children and adults, and that play and intrinsic joy are intimately connected, creating a synergy that naturally leads to greater inspiration, effort, and creative growth.

Passion often stems from an experience or a relationship that moved us somehow and can lead to inspiration. It is often the emotional fuel that starts one down a creative path, but it’s only a start. People who fulfill their creative dreams over the long haul balance the excitement about the future with realistic strategies for getting closer to their goals; inspiration with hard work; and dreaming with doing.

When someone advises you to “Follow your passion,” use caution: aside from being one of the most common clichés out there, it’s not very helpful advice. You must look for passion that is in harmony with your authentic self and is compatible with your other activities. Passion to prove yourself to others will probably not result in creativity, as it relies on your avoiding challenges that would otherwise lead to growth. So, while you should be open to what inspires you, don’t follow passion blindly. Make sure it truly resonates with you and your skills.

3. Daydreaming

Creative people know, despite what their parents and teachers might have told them, that daydreaming is anything but a waste of time. A review of the latest science of daydreaming has shown that mind wandering offers very personal rewards, including creative incubation, self-awareness, future planning, reflection on the meaning of one’s experiences, and even compassion.

Idle though it may seem, the act of mind wandering is often anything but mindless; it can lead to improvements in creative thinking. So, the next time you’re working hard on a creative project or work assignment that requires intense focus and creative chops, try taking a five-minute daydreaming break every hour. Try engaging in a simple activity that will allow your mind to wander, like walking, doodling, or cleaning, and see how it affects your ideas and thinking.

4. Solitude

The metaphorical “room of one’s own” is a basic need for many creative people. Now, science has reinforced what the work habits of countless artists have demonstrated: Time for solitary reflection truly feeds the creative mind.

Neuroscientists have discovered that solitary, inwardly focused reflection employs a different brain network than outwardly focused attention. When our mental focus is directed towards the outside world, the executive attention network is activated, while the imagination network is typically suppressed. This is why our best ideas don’t tend to arise when our attention is fully engaged on the outside world.

It’s important to make time for solitude, to give yourself space to reflect, make new connections, and find meaning. Unfortunately, solitude is widely undervalued in society, leading many people to shy away from alone time. We tend to view time spent alone as time wasted or as an indication of an antisocial or melancholy personality. But the ability to enjoy and make productive use of our own company can trigger creativity by helping us tap into our thoughts and our own inner worlds. So, don’t avoid it…embrace it!

5. Intuition

Intuition arises from unconscious, or spontaneous, information-processing systems, and it plays an important role in how we think, reason, create, and behave socially. Over the past thirty years, cognitive scientists have made huge strides in demystifying the power of the unconscious mind, leading to the recognition of a dual-process theory of human cognition—or the “fast and slow brain” theory. Intuition is part of the fast brain system.

The fast brain is structurally more sophisticated than the slow brain. It helps us assimilate new information into our existing knowledge structures, and aids us in complex pattern recognition and in making unconventional connections that lead to more original ideas and solutions. The fast brain plays the largest role when generating creative ideas, while the more deliberate slow brain play a larger role when exploring those ideas and playing around with them, to determine their uses and applications. Both the fast brain and slow brain have a role to play.

6. Openness to experience

Openness to experience—the drive for cognitive exploration of one’s inner and outer worlds—is the single strongest and most consistent personality trait that predicts creative achievement. Openness can be intellectual, characterized by a searching for truth and the drive to engage with ideas; aesthetic, characterized by the drive to explore fantasy and art and experience emotional absorption in beauty; or affective, characterized by exploring the depths of human emotion.

Research has found that the desire to learn and discover seems to have significantly more bearing on the quality of creative work than intellect alone. So, if you want to boost your creativity, try out a new creative outlet or a totally different medium of expression, or take a new route home from work, or seek out a new group of people with different interests or values that you might learn from. Openness to new experiences can help increase your integrative complexity—the capacity to recognize new patterns and find links among seemingly unrelated pieces of information.

7. Mindfulness

While the capacity to observe the present moment without distraction or judgment is a vital skill for anyone who seeks joy and fulfillment in life, it’s particularly important for creative thinkers.

A large body of research has associated mindfulness —both as a practice and as a personality trait—with many cognitive and psychological benefits like improved task concentration and sustained attention, empathy and compassion, introspection, self-regulation, enhanced memory and improved learning, and positive affect and emotional wellbeing. Many of these are central to creativity.

However, for optimum cognitive flexibility and creativity, it’s best to achieve a balance of mindfulness and mind wandering. Some forms of mindfulness may actually work against creativity—specifically, those that encourage one to let go of thinking rather than accepting thoughts in a more open manner. Interestingly, open-monitoring meditation, which emphasizes tuning into one’s subjective experience, has been found to increase both the activation and the functional connectivity of the imagination network. So, try practicing an open-monitoring or nondirective form of meditation, and allow for constructive mind-wandering while also boosting attention.

8. Sensitivity

If we think of creativity as “connecting the dots” in some way, then sensitive people—those who have a heightened sensitivity to their surroundings and also an intensified experience of sensory input, like for sound, lighting, and scent—experience a world in which there are both more dots and more opportunities for connection.

Sensitivity can be both a blessing and a curse—leading to a greater intensity of experience as well as emotional overwhelm. Journalist Andrea Bartz wrote in Psychology Today that “those who learn to dial down the relentless swooping and cresting of emotion that is the almost invariable accompaniment to extreme sensitivity are able to transform raw perception into keen perceptiveness.”

So, rather than trying to harden yourself, you may want to harness your sensitivity into artistic expression.

9. Turning adversity to advantage

Experiences of loss, struggle, suffering, and defeat can be powerful catalysts for personal growth, creativity, and deep transformation. It is often through suffering that we learn compassion, from loss that we learn understanding, and from overcoming struggles that we come to discover our own strength and beauty.

Adverse events can force us to reexamine our beliefs and life projects, and therein lie their power and creative potential. After the experience of adversity, the mind is actively dismantling old belief systems that no longer hold up and creating new structures of meaning and identity. To make meaning of difficult experiences, try expressive writing , which research has found can lessen symptoms of post-traumatic stress and depression, while improving some cognitive functions, like working memory.

Interestingly, research has also found that extreme positive events—in particular, those that evoke feelings of awe, wonder, inspiration, and connection to something greater than the self—can also encourage creativity. Positive emotions build a person’s psychological resources, broadening attention, inspiring new thoughts and behaviors, and stimulating creative thinking. So, if you’re looking for a creative boost, treat all of life’s meaningful moments—the good and the bad—as potential sources of inspiration and motivation.

10. Thinking differently

Creative people are united by their unwillingness to abide by conventional ways of thinking and doing things. In choosing to do things differently, they accept the possibility of uncertainty and failure—but it is precisely this risk that opens up the possibility of true innovation.

The secret to creative greatness appears to be doing things differently even when that means failing. Especially during idea-generation phases, trial-and-error is essential for innovation. Dean Keith Simonton, who studies creativity, found that the quality of creative ideas is a positive function of quantity: The more ideas creators generate, the greater chances they will produce an eventual masterpiece. Doing things differently means you will probably do things badly or wrong; so expect that and don’t let caution get in the way of creativity.

Will following all of these routes to creativity mean you will become a creative genius? Not necessarily. But, when the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. If we learn to embrace our own messy, creative selves, we give others permission to do the same. We help create a world that is more welcoming of the creative spirit, and we make it possible to find a greater connection with others and with ourselves in the process.

About the Authors

Scott barry kaufman.

Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., is scientific director of The Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He conducts research on the measurement and development of imagination, creativity, and play, and teaches the popular undergraduate course Introduction to Positive Psychology. Kaufman is author of Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined and co-author of the book Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (with Carolyn Gregoire).Follow on Twitter @sbkaufman .

Carolyn Gregoire

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Train Your Brain to Be More Creative

• Bas Korsten

How to get those ideas flowing.

Creativity isn’t inherent. You have to hone it. Here are a few ways to do that, based on neuroscience.

• Engage with nature: Looking at trees and leaves, instead of our electronic devices, reduces our anxiety, lowers our heart rates, soothes us, and allows our brains to make connections more easily.
• Meditate: Meditation clears our minds of jumbled thoughts, and gives our brains the space to observe and reflect, improving task concentration and enhancing our ability to make smart decisions.
• Get moving: Exercising releases endorphins – chemicals our body produces to relieve stress and pain. And when we are less stressed, our brains venture into more fruitful territory.
• Connect with different kinds of people: Diversity makes the brain work harder, by challenging stereotypes.

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

I don’t do ruts.

• Bas Korsten is the Global Chief Creative Officer at Wunderman Thompson.

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24 Hours in the Creative Life

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In our 2022 Culture issue, out April 24, T followed a group of artists — musicians, chefs, designers, writers and others — throughout the course of a day, exploring the intimate moments of their lives that contribute, in ways small and large, to their creative process.

Every creative person knows that inspiration is everywhere, and yet the question What inspires you? can be both dull and impossible to answer. Inspiration, the alchemy by which an idea makes it from the mind to the page (or canvas or potter’s wheel or dress form), is often inarticulable or somehow unsatisfying. What feels so clear can, once spoken, sound tinny or fragile or banal. It’s why, I often feel, artists find not only solace but hope in hearing about other artists’ processes instead — what do they do, these other people, to make art happen? How do they create? What might their struggles illuminate about our own?

This issue is dedicated to living a creative life, which is something that all of us, whether self-proclaimed artists or not, have available to us. We asked people across ages, genders, races and mediums to explain how they create and, as important, why they create. Over the last two years, many of us who were fortunate enough to have somewhere clean and safe to live concluded that one of the great pleasures of life is making things: be it bread, furniture or clothing. Pleasure is, naturally, one reason why, but there are others, too, some of them inexplicable.

The 34 people profiled in this issue are testament to not only the diversity of art but the diversity of artistic experience. Some I know personally — they are close friends (the architect Daniel Romualdez , the fashion designer Daniel Roseberry ), collaborators (the theater director Ivo van Hove ) or former colleagues (the playwright Mona Mansour ) — but I consider all of them teachers: They are proof that, many times, the best work is made while doing things that don’t look like work at all. Art is created in front of the easel, but it’s just as often made while gardening or waiting for the subway or sitting on a park bench. Art happens in the day’s liminal moments, the times when we’re able to forget, for a few minutes or hours, the self-consciousness of creation and let our minds drift.

Along with reminding readers that art demands a state of receptivity, we also wanted to ask artists for their advice: How does one live? How does one keep going? The answers, from 40 artists, are practical (“Pay your taxes”), inspirational (“You gain more respect for yourself … when you say no”) and contradictory (“I’ve always been very, very ambitious”; “I lacked ambition”).

One of the reasons their advice resonates so deeply with me is because, after my day at the magazine is done, I, too, try to make art. And because I’m the editor in chief of this publication, and because I’m a fiction writer, it’s my privilege to get to use this letter to offer some advice of my own: Keep your day job — it means you’ll never have to make creative concessions for money. Don’t internalize criticism, or praise — no one’s opinion about you or your art should matter more than your own. Engage with art outside of the genre you practice — it will remind you how many different ways there are to think, to solve, to be. Forget what you’ve been taught about good practices and habits — there is no single correct way to write, for instance; so much of becoming an artist is unlearning what you think being an artist is. If you can travel, then do so, preferably to someplace you’ve never been and where you know no one — a state of discomfort is a fertile place to be. And finally, you have to finish at some point: The people who get published aren’t necessarily the most brilliant writers — the people who get published are the ones who complete their work.

It all seems so simple, doesn’t it? And maybe it is. After all, art making is mysterious. It is also tedious. And somewhere between those two poles is where the artist lives: magic and drudgery, day after day, for all the lucky years of our lives. — HANYA YANAGIHARA

Behind the Scenes

Read more about how we made the issue., what does it really mean to make art, read the opening essay by ligaya mishan., letters to an artist.

The creative life is one defined by insecurity, doubt and uncertainty (as well as overconfidence, arrogance and delusion). We asked 40 poets, painters, photographers, filmmakers, actors, musicians and writers to share hard-earned wisdom for every stage of an artistic career.

Interviews by Nancy Coleman, Kate Guadagnino, Thessaly La Force, M. H. Miller and Mallika Rao

• Young Artist
• MidCareer Artist
• Late-career Artist

Marilyn Minter, 73, visual artist

Don’t do this unless you have no choice. There’re easier ways to make a living. All the artists I know really had nothing to fall back on. I can only speak for myself, but I was never going to be a lawyer or doctor or mathematician. If you don’t know if you’re going to be an artist or not, well, then you shouldn’t do it. It’s a waste of time. Once you make a commitment to being an artist, the universe makes room for you somehow. But you have to make a commitment. If you’re thinking about being a biologist or an artist and you’re good at biology and it’s really a tossup — be a biologist because it’ll be more rewarding for you. You should find what you love to do and get someone to pay you for it. That’s true with everything.

Don Mee Choi, 60, poet and translator

My advice might only be relevant to young first-generation immigrant artists. I came to the United States as a student from South Korea via Hong Kong. Despite my fluency in English, I struggled for a while to fully understand American English and many of its cultural, economic and racial references. As a result, I couldn’t read people, and people couldn’t read me. This created a huge barrier. I started to adjust to my life in the States after I got a job, which allowed me to work with local community activists and leaders — American Indigenous tribal members. I learned about U.S. history from their perspective, which also helped me to understand my own displacement and diasporic position. So my advice would be to connect with your local community or history and critically examine your own location or dislocation within the country. This will inform what, how and why you want to write.

Brontez Purnell, 39, writer and musician

Wear a condom. When I was in my early 20s in San Francisco, I hung out with this group of gay male friends — see, I never had a group of gay male friends until then. When you have time on your hands, you go full-throttle. We’d be at [the gay bar] the Eagle every Sunday, blacking out and waking up in motel rooms with different guys the next day. It was chaotic, and it was definitely a fun time. We believed our self-destruction was very sexy, but if we’d been a little gentler with ourselves, that would’ve been equally sexy. What’s that quote from Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”? “My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood.” Be kinder than you dare to people.

Ian Cheng, 38, visual artist

Become very specialized in what you do earlier rather than later. Maybe that means having a little bit of FOMO about the many possibilities of what you could be, or might want to be, but it helps as an artist to become very specific.

Bernadette Peters, 74, actor

I wish I’d appreciated myself earlier on. There is only one of you in the whole world, and you have to trust that. It’s important that you never try to copy or sound like anyone else. But you can admire their work — I’m always open to appreciating other people’s talent.

Jameel Mohammed, 27, fashion designer

Subvert the paradigm through as many filters and vantage points as possible. Refuse to accept premises that don’t result in your being regarded as an equal. At the core of Black creativity is the will to express yourself. Blackness is a series of sociological constraints, and so the fact that we persist in making work — that’s inspiring to me. Not simply because it’s a redemption arc but because it demonstrates a greater fallacy in the world. Someone in fashion might say, “The lace must be done in exactly this way, in exactly this mill, in exactly this town in old France.” No: That’s a very specific myth that had the power to become a globally accepted ideal. But that ideal doesn’t exist on the South Side of Chicago.

Uzo Aduba, 41, actor

My mother encouraged me my whole life. Everyone needs someone like that. If you can’t find that person, then you must be that for yourself. When my mom doesn’t pick up the phone and I’m terrified that I’m never going to work again, I have to dig down deep inside and tell myself that I can do it. So you need both. You need faith — and I don’t mean church but a belief in the thing that we can’t see. You also need a person who can stand in your corner, whom you can go to openly and leave whatever it is that needs to be left at their doorstep. They’ll help shoulder the hard times. Nobody goes through this life entirely alone.

Ryan O’Connell, 35, writer and actor

You can’t wait for permission. You just have to do it. It sounds really simple to say, but showing up every day and doing it is the most important thing. It’s like going to the gym but for your brain. Being a writer is so frustrating because you have days where you literally feel like you’re stroking out and brain-dead and you’re concerned . But then you have other days where you’re like, “I’m a genius, OK? Go off.” Sometimes, those two moments can exist within an hour of each other. You have to surrender to the process, which can be maddening.

I’m also going to use an ugly word: “ambition.” I’ve always been very, very ambitious, and we don’t talk about that in relation to our work because it makes it feel less chic. It makes it feel premeditated. Every profile I read of a successful person is like, “I was just walking around! I don’t know how I got there! It fell into my lap!” Actually, babe, I don’t think so. It’s very rare that someone gets plucked from obscurity without their consent and thrust into the spotlight. I wouldn’t feel embarrassed about wanting things, or wanting to be heard. You need a sprinkle of delusion. There was no road map for someone like me, a gay disabled person, to exist. There was no reference point. People are addicted to reference points, especially in Hollywood. They need proof of success. Otherwise, they’re fear-driven and spineless. I had to walk around Los Angeles with the confidence of [the actor and comedian] Rob Schneider in the ’90s to get what I wanted — do you know what I mean?

Joaquina Kalukango, 33, actor

Learn how to advocate for yourself. I figured this out relatively late in life. It would’ve saved me a lot of headache to realize this sooner, because I was naïve. You think, “Oh, hard work is enough. It will get you in any room.” That’s not true. There’re so many other factors that come into play. Make sure that you’re not subjecting yourself to environments that’ll be detrimental to your self-confidence or self-worth, because that can set you back years. Learn the language required to advocate for yourself, and don’t be afraid to do that.

I was one of the only Black girls in my class [at the Juilliard School]. It was extremely hard. I felt unseen. There were things that I couldn’t do. I had such difficulty figuring out how I could bring myself into the classics, for example. Am I colorless? My playing Hedda Gabler [the titular character of the 1891 play by Henrik Ibsen] is very different. No one was having those conversations, or even thinking to have those conversations, at that time. I’m also usually very vocal, but I was silent. I’d observe and listen. Some teachers would confuse this with judgment. It took me a long time after Juilliard to let that energy go and trust myself again.

Lena Dunham, 35, writer and filmmaker

You think you’ll always have the energy you have at 20 or 24 or even 28. But you won’t (no matter how much wellness-industry rigmarole you try, you really won’t), so commit to those physically ambitious, mentally taxing and time-sucking ideas now, while you can still pull an all-nighter and not be wrecked for the following week. Someday, you’ll care about a little something called quality of life, and you’ll mourn the fact that you didn’t run full speed at a proverbial (or literal) wall back when you had the bounceback of a fresh rubber band and not the sag of a vintage scrunchie.

Don’t be so cruel to yourself every moment you’re not working, because all of that living you’re doing will come in handy later. It won’t be the best time, or even the sexiest, but it’ll be the most heightened. You don’t even cry once a month in your 30s, much less once an hour. Can you believe?

Your first collaborator’s a bit like your first lover — you have trouble imagining anyone else will ever make you feel that way. But dozens of people will (“It’s the 21st century, we’re sex positive now, Dad !”). So don’t be callous or cruel, but remember that nobody else is the major ingredient to your creative formula. If you think you can’t make work without them, it means you should probably try. Any partner you’d want knows they’ll survive without you. Any partner you think you need means you should go it alone.

For this feature, T asked four visual artists to create original artwork that complemented their own experience and advice.

Louis Fratino, 28, visual artist

I made this piece while thinking about the studio as a space that mixes both the professional and personal — the two doors represent the membrane between the private and the public. So the dining table is also the worktable. The bay windows are from my parents’ house, so the space is kind of an amalgam of personal memory and fantasy. You have to be defensive about your studio practice. Keep it very safe. It’s the only place where you’re the one in charge. When I was at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, I studied with a professor named Jo Smail who had a mantra: “You really only embarrass yourself if you never embarrass yourself.” That’s very true in the studio. If you’re trying to cover your tracks or make sure you have an art object at the end of the day, it’ll always be mediocre. You have to be open to what isn’t immediate in your work, to what can come from the material. I really believe in that: In art, ideas can happen that’re outside of you.

Raymond Pettibon, 64, visual artist

I had to make the art world bend for me. I was doing everything wrong. I didn’t go to art school, for instance, which is, in my experience, more of a networking thing. Unfortunately, there’s not as much growth as there should be. People get lost in it — as academics or in their practices. It can be an unforgiving place. I studied economics at U.C.L.A., which is an unlikely way to make it in art. But I’m of the opinion that if you’re doing good work, you’ll be noticed. There isn’t a conspiracy to keep you out. Eventually, the art will be recognized. It may take time. In my case, it did. I was never one to wear out my shoe leather and shake hands and show my artwork to galleries and so forth. I wouldn’t necessarily follow in my footsteps. But really, the best thing I could say is: Concentrate on the work itself — whatever kind it is.

Kevin Young, 51, poet

As a high schooler, I wrote terrible poems. But when I realized the subject of writing wasn’t far away from me but close by — in the field behind your house, or the dirt beneath your feet — I understood what a poem could be. I wrote about my parents, my grandparents, my family in Louisiana — people I didn’t see in the books I read. Understanding that literature was about them was probably the biggest leap for me. I didn’t discover some confidence in myself; it was more like, “I have to tell this story.” Doing so was very urgent and important. I stand by that. It was crucial to learn that poetry was about everyday people, places and things. It was finding the extraordinary in the everyday.

Yo-Yo Ma, 66, musician

We live in a very hierarchical world where there are strict lines between selling out and purity. This is the moment not to get paralyzed. You can worry so much that you just stop. Use all your senses and exercise them. And forge your values.

The quality of your intuition will improve depending on your experiences. And how you experience things will depend on how you navigate the road between genius and integrity. Think about the people in all the professions whom we know and have met and experienced, and think about the people you respect, your role models — make sure you’re not just imitating them, that you’re actually getting to their DNA. If you love [the pianist Vladimir] Horowitz, you don’t want to mimic his timing, you want to figure out what makes him tick. For me, it was considering [the Spanish cellist] Pablo Casals, who actually stopped performing in certain countries, including the United States, because the Allies didn’t get rid of [the dictator Francisco] Franco after World War II. I thought, “At what level do you give up a thing you love?”

Celia Paul, 62, painter

When you are young, the biggest distraction can be falling in love. Even if it’s going well, it’s full of turbulence. To be able to channel your feelings in a disciplined way helps. Painting is like playing a musical instrument. It’s very different from writing — we use language all the time — whereas painting is an acquired art. It does need constant practice. I believe any musician would say the same thing, that you have to practice every day. For me personally, without my painting, I really would’ve faced despair. Well, I did face despair, but it was painting that actually brought me through and helped me to steady myself and to maintain a sense of my own identity, which might otherwise have been swept away.

Willy Chavarria, 54, fashion designer

Spend time alone. One of the reasons I was able to follow my dreams as an artist is because my mind did a lot of exploration on its own. I was an only child, so being alone was easy for me. I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley of California in a very small agricultural town. It was mostly Mexican immigrants, primarily undocumented. I was raised among farm workers, and there was no fashion. None. As a queer artist, I always understood that I was a spectator. I was fascinated by the way people presented themselves: how the guys would dress up to go out at night and slick back their hair and iron their shirts and pants; how the women would get ready with their lipstick and hair spray and eyeliner. That was my glamour because that was about as glamorous as it ever got. I was motivated by knowing there was something different about me. I carved my own path. I didn’t always have the support of the community around me, because it was a poor community and people were more concerned with the simple things. I always wanted something beyond, something greater.

Cauleen Smith, 54, filmmaker and multimedia artist

What do other people get out of your work if you share it with them? That’s a really interesting question, because I lacked ambition. I always dreamed that if I could do something that put me in the same space as a person I really admired and I could talk with them, then I’d die happy. That’s still how I operate. I’m trying to make work that allows me to participate in the conversations I want to have with the people I want to have them with.

Tommy Dorfman, 29, actor

I set really clear goals for myself , which I wrote on index cards and then taped to a wall. When I was younger, I had very specific parameters: “You’re not working for free.” “You’re not working for trade.” “Get a guest spot on a TV show in the next five years.” I moved in with my friend from college who was the star of the theater program. He had an agent; I didn’t. One day, after we had been living together for six months, he came home and was like, “You know, they’re seeing a bunch of different types of people for this show called ‘13 Reasons Why.’ It’s based on a book — you should read the pilot. My agent just got me the audition, but I feel like you’d be good for this.” I’d never really auditioned for anything before on camera. So I did, and it worked out, but I thought I was only going to be in a few episodes. Then I ended up being in a lot of the first season and a lot of the second. I found myself in a situation where most of the index cards I’d made for the next five years were done in a year. And I was like, “Great! I did it!” Then I thought, “Well, now what do I want to do?”

Sutton Foster, 47, actor

Be a sponge. Listen and observe. You don’t have to know everything, because how could you? When you’re first starting out, you can get trapped by this feeling that you have to know everything. But that’s not true. There are people I’m still learning from. Every night right now I perform in “The Music Man” on Broadway, and I watch [my cast mate] Jayne Houdyshell. I just stare at her, observing her genius as she masters a look or a line. You’re constantly absorbing and learning throughout your life. That doesn’t ever stop.

Garrett Hongo, 70, poet

My advice would be to seek out a mentor: someone who supports you and wants you to achieve your own voice and vision, and who can confirm that in you. Real poets can recognize real poetry in a young person. I hadn’t met actively practicing poets until I got my M.F.A. There, I discovered that what they wanted from me was my poetry, which I hadn’t learned how to commit myself to. I wasn’t confident; a good mentor can help you find that center of your creativity and build confidence. My teachers that year were fantastic. One — the great C. K. Williams — was just extraordinary. He was tough on me because he knew that I had something, or he suspected I did. He wasn’t having any of the B.S. I was producing. I was writing jive poetry. I have a really good ear, and I can imitate anything, so that’s what I was doing. But I wasn’t coming up with anything of my own. Once, I brought in a poem based on Akira Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood” (1957). I did this dramatic monologue of Washizu Taketoki, the character [Toshiro] Mifune plays, who’s Macbeth, just before the arrows strike his body in the movie. I thought it was very clever, using Shakespeare and all that. Williams looked at the poem after I read it in class — he had these big eyes — and goes, “What next, Hongo, ‘Two Gentlemen of Osaka’?”

When I was 14 years old, I had taken this poetry class one summer with [the poet, editor and journalist] Quincy Troupe. I’d ride the bus from Gardena, which was a largely Japanese American town, to Watts, which was a Black neighborhood [in Los Angeles]. One time, I saw this woman sobbing on the bus. Nobody did anything. Then this kid walked up to her and put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Hey, is everything OK?” She pulled him down into an embrace. He was bewildered. The scene stayed with me, but I never really remembered it until one night when I’d run out of nonsense to write. I composed a narrative poem about that moment and turned it in. My classmates had all been cued by C.K. to give me hell, so they all ridiculed the poem, calling it sentimental, unbelievable. C.K. shut them up and went, “You’re all wrong. This was the real thing.” He looked at me and said, “Garrett, if you can write like this, I don’t know why you waste your time on all that other [expletive].” He waited another beat: “What’s more, I don’t see why you’re wasting mine.”

Annette Bening, 63, actor

To someone just starting out, I’d suggest finding a good teacher or institution where you can go and study acting as an art. Though when you’re actually doing it, it’s not an intellectual process — you want to be free to experience the moment. So much of what you learn in training is how to listen, to allow your focus to be off you and on the other actors, which is the great relief that acting can bring. If you respond intuitively, that’s gold. In the moments you feel like a phony, that’s when you go back to the basics, which is what [the Russian theater director Konstantin] Stanislavski taught: “What do I want? What do I do to get it? And what’s in my way?” The more that’s in the way, the better off you are because you need to have a hole inside of you that you’re trying to fill. Sometimes, of course, you just need a job, and if you get a gig that isn’t satisfying those higher artistic ideals, that can be OK. Work is work. If you can be selective and follow the work you love, that’s a privilege.

I regularly took time off because I had four kids, so I was stopping and starting a lot, which ended up being a good thing. Some people don’t want to have children, and they’re able to dedicate themselves in a different way. I’ve found, though, that when you have responsibilities that are outside of yourself, it makes your work better. And your desire to continue to excavate and express the inexpressible doesn’t leave you. It might wane, but then it comes back.

Jacqueline Woodson, 59, writer

Having come from a family that didn’t have a lot of money, I was never scared to be broke. That’s really important. You learn very early on to keep a low overhead, but you also can’t be fearful of the struggle, because it’s going to be there in some way. I was lucky enough to come up in the age before social media, so I wasn’t surrounded by images of everybody else out there living their best lives. What I saw were my friends around me, us eating rice and beans or having potluck dinners. And I saw my rent checks bouncing. People would be going to a movie or a club, and I’d say, “I got to pass because I don’t have any money.” Some of those nights, I stayed home writing, trying to finish a book that would eventually get me paid, and then putting my clothes together to go work as a temporary secretary at a bank in the morning.

Choose something you love doing because you’re going to be doing it every day. I didn’t think I could be a writer, because it wasn’t what people in my family grew up to do. Our family believed in the larger idea of the Great Migration. My mom brought us to Brooklyn for better opportunities, for better education. We were supposed to grow up and get jobs because that’s what she did. She had a job, a paycheck and a pension. Eventually, you married, bought a house and you had some kids, and that was the dream. Of course, this wasn’t mine, because I didn’t like doing the same thing every day. I saw my mother’s unhappiness. Witnessing this — that she had this job that she was really proud of, that she bought a home and all of this stuff, that she was able to raise four kids as a single mom and that she was able to have this so-called American dream that didn’t make her happy — was heartbreaking. I equated working a day job with not leading a life that was emotionally fulfilled. From a very young age, I asked myself, “What is it that’ll make me happy every single day?” It was writing.

Nayland Blake, 62, interdisciplinary artist

Pay your taxes. That’s the best advice I could give any artist. People get into tons of trouble when they don’t pay their taxes.

Ayana Mathis, 48, writer

In my mid-30s, there was a lot of upheaval in my life and, for whatever reason, I started feeling like I wanted to invest more in writing. I applied to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which was one of the few experiences in my life that turned out as good as or better than I’d imagined. I was 36 when I started, and to have all this time to think about books and ideas was kind of a miracle. It was also difficult. I wasn’t afraid it’d end with me being unable to support myself — I grew up poor and can hustle. It was the work itself that was hard. Ultimately, though, it was a transformative experience. My professors would talk about things that seemed very familiar — things that were beyond me but that I understood. I spent my last year there in a kind of fever spell, and I finished my novel on graduation day.

That book was a gift, and what happened to it was a gift. But the cost of a big success like that, particularly with a first book, was that I didn’t quite know who or how to be. Part of the bargain is that you have to take off your small-“W” writer sweatpants and put on your capital-“A” author cap and go out to talk to folks. I sort of lost my muscle for writing, and my discernment. It took a while, and a lot of trial and error, for me to find a new way to write and a new kind of privacy. I don’t mean like Kanye and the paparazzi. I mean an internal world that’s unassailed by external voices.

One of the great things about writing, which is also one of the awful things about it, is that no two books are alike. You never fully learn how to do it, but that’s a good barometer. If you’re utterly confident, that’s a red flag. But if you get to the end of a project and think, “It’s not perfect, but I’ve done everything I know how to do, and maybe more,” that’s deeply satisfying and completely personal. It’s between you and the thing you made.

Justin Vivian Bond, 58, performer

Don’t wear yourself out. At a certain point in my career, in the 1990s and early 2000s, I was really well known as the singer and performer Kiki DuRane ; it was an act that people really liked, and it brought me a level of success. But I was feeling stuck. I had to make a big decision as to whether I was going to continue. I was drinking and doing drugs and avoiding the fact that I wasn’t really happy. And so, at the age of 43, I went back to college and got my master’s in scenography and live art at Central Saint Martins in London, just to shake things up. I believed in myself enough to walk away from Kiki, do what actually gave me joy and change my life. I took a big pay cut and disappointed a lot of people, but I did what I felt was the right thing. I didn’t allow myself to be trapped in a success. I kept moving.

I was lucky because I didn’t have children, so my responsibilities to other people were minimal. I was able to take a risk. It sounds easy for me to say, “Oh, yeah, just drop everything and go follow your muse and do what’s right.” What I really mean is, don’t get yourself so caught up in material things. I do what I need to support myself as an artist, not as a lifestyle.

André De Shields, 76, actor

I don’t really enjoy giving advice, but what I do enjoy is sharing what I know. Art and activism are inextricably bound. There’s no choice any longer. I come from Baltimore, where Freddie Gray lost his life in the police van [Gray was a 25-year-old Black man who was arrested in 2015 and died from injuries sustained while riding in the back of a police van, setting off a wave of demonstrations; the officers were subsequently cleared of all charges] — that’s six blocks away from the house where my family lived for 64 years.

Both of my parents had dreams. In my mother’s case, she wanted to be a chorus girl. Her parents said to her, “No decent colored daughter of ours is going to shuffle her way through life; we barely shuffled our way off the plantation.” My father wanted to be a singer. He had a beautiful voice and sang in the community, but his parents said to him, “How can you be a responsible husband and father with such an insecure profession?” So both of my parents did other things. And somehow among their 11 children, one of us was fortunate enough to receive those X and Y chromosomes of their deferred dreams. I’m lucky number nine. Do you know the [1951] poem by Langston Hughes called “Harlem”? It’s the one Lorraine Hansberry borrowed for her play “A Raisin in the Sun.” Here it is: “What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun? / Or fester like a sore — / And then run? / Does it stink like rotten meat? / Or crust and sugar over — / like a syrupy sweet? / Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load. / Or does it explode? ” So those dreams exploded in me.

Ryan O’Connell

Learning how to deal with people while also getting what you want is an art. Show running is so crazy in Hollywood. You have to possess all these qualities that shouldn’t exist in one human. You become a manager of people. What artist is that? We can barely manage ourselves! But I really liked being a champion for a team, empowering people and letting them feel that they had a hand in making something. The end goal for me was finding how to get to a place where my original intention is unaltered, despite 40 million people weighing in. To do that is work. It’s a lot of social work. It’s understanding baseline human behaviors, wants and desires. Having those tools gets you very far. Also, if you’re a fun person, you’ll work forever because so many people are nightmares. By being a nonpsycho, you already have an edge.

Alexandra Bell, 39, interdisciplinary artist

John Baldessari has such a sense of humor about his work that I relate to. My piece is a riff on three Baldessari paintings, including “Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell” (1966-68). I crossed out the “Who Want to Sell” part because I wanted to de-emphasize the commercial art market. A lot of practicing artists aren’t actually selling work. They’re doing other jobs or they’re at home writing an application to fund another project. I think that’s a more realistic picture of the bureaucracy behind making art. I’m a former proposal writer — I used to write them for nonprofit organizations, where what you request is straightforward: “I need $100,000 to house this many people.” But in art, it’s more like, “I need some space to think and live and have generative conversations and do things, and then I’ll make something, but I can’t tell you what it is just yet.” It can be really tricky. So much of what and how you create comes from just living in the world. That can be scary, so it’s easy to get boxed in if you make something that gets a response. Don’t be afraid to jump genres. Make the work you want but, also, turn in those applications. All of them.

Annette Bening

You’ll always deal with insecurities. That’s just part of being an actor, or any kind of artist, because you need to have that sense of not being quite sure of what’s going to happen. In the ’80s, I got a role in a fancy period film called “Valmont” (1989). I told this older actress on set, Fabia Drake, that I was nervous, and she said, “Ah, yes, divine discontent.” She meant that there’s something we can welcome about that feeling. I also like this quote from a Henry James story [“The Middle Years,” 1893]: “We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

Kameelah Janan Rasheed, 36, interdisciplinary artist and educator

Working as a high school teacher and now as a high school curriculum developer as well as an adjunct alongside my art practice has allowed me to think about how learning is core to all I do in life. The most ideal learning space is one where you have the opportunity to play, to self-discover, to explore. All of my projects are me trying to share what I’ve discovered or to create environments for others to learn with me. For the past couple of years, I haven’t called myself an artist, I’ve called myself a learner. I’ve been using this language because I find the word “artist” to imply a certain narrowness or a certain expertise that I don’t identify with. There’s humility in focusing on learning.

Nayland Blake

I had a really amazing and very abbreviated studio visit with [the painter] Agnes Martin when I was a college student at Bard. She was just as you’d imagine: a very self-contained butch lesbian. I had this whole rap about why I was doing what I was doing. I was making these very bad paintings, and I had all these justifications for why they looked the way they did. She came in and I ran my mouth at her for about 10 minutes. Then she looked around and said, “You think too much about other people,” and walked out the door. My jaw was on the floor. It shocked me. It was like that scene in the movies where people babble, and then someone slaps them to stop them. She wasn’t mean, but she was exactly right. I’d imagined that being an artist was like being a good student who could figure out the assignment and become a teacher’s pet. That visit made me a better artist.

Tomashi Jackson, 42, multimedia artist

I originally made this piece with the intention of positioning [the artist] Tschabalala Self at its center when we were [at the Yale School of Art] in 2015. I was experimenting with using painting and video in order to explore the history of school desegregation and present-day police brutality against Black children and was dedicating the effort to Aiyana Stanley-Jones [a 7-year-old girl killed by Detroit police in 2010]. Then it lay dormant for years. In 2016, [the painter] Eric N. Mack let me store it in a corner of his studio in the Bronx. Then it moved again, to my Brooklyn studio at ArtBuilt. Last month, I unfurled it and it broke into three pieces. I called up [the painter] Jennifer Packer and asked her, “Should I let these go now?” She replied, “I don’t think you should throw them away.” So I held on to them.

Finally, I got the work to my new studio in Massachusetts, where things started moving. Orderly direction comes from getting lost in the work. My eyes and my hands know what has to be done next because of what the painting is showing me. Visual artists need to encourage each other before certain outside values are ascribed to a thing. Sometimes, we can learn the true meaning of a piece by hitting pause so that it can change and possibly take on a new form that we can’t anticipate.

Lorraine O’Grady, 87, visual artist and writer

It takes money to make art, whether we like it or not — so you have to figure out where that money’s coming from. Why is money so important? Because you have to keep answering the phone. At a certain point, you can’t do that alone. You need to hire people to help you. And even if you’ve hired people, you’ll find yourself working for them because you’ll then be forced to create work for them to do in a meaningful way. That’s just the running of your studio. Then there’s the business of the openings that you’ll be asked to attend, the dinners to which you’ll be invited — this, that and the other. The business of art can take 95 percent of your time. That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, you could be spending 98 percent of your time doing that, and there’s a big difference between 95 and 98 percent, right? So spend less time on the business of art because you can delegate it to others, which gives you more time for your own work.

I feel like I’m just in my midcareer now. I’m far more successful critically than I am commercially, and so I have fewer people to delegate to than I wish I did.

Thomas Struth, 67, photographer

When a curator invites you to do a show, or someone sends you a proposal for something that you think isn’t really what you want to represent, it’s important to say, “No thank you, I’m not interested.” Consider who you really are. You gain more respect for yourself and from the outside when you say no.

Gabriela Hearst, 45, fashion designer

I see myself as more of a creative than an artist, because I have a dialogue with a client and work with a team. In the West, we always celebrate the individual, but fashion is a collective process. Obviously, I’m the driver of a certain vision, but I’m not the only one.

But whether to an artist or a creative, I’d give the same advice I was given. Around 2003, before I started designing, I was working in a fashion showroom in New York where one of my clients was a French sneaker brand, and a delivery arrived so late that the department store wouldn’t accept it. So here I was, stuck with all these sneakers, and I needed to figure out how to sell them. I went to see the owner of a different sneaker chain — his office was at the top of a very steep and narrow flight of stairs — carrying bags full of shoes. When I started taking the pairs out and putting them on the table, he said, “You’re going to make it. But when you do —” and then he pointed to a sign that read, “Don’t believe the hype.” He was someone who’d found success at a young age and never allowed himself to rest on his reputation.

Tony Kushner, 65, playwright

I’d like to believe that I’m still a midcareer writer, just as I’d like to believe I’m still middle-aged. I’ve written less than I feel I should’ve, and I’d like to have a lot more time to catch up; and I don’t want to die. But the grim truth is that, even though it’s surprising to me and it seems unfair, I’ve begun the late phase of both my writing career and my existence. That it seems to me unfair doesn’t speak well of me. But that’s what being an early late-career writer feels like to me: an unholy three-way marriage between all the anxieties, insecurities and terrors that have accompanied me for as long as I can remember, all the regrets over mistakes I’ve made since becoming a midcareer middle-aged writer and an increasingly insistent awareness of my physical and mental being headed toward its noncancelable appointment with nonbeing. It feels like my job now is to figure out how to remain engaged with the world, in love with the world, turned on by the world; how to remain capable of delight in the pleasures of inventing and imagining; how to keep seeking out plausible occasions for hope while remaining as brave and as honest as I’m capable of being; how not to despair; how to believe that generating meaning is the surest way to defeat despair; and, while continuing to try to do all these lively things that writing has always demanded and needed, to keep a watchful eye on mortality and incorporate what I’m seeing into what I write. In other words, my job is to strive to be neither a blissful death-denying idiot nor a dreary, self-pitying panicky old fart.

OK, advice: Try to get enough sleep. Eat sensibly. Stay politically active. Keep reading; keep rereading; keep observing; keep synthesizing. Do not despise the young (even when they’re insufferable, rude, frightening). Locate within yourself the primal sympathy and hold tight to it; find soothing thoughts that spring out of human suffering, but stay angry; feel free to toy with the faith that looks through death, as long as you remember that it’s most likely a placebo; and be grateful for years that bring the philosophic mind, even if they also bring wattles and wrinkles and digestive infirmities. And at least consider the possibility that silence in a writer isn’t necessarily failure.

Maxine Hong Kingston, 81, writer

I’m very aware of aging and of knowing that as one ages, one is approaching death. In Buddhism there are the five remembrances, and one of them is along the lines of “I’m going to die, it’s the nature of human beings to die and there’s no escape.” This is something we meditate on. That drive in a young person to write and publish — that’s just not there anymore. Even the thought that “I have to express myself” — it’s just not there. In the past, I’d choose to write. I wouldn’t be with my son often enough, or if my friends were going out, then I’d stay home. If there was a party going on at home, I’d go to the other room to write. It’s very different now. I’ll drop my work to be with a friend. I’ll pick up the phone. Now I think, “I’ll live .” I know there’s less time left. You know that [1848] John Keats sonnet “ When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be ,” about how he’s afraid he’s going to die before he finishes his writing? Well, it’s different when you’re older. I don’t want to die before I can show my love to my friends and family.

Lynda Benglis, 80, visual artist

Don’t close yourself off. Whether it’s a room of one’s own, or revisiting your memories of self at various stages in your growth, or buying yourself a collection of materials, or going on a hike and collecting natural artifacts, or listening to your favorite music orchestrated publicly or selected privately, or finding new favorites or new friends, or simply going to the gym, on a bike ride, a horseback ride or playing in the snow or on the beach — context is everything. Put it into play and into work.

Lar Lubovitch, 79, choreographer

It’s very hard to generalize, because people get to the late stage of their careers through such a unique sequence of events that amounts to their biography. I can only speak for myself. After the 50th anniversary of my own dance company, I decided only to work if the situation and the subject were an inspiration to me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t work. I’d spent so many years creating on demand — which is part of the profession, I don’t mean to put that down. You’re given three weeks, four weeks, five weeks to make a dance. The curtain’s going to go up. It’s a job, and you get that dance done. There’re many, many conditions surrounding the way that situation happened. But very frequently through my career, I’ve been in a situation where I’ve been engaged in making a dance that I wasn’t inspired to make. And I always felt that my best work came from being magnetically drawn to a subject or piece of music that really excited my inner eye and provoked an irresistible need to create. I’ve choreographed much less since making that decision, but in my own estimation, I think that I’ve done much better.

Bernadette Peters

Starting with “ Sunday in the Park With George ” [by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, 1984], I seemed to be on Broadway doing a show every season. I learned that it’s very important to make sure that you connect with the role, and that you feel it in your gut. If you don’t, just pass on it and let someone else who connects do it. There’s always a part of me in every role. And for me, “Sunday in the Park” was a love story — both of the art and of the artist.

When you’re carrying a Broadway show, it’s very important to validate everybody who’s making that show work: other performers, the people who sell the drinks in the lobby, the ushers, the stage crew. All of their energy is going toward the stage. I went to see Lena Horne on Broadway when she was 65, and I said, “When I’m 65, that’s what I want to be doing.” And I did that. I’m very fortunate to have such a long, healthy career. You choose wisely. You recognize that everybody’s doing their part to make the show happen. And you bring an open heart to work.

M c Arthur Binion, 75, visual artist

“Visual:Ear” (2022) is from an idea that started in 1971 in my first year of graduate school. I didn’t work on it constantly; I thought about it over and over again. I was trying to figure out how to incorporate my interest in music with art. I didn’t begin as an artist; I started out as a writer. The first museum I ever went to was the Museum of Modern Art [in New York], where I saw painting for the very first time in my life. It affected me because I had a speech block as a teenager. I couldn’t talk right, but I figured out that I was communicating nonverbally. And slowly, I became aware that I was a painter. I’m 75 years old now, and I feel like I’m just beginning. To younger artists and also middle-aged artists, I say: You have to let the game come to you. Be patient. Believe in yourself. Trust yourself. Keep your eyes wide open, your ears wide open. Listen to who you are.

Judy Chicago, 82, multidisciplinary artist and educator

I often say, “I don’t want to be the Ann Landers of the art world.” I learned how to be an artist by looking at my predecessors. This year, I’m revisiting the installation of “ Womanhouse ,” which I first facilitated in 1972. It’s being recast as “ Wo/Manhouse 2022 ” as a way of offering young New Mexico artists across the gender spectrum the experience of making meaningful art. Because of this, you might say I’m enacting advice to other artists.

Many women artists of my generation became bitter because of a lack of deserved recognition. But I’m not bitter, perhaps because I have a global perspective that makes me understand how fortunate and privileged I’ve been in comparison to millions of women around the world.

I’m happy about the fact that success has come late in my career because that meant that I had five decades of uninterrupted art making without ever having to think about the market. I’m all about creating art that means something; I’m not about the market. It’s particularly dangerous now for young artists because they get gobbled up by the business, spit out and then they’re done. What I did — and this wasn’t so much about that as it was about the straight-up rejection of my work by the system; “ The Dinner Party ” (1974-79) being a piece that everybody wanted to see and nobody wanted to show — was, I made working in my studio my reward. I had a burning desire to be an artist from the time I was a child. After all, who defines what’s good? You have to decide for yourself. I had the support of those who really believed in me, and that’s important — you need people you trust to give you feedback. The art world never supported me. It was the opposite. It tried to kill me.

Eileen Myles, 72, poet

Stop making work. You’ve probably already said it. You’ve probably already made it. I don’t mean don’t do work, but now is a good time to think, “Do I have to?” I’m currently working on something, and suddenly I’ll be like, “Oh, this is really bad.” The most valuable moments are when I stop. And I wonder: “What would it be like to stop for a year, or longer?” The silence is such a notorious period of an artist’s life. One of the things I noticed in the middle of my career was that my enemies hadn’t made me go away. I might not be getting paid a lot of attention, but I didn’t stop and I didn’t go away. I kept making. The edifice is there. So the most radical thing I think an older artist can do is to be silent. Come back when you really have something to say. There’s no reason to retread.

After you turn 60, if you say or do something and it’s really silly, people forgive you. And if you say something very useful and it halfway makes sense, people are pleasantly surprised. That’s the good part. Hopefully, as an older person you can see what’s coming down the pike better. You can see it from further away. There’s a sense of clarity. You know your time is limited. You can differentiate and maybe occasionally have some choice in saying, “I don’t need to do that. Let me tell you what I really care about.” You’ve gone through several cycles of life. It’s an authority that’s not coming from on high, it’s just an authority of experience.

Edmund White, 82, writer

When I was a teen, I met an older painter and she told me to think of my career as a writer as a long, slow progression. And I did, so that now, in my 80s, I’m doing my best work. Success in old age is achieved by artists (Titian) or composers (Verdi), but it is rare for writers — though I’m probably forgetting some examples.

In my 20s, the great composer Virgil Thomson read my first experimental novel and warned me that the only way for a writer to have a long career was by way of imitating reality. Invention alone was sterile. I believed him, and his statement, as well as my discovery of Isaac Bashevis Singer, made me renounce avant-gardism and embrace realism in its infinite variety.

In my 30s, I discovered the Russian formalist strategy of making it strange — that is, a way of looking at the familiar rituals of our world as if one were from the moon. At about the same time, [the writer] Harold Brodkey told me that writing “they made love” is a lie, since making love is always incomparable and for the first time.

Willy Chavarria

Be kind to yourself. I’m imagining speaking to myself at 90 years old. If I’m still creating, I’d like to make sure that I’m very much enjoying myself and my life.

The Artists

A glimpse into how creative people live and work, from dawn to dusk to the early morning hours.

Samuel R. Delany

Jonathan bailey, piet oudolf, garden designer, beanie feldstein, daniel roseberry, fashion designer, radha blank, writer and filmmaker, katerina tannenbaum, ethan hawke, christopher john rogers, katie stout, artist and furniture designer, raja feather kelly, choreographer, aleshea harris and whitney white, playwright and director, jamie nares, multidisciplinary artist, patricia urquiola, architect and industrial designer, rirkrit tiravanija, faith ringgold, louise erdrich, sheila hicks, virginie viard, tschabalala self, jordan casteel, toshiko mori, caroline polachek, singer-songwriter, daniel romualdez, architect and decorator, ivo van hove, pim techamuanvivit, pierre hardy, accessories designer, james whiteside, ballet dancer, mona mansour, manuel solano, musician and actor.

Interviews have been edited and condensed. Photos, from top: Jason Schmidt/Courtesy of Marilyn Minter (Minter); John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Choi); Melissa Dale Neal (Purnell); Lucka Ngô for The New York Times (Cheng); Jenny Anderson/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions (Peters); Courtney Yates for The New York Times (Mohammed); Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP (Aduba); Tracy Nguyen for The New York Times (O’Connell); Olivia Galli for The New York Times (Kalukango); Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times (Dunham); Jason Schmidt/Courtesy of David Zwirner (Pettibon); Brad Ogbonna for The New York Times (Young); Mustafah Abdulaziz for The New York Times (Ma); Tom Jamieson for The New York Times (Paul); Isak Tiner for The New York Times (Chavarria); Dustin Aksland (Smith); Calla Kessler for The New York Times (Dorfman); Ellie Smith for The New York Times (Foster); Steve Varni (Hongo); Celeste Sloman for The New York Times (Bening); John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Woodson); Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times (Mathis); Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times (Bond); Whitney Curtis for The New York Times (De Shields); Christopher Gregory for The New York Times (Rasheed); Scott J. Ross (Blake); Lelanie Foster for The New York Times (O’Grady); Luis Tejido/EPA, via Shutterstock (Struth); Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via Shutterstock (Hearst); Sean Donnola (Kushner); Jennifer S. Altman/Contour RA/Getty (Kingston); Amy Lombard for The New York Times (Benglis); George Etheredge for The New York Times (Lubovitch); Adria Malcolm for The New York Times (Chicago); Emily Berl for The New York Times (Myles) and September Dawn Bottoms/The New York Times (White).

Digital production and design by Nancy Coleman, Amy Fang and Jacky Myint.

Due to a transcription error, an earlier version of this article misquoted the artist McArthur Binion on his advice to younger and middle-aged artists. He said, “You have to let the game come to you,” not “You have to let the king come to you.”

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How to Boost Creativity

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Amy Morin, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and international bestselling author. Her books, including "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do," have been translated into more than 40 languages. Her TEDx talk,  "The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong," is one of the most viewed talks of all time.

Creativity is the ability to come up with or recognize ideas to solve problems, communicate with others, or entertain.

Creativity is all about finding new ways of solving problems and approaching situations. This isn't a skill restricted to artists, musicians, writers, or "right-brained" thinkers; it is a useful skill for people from all walks of life . If you've ever wanted to boost your creativity , these tips can help.

Commit Yourself to Creativity

The first step to increasing creativity is to devote yourself to developing your creative abilities. Do not put off your efforts. Set goals, enlist the help of others, and put aside time each day to develop your skills. For example, if you are interested in painting, schedule time regularly to learn and practice your skills.

Boost Creativity by Becoming an Expert

One of the best ways to develop creativity is to become an expert in this area. By having a rich understanding of the topic, you will be better able to think of novel or innovative solutions to problems. One way to develop expertise is by reading about creative people and listening to them speak.

Reward Your Curiosity

One common roadblock to developing creativity is the sense that curiosity is an indulgence. Rather than reprimanding yourself for following an internet rabbit hole, reward yourself when you are curious about something. Give yourself the opportunity and the time to explore new topics.

Rewarding yourself is important, but developing intrinsic motivation is also crucial. Sometimes, the true reward of creativity is the process itself, not the product.

Take Risks to Build Creativity

When it comes to building your creative skills, you must be willing to take risks to advance your abilities. Although your efforts may not lead to success every time, you will still be boosting your creative talents and building skills that will serve you well in the future.

For example, sharing your work in a creative writing course might feel intimidating. But the critique you receive from classmates and teachers can be invaluable.

Build Your Confidence

Insecurity in your abilities can suppress creativity, which is why it is important to build confidence. Note your progress, commend your efforts, and always be on the lookout for ways to reward your creativity.

Make Time for Creativity

You won't be able to develop your creative talents if you don't make time for them. Schedule some time each week to concentrate on some type of creative project.

Making time for creativity might involve saying no to some things that are draining your available time, or even choosing to let go of things in your schedule that are not bringing you joy. Sometimes, it might even involve asking others to help with tasks or take care of childcare and other household duties so you have some free time for your creative pursuits.

Overcome a Negative Attitude

Focus on eliminating negative thoughts or self-criticisms that may impair your ability to develop strong creative skills. Recognize these as roadblocks and work to overcome them.

When you find yourself dwelling on negative thinking, make an active effort to challenge those faulty ideas and replace them with more realistic or positive ones.

Fight Fear of Failure

The fear that you might make a mistake or fail in your efforts can paralyze progress. Whenever you find yourself harboring such feelings, remind yourself that mistakes are simply part of the process. While you may occasionally stumble on your path to creativity, you will eventually reach your goals.

Brainstorm New Ideas

Brainstorming is a common technique in both academic and professional settings, but it can also be a powerful tool for increasing creativity.

Start by suspending your judgment and self-criticism. Then start writing down related ideas and possible solutions. The goal is to generate as many ideas as possible in a relatively short span of time. Next, focus on clarifying and refining your ideas in order to arrive at the best possible choice.

As unlikely as this may seem, recent research points to dim light as a trigger for creativity. Darkness may free you from perceived constraints and encourage you to take creative risks that may seem intimidating in bright lighting.

Explore Multiple Solutions

The next time you approach a problem , try looking for a variety of solutions. Instead of simply going with the first idea you have, take the time to think of other possible ways to approach the situation. This simple activity is a great way to build both problem-solving and creative thinking skills.

Keep a Creativity Journal

Start keeping a journal to follow your creative process and track the ideas you produce. A journal is a great way to reflect back on what you have accomplished and look for other possible solutions. This journal can be used to save ideas that can later serve as future inspiration.

Use Mind Maps and Flow Charts

A mind map is a way to connect ideas and look for innovative answers to questions. Create a mind map by writing down a central topic or word. Next, link related terms or ideas around the central word. While similar to brainstorming, this technique allows for branching ideas and offers a very visual way of seeing how ideas are linked.

As you start to develop a new project, create a flow chart to track the project from start to finish. Look for various paths or sequences of events that might occur. A flow chart can help you visualize the final product, eliminate potential problems, and create unique solutions.

Challenge Yourself and Create Opportunities

Once you have developed some basic creative skills, it is important to continually challenge yourself to further advance your abilities. Look for more difficult approaches, try out new things, and avoid always returning to the same solutions you have used in the past.

In addition to challenging yourself, you also need to create your own opportunities for creativity. This might involve tackling a new project or finding new tools to use in your current projects.

Try the Six Hats Technique

The "six hats" technique involves looking at a problem from six differing perspectives. By doing this, you can produce more ideas than you might have had you only looked at the situation from one or two points of view.

• Black hat : Use a negative perspective. Which elements of the solution won’t work?
• Blue hat : Think broadly. What is the best overall solution?
• Green hat : Think creatively. What are some alternative ideas?
• Red hat : Look at the situation emotionally. What do your feelings tell you?
• White hat : Look at the situation objectively. What are the facts?
• Yellow hat : Use a positive perspective. Which elements of the solution will work?

Find Inspiration to Boost Creativity

Never expect creativity to just happen. Look for new sources of inspiration that will give you fresh ideas and motivate you to generate unique answers to questions. Read a book, visit a museum, listen to your favorite music or engage in a lively debate with a friend.

Use whatever strategy or technique works best for you. Do you enjoy video games? Research indicates that playing video games can help increase your creativity.

Consider Alternative Scenarios

When approaching a problem, ask "what if..." questions to consider each possible scenario. If you take a specific approach, what will the outcome be?

By looking at these alternatives beforehand, you'll be better able to develop creative solutions to problems.

Try the Snowball Technique

Have you ever noticed how one great idea often leads directly to another? You can take advantage of this by using a "snowball technique" when you are generating ideas for a project. If an idea isn't appropriate for your current work, set it aside to work on later, or implement it in a future project.

Frequently Asked Questions

Strategies that can help stimulate creative thinking include challenging yourself to think about things differently, engaging in leisure activities that reduce stress, having social interactions with other people, and taking a break from a task to go for a walk.

Give yourself time to be creative. Engage in hobbies and pursue the things that spark your interests. Allow yourself to daydream or imagine different scenarios. Perhaps most important, allow yourself the freedom to pursue different ideas and take risks. Not every idea will pan out, but the process and practice will help you boost creativity and develop a stronger imagination.

Franken RE.  Human Motivation . 3rd ed. Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.

Steidle A, Werth L. Freedom from constraints: Darkness and dim illumination promote creativity .  J Environ Psychol . 2013;35:67-80. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2013.05.003

Tilly M. How to create a mind map (+examples) . The Institute of You.

De Bono E. Six Thinking Hats . Penguin, Limited.

Blanco-Herrera JA, Gentile DA, Rokkum JN. Video games can increase creativity, but with caveats .  Creat Res J . 2019;31(2):119-131. doi:10.1080/10400419.2019.1594524

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Making art is good for your health. Here's how to start a habit

Malaka Gharib

Subscribe to Life Kit's weekly newsletter and get expert advice on lifestyle topics like money, relationships, health and more. Click here to subscribe now .

Whether it's woodworking, sewing or sculpting teeny cupcakes out of bright purple clay, making art is good for your mind and body.

The act of creation can reduce stress and anxiety and improve your mood, says Girija Kaimal , a professor at Drexel University and a leading researcher in art therapy. And flexing our creative side can give us a stronger sense of agency — the ability to solve problems by imagining possible solutions.

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This story is adapted from an episode of Life Kit, NPR's podcast with tools to help you get it together. Listen to the episode at the top of the page, or find it here .

Making art can also feel pretty awesome, she says. Engaging in any act of visual expression activates the reward pathway in your brain, "which is perceived as a pleasurable experience."

Artists say they often feel those positive vibes when they work. Trinidad Escobar , a Filipino American graphic novelist and poet based in Oakland, Calif., says that drawing "feels like a superpower." And Liana Finck , a cartoonist for The New Yorker, says sharing her art with an audience is "the most cathartic thing in the world."

But you don't have to be a full-time artist to get in on those health benefits, says Kaimal. All you need to do is just make art. And the more you do it, the better. Here are six things you need to know to kick-start your creative art habit.

1. You don't need to be an artist with a capital "A"

We tend to think that only people who are very skilled at art can call themselves artists, but really, anyone can be an artist, says Kaimal.

"Everyone is capable of creative expression," she says. In fact, her own research has shown that there are no differences in health outcomes between those who identify as experienced artists and those who don't. So that means that no matter your skill level, you'll be able to feel all the good things that come with making art.

Christianne Strang , a professor of neuroscience at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, promises that if you stick with it, you'll enjoy it. In her 30-year career as an art therapist, she has found that "99% of the time, people find that if they give up the idea that they're not good enough, if they give up the judgment, making art actually feels good."

2. Figure out your mode of creative expression

Start with what you enjoy — maybe something you've done before, maybe something you loved as a kid. But keep an open mind.

"Anything that engages your creative mind — the ability to make connections between unrelated things and imagine new ways to communicate — is good for you," says Kaimal.

You can do that through myriad activities: finger painting, cooking, baking, collaging, oil painting, weaving, knitting, crocheting, writing screenplays, scrapbooking — the sky's the limit. And don't feel like you have to stick to one thing, say the art therapists. Mix it up — do whatever you're in the mood for.

TED Radio Hour

Jumpstarting creativity, 3. focus on the making, and let go of expectations.

Once you have your art materials, here comes the fun part. Mess around! Let yourself get lost in the process and just play. Because it's the physical act of making art, says Kaimal, that induces those feelings of stress relief and positive energy — not what you make or how you make it.

Kaimal says you don't even need to complete a project or like what you're making to feel those health benefits.

In fact, says Strang, that can be a positive thing. In her free time, she likes doodling, watercoloring and glass fusing. "Sometimes, when I don't like what I'm making, it frees me up to play and explore new ideas, because I've let go of expectations," she says.

Make This: "How To Start An Art Habit" Zine

This zine covers the basics of starting an art habit. Print it out here , and carry its inspiration wherever you go. ( Folding directions courtesy of The Oregonian ).

4. Think about making art like any healthy habit, such as eating well or exercising

Just as you make time to work, exercise and hang out with family and friends, you should make time for your artistic endeavors, says Strang. "Creativity in and of itself is important for remaining healthy — remaining connected to yourself and remaining connected to the world," she says.

While there are no hard and fast rules for how much time you should devote to engaging in art, Strang has a suggestion: "as much as you can get away with."

Try to designate a special time in your week to devote to your practice, says Kaimal. She likes to set aside time on the weekends to work on her own art projects: mixed-media pieces inspired by nature. She calls it her "TGIS." "Thank God it's Saturday," she says. "It's my few hours of time to develop something I'm working on and really take that time for myself."

You don't even need a few hours. Escobar, the Oakland-based artist, teaches community art classes to people of color and members of the LGBT community. She says that doing just 10 minutes of art each day can do wonders.

Whatever you do, don't wait for creative inspiration to strike. "That's a myth that you'll create because you're in this altered state of mind and feeling free and loose," she says.

In addition to carving out time, carve out a physical space in your home for art, says Kaimal. She suggests setting up a corner table for your sketchbook and art supplies. If space is an issue, put it all in a basket or a plastic container that's easily accessible.

Your creative corner is "kind of like a reminder," she says. "It reinforces your commitment to invest in yourself and your well-being."

Shots - Health News

Feeling artsy here's how making art helps your brain, 5. ride those waves of emotion.

The more you're able to make art a regular habit, the more you're likely to get this great reward: this wonderful thing that happens when you're in the zone. Kaimal says that scientists have a word for it. It's called "flow."

"It's that sense of losing yourself, losing all awareness. You're so in the moment and fully present that you forget all sense of time and space," she says.

Escobar says she feels that flow when she's filling in lines with color, inking — which in the world of cartooning means tracing over pencil marks with ink — and when she's drawing aesthetically pleasing backgrounds, such as jungle or garden scenes.

"It feels meditative," she says, like things are "going well, smoothly, like the process is nourishing me."

6. Get yourself in the mood

Some days, you won't feel like making art. And that's OK, says Finck. As the author of several graphic novels, most recently Excuse Me: Cartoons, Complaints, and Notes to Self , she's used to juggling multiple projects.

"I get a lot of writer's block," she says. "It feels like stage fright when I sit down with a blank page."

To trick herself into drawing, Finck tells herself to think "that I'm just doodling," she says. "Then it flows freely."

If the block persists, she checks in with herself. What's stopping her from drawing? Is she anxious? Depressed? Worried?

"If you're too anxious to draw, address the anxiety. Go take a walk. Stand up from the couch. Go for a run. See a person," says Finck.

You can also try a breathing exercise, says Escobar. "Inhale for four seconds and hold for a second. Repeat that for about three minutes."

She does this with students in her art classes to help them reset and refocus after a long day at work — and it works, she says, like a charm.

How To Read More Books

Feeling Insecure? 6 Tips To Quiet Your Inner Critic

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March 16, 2015

The Creative Life and Well-Being

The Creative Life is full of new possibilities, discoveries, exploration, experimentation, self-expression, and invention. It’s a habit, a way of being, a style of existing.

By Scott Barry Kaufman

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

The Creative Life is full of new possibilities, discoveries, exploration, experimentation, self-expression, and invention. It's a habit, a way of being, a style of existing. But is the Creative Life full of well-being?

Depends on how you define well-being.

In recent years, psychologists have taken a deeper look at well-being. The traditional approach to well-being focuses on hedonic pleasures and positive emotions. However, while positive emotions often accompany happiness, the mere experience of positive emotions is not necessarily an indicator of happiness, and the presence of negative emotions doesn't necessarily decrease one's well-being. This deeper approach to well-being, often described as "eudaimonic well-being", focuses on living life in a full and deeply satisfying way .

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What are the dimensions of eudaimonic well-being? Psychologist Carol Ryff makes the case for no less than six dimensions of eudaimonia:

Autonomy ("I have confidence in my opinions, even if they are contrary to the general consensus")

Environmental mastery ("I am quite good at managing the many responsibilities of my daily life")

Personal growth ("I think it is important to have new experiences that challenge how you think about yourself and the world")

Positive relations with others ("People would describe me as a giving person, willing to share my time with others")

Purpose in life ("Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them")

Self-acceptance ("I like most aspects of my life")

As it turns out, the Creative Life is associated with quite a few dimensions of eudaimonia. 

A more recent study  by Michael Ceci and V.K. Kumar dived deeper into the relationship between the Creative Life and happiness. They found that creativity was not significantly correlated with overall life satisfaction. Nevertheless, they found that various creativity styles were associated with intrinsic motivation- - a love of creating for the sake of creating, and not for external rewards. This is consistent with a large body of research by Teresa Amabile on the importance of intrinsic motivation for creativity.

In particular, the following four aspects of the Creative Life were all associated with intrinsic motivation:*

Specific strategies to facilitate creativity ("I often let my mind wander to come up with new ideas,” “I take walks to come up with new ideas,” “I typically create new ideas by combining existing ideas,” “I am always thinking (fantasizing) about how to do everyday things differently”)

Strong belief in unconscious processes (“I believe in unconscious processes that facilitate my creative work,” “I have been able to use many ideas for creative work that have occurred in my dreams”)

Use of all senses for creative work (“I tend to use my visual sense a lot in my creative work,” “I tend to use my sense of smell a lot in my creative work,” “I tend to use my sense of taste a lot in my creative work”)

High need for solitude (“I am secretive about my new ideas,” “I physically isolate myself from other people when I am working on creative ideas”)

Additionally, those who reported controlling their environment to self-regulate their creative work (“I have set aside time (or times) during the day when I do my creative thinking”) also tended to score higher in multiple measures of "creative capacity." As you may recall, environmental mastery is an essential element of Ryff's conceptualization of well-being.

In contrast, those who reported being more motivated to develop a final product (“I work most creatively when I have deadlines,” “If I do not have a concrete (visible) creative product to show (such as a written composition, work of art or music, etc.), then I think I have failed”) tended to score lower in overall creative capacity, and higher in stress and extrinsic motivation (being more motivated to accomplish a task for external rewards, such as money or grades).

But perhaps most tellingly, the researchers found that creativity was more strongly related to the sum of positive and negative emotions than measures of positive or negative emotions alone. This suggests that the capacity to experience intense emotions-- both positive and negative -- may be central to the Creative Life.

The Creative Life

While the Creative Life is not directly associated with traditional conceptualizations of happiness, the Creative Life appears to be associated with a more deeply meaningful life. In his book " Authentic Happiness ", Martin Seligman distinguishes between the "Pleasant Life" and the "Meaningful Life". The Pleasant Life is what people tend to think of when they think of happiness: a life full of positive emotions and joy, and lacking challenge or struggle. The Pleasant Life is mainly about getting what you want and need. It is associated with feeling good in the moment, and being a taker more than a giver. In contrast, the Meaningful Life is linked to self-expression, and doing positive things for others. Certainly, there are factors that contribute to both the Pleasant Life and the Meaningful Life-- including feeling connected to others, feeling productive, and not being alone or bored-- but there are also some key differences between living a pleasant and meaningful life .

The Meaningful Life is associated with increased stress and anxiety, but it is also linked to greater integration of the past, present, and future, resiliency, and the ability to cope with life's inevitable difficulties. After all, as the Buddhists have long noted, every life has its 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. "Humans may resemble many other creatures in their striving for happiness, but the quest for meaning is a key part of what makes us human, and uniquely so," notes lead author Roy Baumeister.

The deep connection between creativity and meaning was noted long ago by the great creativity researcher Frank X. Barron . Through his pioneering research on some of the most creative people of his generation, Barron came to realize that creative people have the remarkable capacity to become intimate with themselves. According to psychologist Ruth Richards, they “ dare to look within, even at one’s irrational and less conscious material, including one’s ‘shadow’ materials ”. Richards refers to this capacity as “courageous openness"

In her review of existing studies on everyday creativity, Richards summarizes the many benefits of living more creatively, including becoming aware of present experience and one’s own inner thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, memories, and imaginings, sustaining a lifestyle of internal balance and harmony, creatively coping with adversity, integrating functions across multiple sensory modalities and states of consciousness, awareness of our interconnection and unity with others, working with others toward broader goals, bridging false dichotomies (e.g., sensitive/assertive, intuitive/logical, gentle/strong), continuing personal development and bravely welcoming the risks of exploring the unknown and embracing the mysteries of life. As Richards puts it, “A creative style of living, coping with difficulties and weaving possibilities, can not only produce useful accomplishments for self and world but can offer the creator new resilience, perspective, aliveness in the moment, joy, and purpose in life.”

The Creative Life may not always be pleasant, but stick with it, because it can ultimately lead to a deeper and more meaningful sense of well-being.

© 2015 Scott Barry Kaufman , All Rights Reserved

image credit: istockphoto

* The items came from the Creativity Styles Questionnaire-Revised by V.K. Kumar and E.R. Holman. Reference: Kumar, V. K. & Holman, E. R. (1997).  The Creativity Styles Questionnaire-Revised . Unpublished Psychological Test. Department of Psychology, West Chester University of Pennsylvania, West Chester, PA 19383

Creative Thinking: What is it, Why is it Important, and How to Develop it?

by Rawzaba Alhalabi Published on January 17, 2021

So what is creative thinking?

Creative thinking is the process of nurturing your imagination allowing you to “think out of the box”. 

Being able to train your mind to think creatively helps you invent, problem-solve, create and communicate in fresh, new ways. Moreover,  studying art and design , along with diverse disciplines, provides a rich tapestry of perspectives and techniques, enriching your creative thinking process even further.

Creative thinkers are in high demand in the job market and creative thinking is one of the key skills needed in future jobs according to a recent report by the World Economic Forum. 

So, let’s develop your creative thinking skills!

In this article, we will take you through a step by step process of how  to  improve your creative thinking skills. You will  learn   about different ways used to help you become more open-minded, innovative and creative .  

Article Outline

• The importance of creative thinking
• 6 Ways to apply creative thinking in your everyday life
• Thinking Hats: Approach Creative Thinking by de Bono
• Another Creative Thinking Approach: Lateral Thinking

Things to Avoid which will impact your Creative Thinking

• How to succeed in your career based on your enneagram (infographic)

Every person can improve their  creative  thinking skills. By doing so, it will help you create, interpret and come with solutions to challenges  in your daily life routines at school, university, organization or simply at home. 

“Everyone is born creative” – Hugh Macleod

A group of CEOs were asked “What is the skill you most value in your people?” as part of a survey , they said creativity, the ability to solve problems, come up with new solutions, and use brainpower to figure things out.

Before we get into the techniques, let us explore why is it important to become a creative thinker.

Everyone Should Become a Creative Thinker

Being able to train your mind to think creatively helps you invent, problem-solve, create and communicate in fresh, new ways.

When you think open-mindedly you become a happier person ready to accept exciting surprises from life.  

8 reasons why creative thinking is an essential skill for everyone 

The following are 8 reasons why you are advised to be creative in your everyday life:  

• Thinking creatively  adds value  not only to your life but also to the life of others. Translating your thoughts into beautiful work, projects ‘yourself’ clearly into the world you live in.  
• Creative thinking helps you become  self relying and more confident . You can think on your own without the help of others making you a stronger, truly-happy person.  
• By thinking creatively you  become true to yourself . You accept who you are without worrying about other peoples’ judgments.  
• Thinking open-mindedly gives you a reason to wake up every morning to start  exploring new ideas and thoughts . It makes your life worth living.  
• Creative thinking can  bring out hidden talents  that you have not noticed before. Instead of just nagging about a problem, it helps you discover new opportunities that you haven’t been aware of.  
• Thinking ‘out of the box’  makes you feel satisfied  at all phases of your life. You never feel that you have reached a dead end instead you are always ready to explore new challenges. You have the ability to see what others can’t see.  
• Being creative helps you  express your feelings  allowing you to be whatever you want to be in this world.  
• The more experienced you get with thinking creatively, the easier it becomes to  master difficult situations  you may face in your life.  

As explained, creative thinking has many advantages but most importantly it will make you a happier and better person so start practicing!

Check out the below infographic extracted from a  global study  done by Adobe.

6 Ways to apply creative thinking in your everyday life  

Successful people today are great creative thinkers.

Practicing creativity on a daily basis guides you to become a great success in the future.

The most important thing is to feel free when trying to apply creativity in your life. Creativity is having the power to expand your imagination bringing the most out of your potentials.  

The following are 6 ways to apply creative thinking in your life:  

• R isk  Taking : Being adventurous and ready for life’s challenges pushes you a step forward to creativity.  
• Playing :  Trying to play and be funny at times gives you the chance to manipulate the given problem accordingly to what you need.   
• Regularly asking Why :   Being curious and nosy, wanting to ask questions all the time opens endless doors and possibilities.  
• Generating large quantity of ideas:  By producing a big number of possible solutions, a smart, unique, unexpected answer might be discovered.  
• Day Dreaming:  Wondering about things related to your project frees your mind to expand its horizons and explore new ways out there.  
• Reading:  Going to the library and spending hours reading can nurture your imagination and grow a strong creative thinker.  

Therefore, by working on being a risk taker, a day dreamer and a good reader you are forcing your mind to grow in all directions.

So follow the above steps to WOW your way to become a high-standard creative thinker as opposed to being a boring, traditional thinker with limited abilities!  

See also: Innovation Design Thinking

Thinking Hats: Approach Creative Thinking by de Bono  

The “6 Thinking Hats” is a system designed by Edward de Bono as an approach to promote creative thinking. It is a tool used to enhance real thinking to make the process more productive and focused.

The ‘6 Thinking Hats’ separates thinking into 6 different roles, each role identified with a colored symbolic thinking hat. This approach helps to redirect thoughts by mentally switching from one hat to the other.  

6 Thinking Hats – by de Bono

The following are the 6 thinking hats and what each color represents:  

• “White Hat” – stating facts and information, things you already know.
• “ Yellow Hat” – looking at the bright side, being optimistic and positive, adding value and benefits.
• “Red Hat” – expressing feelings and emotions, your reactions and opinions.
• “Blue Hat” – managing and controlling, looking at the bigger picture.
• “Green Hat” – exploring other alternatives, generating new ideas and solutions.
• “Black Hat” – being realistic and practical, being cautious, finding where things might go wrong, discovering dangers and difficulties. Black Hat is usually called the ‘devil’s voice’.

The above 6 hats, when combined together, allows your mind to think clearly and objectively.

For example, you can start by grabbing the “Blue Hat” asking yourself questions such as: what is our goal? Are the 6 guidelines observed clearly? What is the subject addressed? This helps you get an overall view of your problem.

Next, you can grab the “Red Hat” expressing what you feel towards the problem and asking yourself who might be affected by this problem.

Then, you can grab “Yellow” and later “Green Hat” to invent new concepts and solutions.

Finally, you can switch between the “White” and “Black hat” in order to validate your solution by using information that you already know.  

Start training your mind to switch directions from one hat to another to solve problems efficiently, effectively bringing out benefits too!  

Here’s a video to explain the process:

Another Creative Thinking Approach: Lateral Thinking 

Lateral Thinking is a phrase invented by Edward de Bono that means thinking about a problem in a different way than what is usually used.

You can check out Edward de Bono’s book on the topic:

Lateral thinking is far from logical thinking most people use today.

It is expanding your thinking limits, freeing yourself from boundaries giving you the chance to explore things you never knew existed.  

The following are 5 steps involved in Lateral Thinking: 

• Change the focus of your thinking , allowing your mind to discover new options. Don’t be afraid to try something new.  
• Break free from limits  of traditional logical thinking of reason. Think messy, think all over making every small detail count.  
• Develop new ideas and shape them to fit the  situation you have on hand. Generating ideas is not sufficient; implementing these ideas according to what you need is what it takes to be a success.  
• Use diverse unrelated data  to help you come up with new concepts. Break down data, group them together or even try data you have never imagined might work. By experimenting without judgment, unexpected solutions may arise!   
• Look beyond obvious alternatives . Sometimes, opportunities are hidden and can only be discovered by thinking ‘out of the box’.  

Creative thinking is the ability to free your mind to create, interpret and visualize possibilities.

See also: How to become an exceptional critical thinker

Whether you decide to use lateral thinking or the 6 hats thinking approach, work your way to become a WOW creative thinker!    

Creative thinking pushes passion allowing you to love and live beyond your limits.

However, sometimes situations happen in life that restricts your freedom. It’s up to you to break down these walls and live up to your full potential, with the support and resources from Customwritings to help you overcome any obstacles.

The following are 8 things you are advised to avoid in order to be able to unleash your creativity:  

Complain about a problem: 

Worry about what others think: , stay in your ‘comfort zone’: , school limiting your creativity: , hold back when you have a good idea: , stop learning: , assume certain perceptions: .

We suggest you try to avoid the 8 points mentioned above in order to free your mind to think creatively.

It is a step forward to raise hidden talents that will push our world to lasting global success!

How to succeed in your career based on your enneagram

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to succeeding in your career. Some personality types thrive when put in front of a crowd, but for others, it’s their worst nightmare! Similarly, some personality types have the potential to be amazing employees but their personalities may be able to show success in a different way. 

Understanding your career personality type is a great way to figure out how to succeed in your career. Using your Enneagram type , you can learn personality-specific ways that you can thrive. For example, type five does well when they can work independently and can use “heads down” (no meeting) days to get the space they need to be productive.

Ready to find your career Enneagram? Check out the infographic below to get started.

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19 Creative Thinking Skills (and How to Use Them!)

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In a fast-moving world, being able to find new perspectives and create innovation is an increasingly valuable skill . Creative thinkers are often at the forefront of driving change, solving problems, and developing new ideas. Not only that, but those who bring creative thinking to how they work are often happier, more productive, and resilient too!

So you might be asking yourself, how can I develop my creative thinking skills and think more creatively at work?  Whether you want to supercharge your interpersonal skills, advance your career or be happier and more satisfied in the work you do, it pays to learn to think more creatively.

For many people, creative thinking is the key that unlocks solutions, promotes diverse thinking, and leads to better relationships and job satisfaction. So how can you get started with creative thinking?  As passionate believers in the value of creative thinking, we’re here to help and truly think unleashing your creativity can be key to your personal development!

In this post we’ll define what creative thinking is, highlight the benefits, explore 19 key creative thinking skills and give you some examples of how to apply them in the workplace . Let’s dig in!

What is creative thinking?

Why is creative thinking important, what are the benefits of creative thinking.

• What are creative thinking skills?  
• Examples of creative thinking skills (and how to use them)
• How to use creative thinking skills at work?

How to improve your creative thinking skills? 

Creative thinking is the ability to approach a problem or challenge from a new perspective, alternative angle, or with an atypical mindset. This might mean thinking outside of the box, taking techniques from one discipline and applying them to another, or simply creating space for new ideas and alternative solutions to present themselves through dialogue, experimentation, or reflection.

Bear in mind that the number of different creative approaches is as vast as the number of creative thinkers – if an approach helps you see things differently and approaching a challenge creatively, follow that impulse.

While there are some proven methods and guidelines that can help you be a better creative thinker, remember that everyone can be creative and finding what works for you is what is important, not the terminology or specific framework.

One misapprehension about creative thinking is that you have to be skilled at more traditional creative skills like drawing or writing. This isn’t true. What’s important is that you are open to exploring alternative solutions while employing fresh techniques and creative approaches to what you’re working on. 

You don’t need to be a great artist or even work in a traditionally creative field – we believe everyone is capable of creative thinking and that it enriches your personal and professional lives when you learn to be more creative.

Another misconception about creative thinking is that it applies only to the ideation or technically creative parts of the process. All aspects of our lives and interactions with people and challenges can benefit from creative thinking – from the ability to see things differently.

At work, thinking creatively might mean finding better ways to communicate, improve your working practices, or developing and implementing fresh solutions too.

Creative thinking is important because it drives new ideas, encourages learning, and creates a safe space for experimentation and risk-taking.

As organizations and people grow, they often develop tried and tested ways of operating. While it’s important to have solid working practices and processes, unswerving dedication to the norm can lead to stagnation and a lack of innovation and growth. 

Creative thinking is important because it drives new ideas, encourages learning and creates a safe space for experimentation and risk-taking. Simply put, creativity and creative thinking are part of what helps businesses and individuals succeed and grow .

Whether your team or business thinks of itself as a creative one, you can’t afford to miss out on the benefits of creative thinking if you want to grow , deliver change, and help your team bring their best selves to work. 

Using creative thinking skills at work creates b enefits not only in the ways we solve problems but also in how we approach everything from communication to self-fulfillment, task management, and growth . Bringing a culture of creative thinking into a workshop or group is often the job of a talented facilitator but whatever your role, there are benefits to thinking more creatively. Let’s explore some of the benefits of thinking creatively at work and in your everyday life!

Build empathy

• Bust assumptions  
• Become a better problem solver  

Find ways to move quickly and effectively

• Increase happiness

Discover new talents and promote learning

• Boost resilience and deal with adversity

Boost your CV and employability 

Empathy and creative thinking go hand-in-hand. By practicing creative thinking skills and regularly looking for new ideas and points of view, you can actively become better at understanding your colleagues, customers, and even your family and friends. One of the major barriers to having productive and meaningful relationships is an unwillingness to see things from a perspective other than your own or failing to understand how another person is feeling. 

By developing this skill, you can engage more meaningfully and honestly with people, ideas, and perspectives in all aspects of life. What’s more, because of the benefits that creative thinking can bring, you’ll actively want to see things from new perspectives and be more empathic : something that’s fundamental to creating real change.

Bust assumptions 

Assumptions can be harmful in both our personal and professional lives. Whether it’s making assumptions about why someone is behaving the way they are in a workshop or what features will make your customers happiest, holding onto incorrect or inadequately formed assumptions can be problematic . It can create difficulty and tension in relationships and what’s more, it can lead to the development or introduction of solutions that are simply unfit for purpose.

Using creative thinking skills to challenge assumptions, build clarity, and see things from new perspectives can be transformative. If an assumption someone else makes feels incorrect, think about why and try to find out more. If someone challenges an assumption you hold, be open and listen.

Become a better problem solver

An example of not being a creative thinker is sticking to a tried and tested approach and sticking to the norm in every situation without considering whether trying something new might not lead to better results.

When looking to solve a problem or create innovative solutions, going outside of what you know and being open to new ideas is not only exciting, but it can create more impactful solutions too. You might even try using problem-solving techniques alongside some of the creative thinking skills below to find the absolute best solutions!

Some processes and working practices can be slow, especially in large organizations with many moving parts – but do they all have to be? Thinking creatively can help you find lean, actionable solutions that you can put into practice quickly and test ahead of bigger changes .

Experimentation and a willingness to take risks are vital to growth and change, and creative thinking helps create a climate conducive to finding and trying quick, effective solutions. 

Increase happiness and satisfaction

Finding fresh, appropriate solutions to problems can be incredibly satisfying and is a fast-track to finding happiness both in and out of work. Bringing your whole self to a situation and being enabled to think outside of the box is a great way to feel valued and engaged with what you are doing.

Feeling frustrated with how a situation or process at work is going? Try developing and employing your creative thinking skills alongside your colleagues to find a better, happier way to collaborate! Feel unfulfilled or that not all of your skills and interests are being utilized? Consider how you might creatively deploy the skills or talents that make you happy and scratch that itch.

As children, we are encouraged to see things differently and try new things as part of our learning and growing process. There’s no reason we shouldn’t do this as adults too! Trying new things and learning to think creatively can help you find new skills, talents, and things you didn’t even know you were good at.

Staying curious and following what interests you with an open mind is a prime example of what a small change in thinking can achieve. Remember that creative thinking is a gateway to learning and by actively developing your creative toolset, you can grow and discover more in all walks of life – a surefire path to personal development.

Get better at dealing with adversity

It’s easy to get frustrated when problems seem to come thick and fast and existing solutions or methods don’t work. Adversity is something all of us will face at some point in our personal and professional lives but there are ways you can become more able to handle problems when they arise .

A strong suite of creative thinking skills is an important aspect of how we can build resilience and be more flexible when adapting or creating change. By exploring alternative ways of thinking, you’ll be better prepared to face adversity more openly and find alternative ways to resolve challenges in whatever context they emerge.

Creative thinkers are valuable employees at organizations of any size. Whether it’s championing innovation, creating change in policy, or finding better ways to collaborate, people who can effectively solve problems and leverage their creative thinking skills are better positioned for success at work.

Consider how you might plug your skills gap and boost your CV by developing your creative skillset and you won’t just be more successful – you’ll be happier and more engaged at work too! 

Whatever your background or role, you are capable of thinking creatively and bringing creativity into your life.

What are creative thinking skills? 

Creative thinking skills are the methods or approaches you might use when trying to solve a problem differently and explore a fresh perspective. While some of these skills might come naturally to you, others might need a more considered, purposeful approach.

For example, you might be a natural visual thinker who is great at presenting and interpreting visual information but you might not be so good at freely experimenting or creating space for reflection. In this case, you might try some brainstorming exercises to loosen up your experimentation muscles or create scheduled time for reflection in your working routine.

While creative professions like artists, writers, or designers may see more obvious uses for creative thinking skills, all professions can benefit from developing and deploying creative thinking . If you find yourself having difficulty at work or in need of inspiration or motivation, finding space to build on your creative skillset is a way to not only move forward but have fun while doing so.

If you think you’re not creative or have no creative thinking skills, we’re here to tell you that whatever your background or role, you are capable of thinking creatively and bringing creativity into your life : you might just need a little push or to reframe how you think about creativity!

Save time planning your next creative workshop

Examples of creative thinking skills (and how to use them) 

Creative thinking skills come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from things like abstract thinking and storytelling to finding ways to radically plan projects or recognize organizational patterns .

In this section, we’ll explore each of the example creative skills below and talk about how you might use them in your personal and professional practice. We’ll also point out some things to watch out for where appropriate so you can make the most out of your new creative skills and avoid potential setbacks.

We’ll also include a method from the SessionLab library that will help you practice and explore each skill, whether alone or with others .

Feel free to read and explore the creative thinking skill which feels most interesting or applicable to you and come back and experiment with others in the future!  

Some example creative thinking skills include:

Experimentation

Open-mindedness, lateral thinking.

• Pattern recognition   

Deep and active listening

Challenging norms, lean organization, simplification, radical planning.

• Collaborative thinking

Data collection

• Interpretation and analysis

Interdisciplinary thinking

Frameworks and rulesets, micro and macro thinking, visual thinking, abstract thinking, storytelling.

Note that this list is not exhaustive, and there are many more ways of thinking creatively – try to see these creative skills as a jumping-off point for seeing things differently and exploring creative thinking at work . 

Let’s get started!

A core creative skill is the ability to experiment and try new things, whether that’s in your personal practice, in a closed environment, or even in the field. It can be easy to fall short of implementing new ideas or following through with creative projects because critical judgment or overthinking gets in the way . A good experimenter is a self-starter who makes informed decisions to kickstart projects and test hypotheses. 

Think of a painter who throws paint at a canvas and introduces new materials without overthinking or being self-critical. While not everything they try will be perfect, that’s the point – not every experiment needs to be successful in order to teach you something useful. By experimenting, you can try things that might prove useful or will lead you towards new solutions and better ideas. Remember that the act of experimentation is generative and often fun so be sure to give it a try!

One thing to watch out for is being sure to effectively capture the results of your experiments and to continue developing and iterating on the results. Experimentation is a great place to start, but remember that it is part of a larger process. Without effective documentation, you might not trace what delivered the best results and be unable to reproduce the outcomes. Experimentation is a great example of why creative freedom should be paired with a strong process in order to be at its best. 

Four-Step Sketch   #design sprint   #innovation   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   The four-step sketch is an exercise that helps people to create well-formed concepts through a structured process that includes: Review key information Start design work on paper,  Consider multiple variations , Create a detailed solution . This exercise is preceded by a set of other activities allowing the group to clarify the challenge they want to solve. See how the Four Step Sketch exercise fits into a Design Sprint

Four-Step Sketch is a great method for promoting experimentation. By following a process that enables quick brainstorming before development, you can help build an experimental mindset that also generates results.

Open-mindedness is a critical element of creativity and one of the best creative thinking skills you can try to build if you’re new to the practice. Being open-minded means being receptive to new ideas, different ways of thinking, and perspectives which are not your own. It means not closing down conversations or ideas prematurely and trying to actively explore what is presented to you.

Imagine that a colleague comes up with an idea that is so far out of the status quo it seems off-the-wall and bizarre. Being open-minded means actively engaging with what is presented and to refrain from forming judgments before first understanding where your colleague is coming from .

Your colleagues’ initial idea might not be perfect, but being open-minded and truly attempting to understand their perspective means you can create dialogue, foster creativity, and move forward as a team. 

Being open-minded doesn’t mean accepting every new idea and agreeing wholesale with every different opinion. While you should always try to be open and receptive to new ideas and other perspectives, you should also critically appraise and engage with them as part of a larger creative process. Don’t be so open-minded you have no strong opinions of your own!

Heard, Seen, Respected (HSR)   #issue analysis   #empathy   #communication   #liberating structures   #remote-friendly   You can foster the empathetic capacity of participants to “walk in the shoes” of others. Many situations do not have immediate answers or clear resolutions. Recognizing these situations and responding with empathy can improve the “cultural climate” and build trust among group members. HSR helps individuals learn to respond in ways that do not overpromise or overcontrol. It helps members of a group notice unwanted patterns and work together on shifting to more productive interactions. Participants experience the practice of more compassion and the benefits it engenders.

Open-mindedness is particularly useful when it comes to meaningfully communicating with others. Whether its developing the ability to walk in the shoes of someone else or building empathy and listening skills, Heard, Seen, Respected is a great method to try when learning to be more open-minded.

Lateral thinking is a prime example of how we can creatively solve real-world problems in a measurable and easy-to-understand manner. Deploying lateral thinking means using reasoning or non-traditional logic to find an indirect or out-of-the-box approach to solving a problem. 

A simple example might be a challenge like: we need to increase revenue. Traditional thinking might mean considering hiring new salespeople to try and get more direct sales. A lateral approach might mean engaging more with current customers to reduce churn, working with external partners to get new leads, working to get sponsorship, piloting an affiliate scheme or any number of new ways to solve the existing problem.

Broadly speaking, lateral thinking often means stepping back and considering solutions or approaches outside of the immediately obvious.

One potential danger with lateral thinking is spending time to create new solutions to problems that don’t need them. Not every problem needs to be solved laterally and the best solution might actually be the most straightforward. Be sure to tap into existing knowledge and appraise a problem before trying something radical to avoid wasted time or frustration!  

The Creativity Dice   #creativity   #problem solving   #thiagi   #issue analysis   Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

Developing your lateral thinking skills comes more naturally to some than others. The Creativity Dice is a great method for getting out of linear thinking habits and moving into different ways of thinking.

Pattern recognition 

Pattern recognition is the ability to recognise existing or emerging patterns and make connections based on the patterns you have discerned . While pattern recognition goes back to our prehistoric roots, being able to spot patterns outside of the ordinary and consider what may not be immediately obvious is a vital creative thinking skill for today. 

Consider how meetings between some members of a team might often end in conflict. While it might first seem that these two people just can’t get along, it might actually be that certain emotional triggers are being tripped or the format of the conversation isn’t working. Looking beyond your initial impressions and from a new perspective might let you find a repeating pattern that isn’t immediately obvious.

When trying to spot patterns, try to be mindful of existing biases so you avoid bending what is happening to fit a pattern you might be expecting. Be sure to interpret all data fairly and honestly, even if you believe a pattern is already forming. 

Affinity Map   #idea generation   #gamestorming   Most of us are familiar with brainstorming—a method by which a group generates as many ideas around a topic as possible in a limited amount of time. Brainstorming works to get a high quantity of information on the table. But it begs the follow-up question of how to gather meaning from all the data. Using a simple Affinity Diagram technique can help us discover embedded patterns (and sometimes break old patterns) of thinking by sorting and clustering language-based information into relationships. It can also give us a sense of where most people’s thinking is focused

Pattern recognition is a skill that benefits from thoughtful practice. Try starting with a deliberate pattern-finding process like Affinity Map to build the ability to see patterns where they might not first be obvious.

While it might not seem like it at first, being a good listener is a creative thinking skill. It asks that a person not only try to understand what is being said but also to engage with the why and how of the conversation in order to reframe prior thinking and see things from a new perspective.

Deep listening or active listening is not only hearing the words that someone is saying but actively seeking to interpret their intent, understand their position, and create a positive space for further conversation. Not only does this create a deeper conversation for both parties, but this act of engagement and understanding leads to more creative and dynamic results too. 

Think of a workplace grievance that one person might have against another. Without actively listening and trying to understand the core issues from the perspective of everyone involved, you might not only fail to solve the issue but actually make staff feel less heard and valued too.

By employing this creative thinking skill in such a conversation you can see things more clearly and find a way to creatively satisfy the needs of everyone involved. 

Active Listening   #hyperisland   #skills   #active listening   #remote-friendly   This activity supports participants to reflect on a question and generate their own solutions using simple principles of active listening and peer coaching. It’s an excellent introduction to active listening but can also be used with groups that are already familiar with it. Participants work in groups of three and take turns being: “the subject”, the listener, and the observer.

Trying to be more present in conversations is a great place to begin building your deep listening and active listening skills . Want to supercharge the process as a group? Try a role-play activity like Active Listening to more thoughtfully see and reflect on how important this skill can be.

Not all established working practices are the best way of doing things. People who practice this creative thinking skill are likely to question the status quo in search of something new which can deliver meaningful change. While any challenge to the established order needs to be conducted respectfully and thoughtfully, thinking of how to go beyond the norm is how innovation occurs and where creative thinkers excel.

When trying to practice this skill, be prepared to question existing methods and frameworks and ask if there might be a better way outside of the limits of the current system. 

As with lateral thinking, it’s important to recognize that not everything is a problem that needs to be solved and so you may need to be selective in which norms should be challenged – otherwise, you may never make it out of the front door!

Additionally, challenging the established order often means questioning the work someone else has already done. While this is a necessary part of growth, it should always be done constructively and respectfully.  

W³ – What, So What, Now What?   #issue analysis   #innovation   #liberating structures   You can help groups reflect on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict. It is possible for every voice to be heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new direction. Progressing in stages makes this practical—from collecting facts about What Happened to making sense of these facts with So What and finally to what actions logically follow with Now What . The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do. Voila!

Challenging norms without a considered approach can be ineffective and potentially frustrating. Taking the time to build shared understanding and push in the same direction with What, So What, Now What? is a great way to explore how your existing process is or isn’t working and challenge norms productively.

Creative thinking doesn’t mean being disorganized or chaotic just because you have an abundance of ideas. In order to facilitate creative thinking, it’s important to stay organized and approach the process with the right framework, mindset, and space. As a creative thinking skill, lean organization means considering what you absolutely need to do in order to make things happen, versus what you don’t.

Think of how a large, multi-discipline team might go about organizing themselves for a big project. While it’s vital everyone is aligned and kept up to date, a traditional system of scheduled meetings might not be the most productive. Lean organization means considering the needs of the team, the project and thinking creatively about what you need to stay organized, and keeping unnecessary admin to a minimum.

Thinking creatively about organization is something all leaders should practice but any project can benefit from thinking through the process by which it will be accomplished. 

MoSCoW   #define intentions   #create   #design   #action   #remote-friendly   MoSCoW is a method that allows the team to prioritize the different features that they will work on. Features are then categorized into “Must have”, “Should have”, “Could have”, or “Would like but won‘t get”. To be used at the beginning of a timeslot (for example during Sprint planning) and when planning is needed.

Lean organization often means being honest and realistic about what is absolutely necessary versus nice to have. MoSCoW is an effective agile framework for planning work and also reframing your approach to organizing time, tasks and more!

Simplifying, presenting or decoding any information is a vital skill when working with others. In a creative thinking context, simplification is the act of seeing what is important about a task or piece of data and stripping away the extraneous parts to see things more clearly.

Some problems can feel unassailable because of their complexity or scale – simplification allows you to reconsider a problem in simple terms and reframe it in a way that means you can approach it productively. 

An example of using this creative thinking skill at work might be when presenting the results of a project to the rest of your organization. People working on other teams and in different disciplines could become disengaged if exposed to too many complex moving parts or it might simply be a waste of time to discuss every detail.

By simplifying a project into more succinct terms, you not only can help your group connect with the material swiftly but also boil a project down to its most important elements . This is a great way to creatively re-energize a project and identify where you can make an impact immediately. 

6 Words   #ufmcs   #red teaming   This tool is designed to help critical thinkers focus on a core idea by writing a short phrase summarizing their thoughts into a set number of words that are clear, concise, and accurate. This idea is based on a complete short story written by Ernest Hemingway: “For sale, baby shoes – never worn.” Six Words forces people to synthesize their ideas in a succinct and meaningful way, cutting away fluff and distilling the idea to its bare essence.

One way of practicing simplification is by summarising or condensing thoughts, ideas of stories into a more concise, compressed form . 6 Words is a method for cutting away extraneous material from ideas that engages creative thinking and reframing approachably – great for groups!

Any major project requires some measure of planning in order to succeed, especially when working with others. But are there times where overplanning or traditional working processes feel too slow or frustrating for the project at hand? This is where these creative thinking skills come in handy! Radical planning is a way of approaching project planning from an alternative angle in order to generate fast, effective results.  

When taking this planning approach, you will often shuffle the order of the normal planning process in order to create alternative outcomes and cut out elements you may not need. For example, with the backcasting workshop activity, the approach is to think of desired outcomes up to twenty years in the future and work backward to figure out how we can make small steps today.

You might also try planning with a mindset of what you and your team can each achieve immediately and in a more experimental fashion with an activity like 15% solutions . 

By approaching planning with a creative thinking mindset, you can surface ideas and plans which may not have come up with a more traditional planning process. Another great benefit is to question the normal manner in which your team or organisation approaches planning and can help your team find a method that works best for you!

Backcasting   #define intentions   #create   #design   #action   Backcasting is a method for planning the actions necessary to reach desired future goals. This method is often applied in a workshop format with stakeholders participating. To be used when a future goal (even if it is vague) has been identified.

Collaborative thinking 

Effective collaboration requires us to bring many different skills together, but consciously considering how to be a more effective collaborator is worth mentioning separately. When a creative thinker approaches collaboration, they will try to think of how to use alternative approaches to make the collaborative process more effective while also helping everyone on the team contribute and be heard.

An example is when it comes to getting work done in meetings – if the current process isn’t enabling everyone to collaborate effectively, you might employ creative thinking to try finding an alternative format, consider working asynchronously, or timeboxing parts of your agenda.

The best collaborators also find ways to champion the work of others and create a safe space for everyone to contribute – it might not be enough to assume collaboration will be accomplished when you get people in a room.

Employing this creative thinking skill can make all the difference when it comes to job satisfaction, interpersonal relationships and group outcomes too! Try approaching your collaborative projects more mindfully and see how it changes things for you!

Marshmallow challenge with debriefing   #teamwork   #team   #leadership   #collaboration   In eighteen minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top. The Marshmallow Challenge was developed by Tom Wujec, who has done the activity with hundreds of groups around the world. Visit the Marshmallow Challenge website for more information. This version has an extra debriefing question added with sample questions focusing on roles within the team.

Working together on a task as a team is an effective way of kickstarting collaborative thinking, especially if you approach the task mindfully . The Marshamllow Challenge with debriefing is a proven method for engaging teamwork and by adding reflection time afterward, your group can share and build on what they learned.

Collecting data might seem like a solely analytical skill, but it is another area where creative thinking can lead to productive, unexpected and transformative results. Approaching the data collection process creatively might mean trying new techniques or sources, or simply reconsidering the how and why of your data collection processes.  

Imagine you are running a survey to measure customer happiness. You might try asking traditional survey questions, but find that your response rate is low and furthermore, your approach might be invasive and actively decrease happiness too!

If you were to approach this problem creatively, you might find that using a simplified form, asking for feedback at a different point in the customer journey, or utilizing an alternative measurement scheme delivers the data you are looking for. In many cases, thinking about the questions you are asking from a new point of view is what unlocks a better data collection process.

The key to this creative thinking skill is to try looking at the data collection process from a new, preferably customer-centric perspective while also considering why and how you are collecting data. You will likely find that by asking for input from your customers more creatively, you create space for more creative responses too!

3 Question Mingle   #hyperisland   #team   #get-to-know   An activity to support a group to get to know each other through a set of questions that they create themselves. The activity gets participants moving around and meeting each other one-on-one. It’s useful in the early stages of team development and/or for groups to reconnect with each other after a period of time apart.

3 Question Mingle is a get to know you activity that does double duty in demonstrating the power of approaching data collection creatively. By creating their own questions, a group can really think about what they want to know, how they ask questions, and how the results differ. Be sure to give it a try!

Interpretation and analysis

Interpretation skills can be varied though in a creative thinking context it means being able to successfully analyze an idea, solution, dataset, or conversation and draw effective conclusions. Great interpreters are people with a desire to listen, understand, and dig deeper in order to make their interpretation fully realised.

One of the ways creative thinking can improve interpretation is in helping us challenge assumptions or initial readings of data in order to consider other possible interpretations and perspectives.

Say your product is having a problem with losing lots of new customers shortly after signing up. You do a survey and people say that they leave because the product isn’t useful to them. Your initial interpretation of that data might be that you’re not the right fit for these customers or that the product needs new features.

If you were to apply creative thinking to the interpretation of this data, you might conduct further research and see that the product is fine, but people didn’t find the right features for them and that your onboarding process needs to be improved.

The key here is interpreting the data from various perspectives and then correlating that with other sources to form an accurate and representative interpretation, rather than going with your initial assumption . By following this process, you might also find that the way you are collecting data is flawed (perhaps not asking the right questions) or that more research and data collection is needed.

So long as you are sure to have data points and analysis to back up your findings, it pays to explore alternative interpretations so you can avoid bias and find the most accurate takeaways . 

Fishbone diagram   #frame insights   #create   #design   #issue analysis   Fishbone diagrams show the causes of a specific event.

Effective interpretation and analysis isn’t possible without a thorough exploration of the problem or topic at hand. Fishbone Diagram is a simple method for not only surfacing insights but framing them in a way that allows for proper and multi-perspective analysis.

Einstein is quoted as saying, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” In this mold, sometimes the best ideas and solutions come from fields and disciplines outside of our own. By considering how someone with a different skillset to your own would solve a problem or deploy solutions, you can often find ideas and techniques you may never have considered. 

Consider being tasked with improving employee happiness. A social media manager with a background in illustration and events management would likely try a very different approach to a sales manager who is used to a culture of incentives and bonuses. If you were trying to develop a new product, think of how a developer would approach deciding on key features versus an academic or a customer success manager? 

The important thing here is to try and use the perspective, skill set , and approach of another field or discipline to first consider and then solve a problem more fully . Where possible, try and include people from other disciplines in the process and try to avoid making assumptions.

As with all creative thinking skills, being open-minded and sourcing the expertise and opinions of others where necessary is vital when creating true innovation.

Mash-Up Innovation   #hyperisland   #innovation   #idea generation   Mash-ups is a collaborative idea generation method in which participants come up with innovative concepts by combining different elements together. In a first step, participants brainstorm around different areas, such as technologies, human needs, and existing services. In a second step, they rapidly combine elements from those areas to create new, fun and innovative concepts. Mash-ups demonstrates how fast and easy it can be to come up with innovative ideas.

Interdisciplinary thinking isn’t just for radical academics. By combining ideas from disparate fields in a fast, fun manner, Mash-Up Innovation is great for building creative thinking skills and generating results in one fell swoop!

All creative thinking skills are about reframing things in a new way of finding alternative approaches. This can often mean abandoning an existing framework and thinking outside of the box. That said , another way of applying creative thinking is by bringing rulesets, constraints, or frameworks to your approach in order to trigger deeper creative work and tap into a problem-solving mindset . 

Consider a simple task like trying to generate more customers. With free reign, there are innumerable ways to accomplish this. But what happens if you create a rule like, we cannot spend any money, or, these must be driven by social media alone. In order to accomplish your goal under these conditions, you must think more creatively and deeply, deploying more concentrated problem-solving skills than if you could try any approach you wanted. 

Alternatively, you might approach a problem with a framework that forces you to think under specific circumstances or with a rigid set of steps. Six thinking hats is a great workshop activity that asks participants to frame and reframe a problem from six different angles. While it might first seem counterintuitive, the use of rules or frameworks can create fertile ground for creative thinking and lead to more realized solutions!

The Six Thinking Hats   #creative thinking   #meeting facilitation   #problem solving   #issue resolution   #idea generation   #conflict resolution   The Six Thinking Hats are used by individuals and groups to separate out conflicting styles of thinking. They enable and encourage a group of people to think constructively together in exploring and implementing change, rather than using argument to fight over who is right and who is wrong.

Not all problems are created equal. Depending on how much it directly affects you, you might see a given problem as being more or less important than your colleagues, leading to a different response and approach to solving the problem. This creative thinking skill is all about being able to switch between seeing the bigger picture while also considering how something might manifest on a smaller scale.

Think of how frustrating it can be when an executive team makes sweeping changes that affect frontline staff in a way they might not have anticipated. Micro and macro thinking means seeing both problems and potential solutions from multiple perspectives and adjusting accordingly. 

Another key aspect of applying this approach is knowing the limits of your own knowledge and involving stakeholders from all levels of an organization to inform your ideation and problem-solving process.

If you’ve never worked in support and don’t regularly talk to your support team, you might not understand how a change to helpdesk software could impact your team and your clients – remember that a big part of any change in perspective is doing the research and talking to who will be affected ! 

Stakeholder Round Robin Brainstorm   #idea generation   #brainstorming   #perspectives   #remote-friendly   #online   A divergent process to generate ideas and understanding from different perspectives.

Learning to practice micro and macro thinking often starts with first listening to and understanding the needs and perspectives of others . Especially those who have varied positions in relation to the problem, solutions, or organization you are working with. Stakeholder Round Robin Brainstorm is an effective method of surfacing insights and perspectives quickly and productively.

Of all the creative thinking skills on this list, visual thinking might be one you are most familiar with. Visual thinking is a method of processing, learning, and presenting information and concepts with visual assets such as images.

Visual thinking is often associated with creative thinking because of the consumption and creation of images at its heart. Don’t let this make you think you have to be able to draw in order to be a visual thinker.

Applying this creative thinking skill means being able to interpret visual information, present concepts in an often simple visual manner, and communicate in a way that is more universally understood.  Drawing stick people is actively encouraged!

Visual approaches to problem-solving can help foster shared understanding and help people be more succinct or creative in their ideas. Remember: if an idea is too complex to be put into pictures, perhaps it needs further refinement .

Imagie-ination   #idea generation   #gamestorming   Images have the ability to spark insights and to create new associations and possible connections. That is why pictures help generate new ideas, which is exactly the point of this exercise.

While you might be able to jump straight into direct applications of visual thinking, it can help to try an exercise where you and a group explore using images simply and engagingly. Imagie-ination helps unlock the power of visual thinking as a team while also helping generate ideas too!

Abstraction or abstract thinking is the art of taking things out of their normal context and presenting them in a radical new light . While most creative thinking skills utilise abstraction in some form, it’s worth noting that actively trying to take an idea from one context and place it in another is a creative approach all on its own.

Think of Pablo Picasso’s cubist portraits – by taking something as common as a human face and bringing abstraction to his process, he created something radically different and innovative. You can create a similar effect by recontextualizing ideas, concepts, and problems and by looking at them from different, perhaps even conflicting points of view.

Abstract thinking is often built on engaging with absurdities, paradoxes, and unexpected connections . As such, it can often be fun, wild and surprising, and is a great way to generate creative ideas even in those who might be resistant to other forms of creative thinking. Lean into the weird!

Forced Analogy   #divergent thinking   #zoom   #virtual   #remote-friendly   People compare something (e.g. themselves, their company, their team) to an object.  

Forced Analogy is a quick, fun activity you can use to promote abstract thinking. Comparing one thing to another seemingly unrelated thing asks for a creative approach to context and metaphor and can really unlock a groups divergent thinking process.

Telling stories or narrativizing a problem can help us not only see things differently but understand where we share common ground with others. Everybody tells stories – whether that’s explaining our employment history, telling colleagues about what happened at the weekend, or when creating user personas and journeys. 

Leverage this inclination to help people not only realize they are creative thinkers by nature but to help them share something of themselves too!

As a creative thinking skill, storytelling is about applying our natural proclivity for stories into new situations or thinking about how to reappraise or present material narratively . Think of the basic storytelling concept like the idea that all stories have a beginning, middle, and end – how might we bring this thinking to a tough challenge, a new product, or when solving a customer complaint?

You might even use storytelling tropes like the hero’s journey when exploring ideas or company conflicts. Whichever way you go, remember that stories are a universal element of culture and you have a rich lineage to dip into if you need a new perspective. 

Telling Our Stories   #hyperisland   #team   #teambuilding   To work effectively together team members need to build relations, show trust, and be open with each other. This method supports those things through a process of structured storytelling. Team members answer questions related to their childhood, young adulthood, and now; then weave them into a story to share with the rest of their team.

Telling Stories in a collaborative space is one of the best ways you can approach creative thinking through narrative . By doing this activity as a team, you can help a group see the benefit of applying storytelling approaches outside of more traditional forms.

How many times have you had a tough problem that you can’t seem to solve so you get frustrated and leave your desk. Then, when you’re on a walk, standing in the supermarket, or falling asleep, a solution seems to arrive out of thin air? Often, you’ll find that creating space to reflect on a problem is an effective way to find a way forward.

The trick with making reflective space work as a larger part of your working practice is knowing when to take time to reflect, building space into your regular schedule, and finding techniques that allow things to surface effectively.

This might mean going for a walk with the intention to be present in noticing the world around you and gaining insights that can help your situation. It might also mean remembering to take time to rest or simply read and give your brain something good to chew on.

I notice, I wonder   #design   #observation   #empathy   #issue analysis   Learn through careful observation. Observation and intuition are critical design tools. This exercise helps you leverage both. Find clues about the context you’re designing for that may be hidden in plain sight.

In a creative thinking context, reflection often means giving an idea time to unfurl and to resist the temptation to force it – by creating space to observe and reflect with I notice, I wonder you might see new ways of thinking emerge naturally.

How to use creative thinking skills at work? 

At SessionLab, we’ve found many of the above creative thinking skills helpful when finding better ways to collaborate , handle workplace challenges or generate new ideas . Here are just a few small examples of things we’ve done that have benefited from thinking creatively as a team.

Using creative thinking to facilitate a site redesign

Using creative thinking to improve team communication, using creative thinking to improve collaboration.

Remember that creative thinking needn’t be explosive or radical to be useful – a simple shift in mindset or perspective can be all you need to create meaningful and impactful change.

When we began working on a site-wide redesign, we had to deploy a large number of creative thinking skills to make the process smooth and effective.

When first determining how to approach the project and scope the work, we reviewed how we had worked together on large projects in the past. While we saw there was room to improve, finding the best way to proceed and make the changes we needed was no easy task.

Challenging the entire process from start to finish with a creative thinking mindset and trying to stay open to alternative methods where possible was what unlocked the process for us. By reconsidering how we were running meetings, sharing feedback, and collaborating, we were able to identify where we were going wrong and then try alternative approaches more freely.

When it came to implementing solutions, we were also sure to  stay open to experimentation while challenging our core assumptions of what would work and wouldn’t. This really helped us refine the working process and tailor it to our particular team and goals.

Another example came with finding a new approach when work stalled on a specific page. For our features page, we began by following the standard approach we had developed – writing the copy and structuring the page first before then following with illustrations and images.

In this case, our existing approach got us to an impasse : it felt difficult for our designer to be creative and find the best way to translate ideas into images if the copy had already been defined and the structure felt too rigid. What we decided to do was to reverse the workflow completely and allow the designer to create design elements before we wrote the copy and implemented too rigid a structure.  

Throughout the project, creative thinking allowed us to challenge whether the existing way we did something was the right one and gave us scope to experiment and be open when finding solutions. Not only did this help us solve the immediate problems as they arose but they helped us come up with a great new design too! 

Creative thinking can come in extremely handy when it comes to communicating. If one form of communication or working process isn’t working, approaching the discussion with a creative thinking mindset can help resolve the immediate issue and create lasting change in how we converse and work together too. 

Like many virtual teams, we faced the challenge of some meetings feeling unproductive . The issues ranged from overrunning, crosstalk, not everyone feeling heard or able to contribute, or getting lost in ancillary discussions that were not productive or necessary. In an online setting, it can be hard to keep everyone on track and for things to run smoothly without accidentally talking over one another or causing frustration. 

When it came to crosstalk, we wanted to avoid the frustration of interruption and disruption but also wanted to ensure people did not feel like they couldn’t contribute . Using the finger rules technique in a remote setting allowed people to easily show when they wanted to speak and what they wanted to discuss without disrupting the flow of the meeting.

We also found that the reason some daily meetings felt unproductive was because the meetings were for the purpose of daily updates and there didn’t always feel like there was a lot to say, thus leading to frustration or unproductive time being spent in these meetings.

In this example, we moved to a weekly format while also ensuring that we continue daily check-ins on Slack. This approach meant that we cut down on unnecessary meetings while still ensuring everyone’s needs were met .

This method is an example of creatively approaching a communication problem by thinking outside of the box and being prepared to challenge core assumptions . While we all wanted to stay informed, it really helped to reconsider the methods for staying informed and whether our current approach was the best way to achieve what we needed. It was also useful to reassess how we approached meeting agendas and goal-setting – follow the link for more on that if you’re having difficulty with unproductive meetings!

Remember that creative thinking needn’t be explosive or radical to be useful – a simple shift in mindset or perspective can be all you need to create meaningful and impactful change .

Remember that looking to others and being inspired by how they did things can be as transformative as trying to reinvent the wheel!

A final example is how we approached collaborating on creating the new design. While all projects at SessionLab feature collaboration between multiple parties, in this case we wanted to create space for everyone on the team to contribute.

We found that when trying to collectively brainstorm in a live, remote session, it became difficult for everyone to contribute and reflect on what was being shared by other members of the team effectively .

Some people had been able to prepare less than others, other people were less aware of all the circumstances of the project, or others were less able to switch gears during their working day. This led to some contributions being missed, a messier working process, and a feeling of being rushed – all of which lead to less effective outcomes than we might have hoped for.

In this case, we thought of how asynchronous work , reflection time, and some small process changes might help solve the problems we were running into. We wanted to be able to respond to what was being shared more effectively while also creating space for everyone to contribute in a way that was most productive for them.

Starting the brainstorming session in personal MURAL boards asynchronously and on our own time meant everyone was able to ideate at the time that was best for them and without any distractions . By then encouraging review and reflection on other people’s boards ahead of the main session, we were able to properly take in ideas and let them develop without feeling hurried.

This approach reduced the amount of time we actively spent working together in a meeting while improving the quality of the work . It helped people engage with the process, reduced potential frustration, and also meant we were more able to respond fully to the suggestions of others. This was a great example of how thinking creatively and learning from others can help create better outcomes and a more streamlined process. 

It’s also worth noting that reflecting on our conversation with Anja Svetina Nabergoj regarding asynchronous learning and finding inspiration there was part of what helped this process along. Remember that looking to others and being inspired by how they did things can be as transformative as trying to reinvent the wheel!

Creative workshops and meetings made easy

Whether you find that creative thinking doesn’t come naturally, if your skills need some attention, or even if you just want to try new ways of working, it can be difficult to know where to begin .

Thinking about the creative thinking skills above and considering which you might be missing or could benefit from purposeful attention is a great place to start, though there are also some concrete ways you can approach the process and improve your creative thinking abilities in a pinch. Let’s see how! 

Be present and aware of how you feel

Create space for new ideas, look to others for inspiration, throw yourself into new things, encourage creative thinking in others.

All skills get better with practice and creative thinking is no exception. Whether it’s active listening, experimentation or any other creative thinking style, it’s okay to not get it right the first time . The very act of being open to new approaches and perspectives is itself a way to improve your creative thinking skill set. However you try to implement creative thinking, know that exploration, iteration, and practice are fundamental parts of the process.

Try starting small and practice your creative thinking skills in your interpersonal relationships and collaborative projects. Take note of how it goes and try building up to larger and larger implementations of your creative thinking approaches. 

A key part of cultivating or improving any new skill is to be fully present and aware when utilizing that skill. Consider how a sculptor needs to be aware of their materials, how they handle the material and place them on the board in order to be truly successful. Being present in the moment is important for any collaborative process, but is an especially vital aspect of creative thinking.

If you find yourself frustrated, excited, engaged, or stuck, make a mental note of how you are feeling and consider how you might do things differently. Staying present and actively engaging with how a situation makes you feel before responding is one of the most effective ways of cultivating and improving your creative thinking – be sure to give it a go! 

As with many aspects of creativity, it’s not always effective to force it. Good ideas and finding new approaches can take time and an important part of the creative thinking process is creating space not only for reflection but to rest and allow things to surface. This might mean building more quiet, mindful time into your routine, reading and finding new inspiration, or simply learning to take a break. 

While this can be difficult to get into the habit of, it does get easier with time. Try blocking out reflective time in your calendar or letting others know that you are taking the time in order to make it stick and avoid interruptions. Reflective space is important and useful, and by treating it as such, you can help ensure it happens and doesn’t get discarded or forgotten about.

One of the biggest barriers to thinking creatively is simply not being open to what is in front of you. Whether it’s rushing to use an existing solution without investigating alternatives, failing to listen or be present when something new is being presented, or sticking with your existing assumptions, a failure to stay open and reserve judgment can kill creative thinking.

Try to stay open and apply creative thinking without pressure or being overly critical in order to improve those skills and let more creative approaches surface in the future. 

One of the best ways to find new perspectives and alternative ways of thinking is by looking to others. Whether it’s finding inspiration from other creative thinkers via conversation, reading and researching new sources, or simply listening and observing, looking outside of yourself is one of the most effective ways you can jolt your creative thinking. 

Try finding sources outside of your normal circles, whatever the medium. It can be very easy to get into creative bubbles that might unwittingly exclude new forms of thinking. By broadening your social, creative and critical circles , you can be exposed to all kinds of potentially inspiring or creatively engaging ways of thinking and doing.

It’s hard to create space and an opportunity for new ways of thinking if you stick to the same routines and activities. You’ll often find that trying new things and exposing yourself to new hobbies, skills and approaches can be massively engaging and exciting too.

An important aspect of creative thinking is applying the learnings from one discipline or approach to another. If a developer were to throw themselves into learning how to dance, they might learn something they can apply to their role as a developer.

An open and honest desire to explore new experiences in and outside of your working life is a vital ingredient in the creative thinking process. Try saying yes to doing new things wherever you can find them – being alive to possibility and engaging in the world is a great way of supercharging your creativity! 

Creativity is even better when shared. Whether it’s crowdsourcing new ideas, iterating together, or helping others build their creative thinking skills, sharing the experience is often a useful and generative process for all involved.

Try bringing a group together to explore thinking creatively together or run a workshop on developing creative thinking skills in the workplace. Not only will it help your participants with their own creative discovery, but it will also help you develop your own creative skills. 

Over to you

As facilitators and advocates of the power of workshops, we’re passionate about how creative thinking can improve many aspects of a group’s personal and working lives. At its heart, creative thinking is an empathic, generative act, and by bringing those concepts to the fore, we believe everyone can see better outcomes when solving problems, generating ideas or communicating with others. 

We hope we’ve given you some great examples of creative thinking at work and how you might discover and nurture your own creative thinking skills . That said, this list is by no means exhaustive and there are many more ways you might try thinking creatively. Think of this post as a jumping-off point for further exploration and creative development!

Do you have any concepts or approaches you’ve used to become a better creative thinker? Did you find any of the creative thinking methods above particularly helpful? We’d love to hear about your experience in the comments below!

Very nice information. Thanks for posting such an informative blog. Creative thinking is an unconventional thinking that looks at an issue from different perspectives. Innovative thinking is a thinking that converts / commercializes a creative idea into practical application.

The Fosbury Flop is a very good example of a creative idea and trend when we apply “the learnings from one discipline or approach [Engineering] to another [High Jump].”

thanks alot…very informative and thoroug

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Going from a mere idea to a workshop that delivers results for your clients can feel like a daunting task. In this piece, we will shine a light on all the work behind the scenes and help you learn how to plan a workshop from start to finish. On a good day, facilitation can feel like effortless magic, but that is mostly the result of backstage work, foresight, and a lot of careful planning. Read on to learn a step-by-step approach to breaking the process of planning a workshop into small, manageable chunks.  The flow starts with the first meeting with a client to define the purposes of a workshop.…

How does learning work? A clever 9-year-old once told me: “I know I am learning something new when I am surprised.” The science of adult learning tells us that, in order to learn new skills (which, unsurprisingly, is harder for adults to do than kids) grown-ups need to first get into a specific headspace.  In a business, this approach is often employed in a training session where employees learn new skills or work on professional development. But how do you ensure your training is effective? In this guide, we'll explore how to create an effective training session plan and run engaging training sessions. As team leader, project manager, or consultant,…

Effective online tools are a necessity for smooth and engaging virtual workshops and meetings. But how do you choose the right ones? Do you sometimes feel that the good old pen and paper or MS Office toolkit and email leaves you struggling to stay on top of managing and delivering your workshop? Fortunately, there are plenty of online tools to make your life easier when you need to facilitate a meeting and lead workshops. In this post, we’ll share our favorite online tools you can use to make your job as a facilitator easier. In fact, there are plenty of free online workshop tools and meeting facilitation software you can…

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Creativity in Everyday Life

By Shelley Berc

Why is creativity important in everyday life? Simply put, it is because it makes life infinitely interesting and fulfilling. Creativity is a way of living life that embraces originality and makes unique connections between seemingly disparate ideas. Creativity is about living life as a journey into seeing and communicating the extra-ordinariness of the simplest, most every day acts.

We often think about creativity as making something, but in fact the root meaning of the word means ‘to grow’. When we are creative we feel as if the world and all that is in it is vibrantly alive. Creativity’s by-products are some of the major achievements of civilization-from the invention of the wheel to Mozart’s sonatas.

Human beings are essentially born creative-from infancy on we find innovative ways to negotiate life. The most creative people find ways around obstacles because they see them not just as roadblocks but also as opportunities. Creativity expands our perceptions and along with expanded perceptions come new ways of problem solving-from making an exquisite meal when you don’t know how to cook to painting an extraordinary landscape when you are living in a freezing attic and can’t afford a full box of paints.

15 ideas for expressin creativity in everyday life:

1. Make your immediate surroundings as beautiful or eccentric as you can. Experiment with your sense of color, texture, and line. Add an element of surprise or quirkiness to your home decor. The unexpected can jolt you out of complacency and into inspiration.

2. Go somewhere new-as close as a restaurant you’ve never tried or as far as China. New places excite the mind and senses and when we are excited our creative abilities soar.

3. Spend 10 minutes a day dreaming out the window.

4. Don’t censor yourself.

5. Do something new or something old in a brand new way. As Picasso said “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

6. Slow down your perceptions so you savor them-that means eat slowly and taste your food, look closely at the flowers in the garden, spend time writing down and drawing your perceptions.

7. Believe in and follow your ‘What ifs’-what if I was an amazing writer? What if I could make a revolutionary spaceship? What if when I walk across a room it feels like floating?

When we ‘what if’ ourselves, we start to believe we can achieve our dreams. That is the first step to making them come true.

8. Spend 15 minutes looking around with the eyes of a child. Remember that sense of wonderment, love of color, surprise, curiosity and hunger to explore. It can get your creativity going because you are remembering how you were once very imaginative.

9. Take a notebook and pen everywhere you go and jot down your observations. We often have innovative ideas but we forget them if we don’t record them.

10. Don’t over-criticize yourself. At worst it will kill and at best cripple your creative hopes and dreams.

11. Make up a visualization in which you observe yourself imagining and creating effortlessly. Picture yourself loving the process.

12. Just Do It! Creativity is a muscle: use it or lose it. Dance, draw, brainstorm, change your life. The more you use your creativity, the easier it becomes and the better you get at it.

13. Collaborate creatively with like-minded friends-write a journal together, make a quilt, design a new play space, choreograph a dance piece, start a new business.

14. Dress wildly-revel in color and texture. Buy or make a fabulous hat. Don’t be age appropriate.

15. Remember the words of Samuel Becket, on the secret to life-long creativity: “fail, fail again, fail better”!

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS

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Develop a Creativity Habit and Get More Out of Life

A habit of creativity may boost your well-being and confidence..

Posted December 10, 2023 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

Most people are more creative than they realize. The problem is they believe creativity is a gift only a few people are born with. Creativity is actually a skill that anyone can develop at any age. A great way to gain that skill is to develop a creativity habit.

With this habit you'll enjoy many benefits including better mental and physical health. You may also reap financial rewards from it as well. But the main benefit is that creativity makes you feel good. It's fun and relaxing. And when you get engrossed in it, time just disappears.

I discovered this by accident. You see, I have two careers: writing and speaking, both of which required me to do creative thinking on a regular basis.

As a professional writer, I mostly write advertising copy. When I first started I would rewrite existing advertising headlines on a daily basis as an exercise to develop my creative ability. Over time it became a habit. I still do this today like second nature. If I see an ad with a failing headline, in my head I'll revise it to be how I think it should’ve been written.

As a speaker I like to add humor to my presentations which means I create jokes that are relevant to the audience. This is part of the effort I make when I write a speech for a particular organization. However, in order to be prepared for when I’m hired, I make it a point to find comedy in everyday situations wherever I go: out to eat, shopping, or the gas station.

I’ll make a joke that’s germane to that place and time even if there’s only one other person to entertain. It’s even more fun when I encounter someone else who likes to be funny too and they respond with a crack of their own. Then it’s Improv-at-the-Grocery-Check-Out-Line. I enjoy making people laugh so much that it’s become a creative habit.

Developing a creativity habit teaches you to look at things in different ways which is a key component in creative thinking. Albert Gyorgyi, the Nobel Prize winning scientist who discovered vitamin C, observed: “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” In other words, when you get a different perspective, you are more likely to see creative opportunities.

The good news is you don’t have to be in a creative career to develop the habit of creativity and enjoy all its advantages.

Creativity Can Improve Health and Happiness

The benefits of developing a creativity habit begin with the mental stimulation you’ll enjoy. When you do something for the first time you lay down new neural pathways in your brain. This is called neuroplasticity, and when you learn or experience something new you create new connections between brain cells and open new channels of thought. The more you do that activity you strengthen and reinforce those neural pathways which makes it easier to do each time. In other words, the more you practice creativity, the more creative you will become.

Research shows that creativity improves happiness and well-being. Here’s how the science of developing a creativity habit will make you feel good: novel experience triggers the brain’s reward system, which produces dopamine , a neurotransmitter and hormone that elevates mood, motivation , and focus. You'll just notice the pure joy of creating something. In my experience there is nothing more gratifying or exhilarating than being enmeshed in the creative process.

Other studies demonstrate that engaging in creativity improves mental health. Creativity can reduce anxiety , depression , and stress . It also helps some people process trauma . When you are in the creative process all else recedes; your stress and problems are gone for the time being. You simply cannot be worried and create at the same time.

Regular involvement in creativity improves your physical health as well. A study by the National Endowment for the Arts determined that older adults participating in creative arts programs had fewer visits to the doctor, fewer falls, and took fewer prescription and over-the-counter drugs than the non-participating (control) group. Creativity has also been shown to improve pain management , boost the immune system, and lower heart rate.

Work Creativity Into Your Daily Schedule

Creativity, however, does take time . I suggest routinely scheduling time to break out of your routine. Now I know that sounds like a contradiction but hear me out. In order to be creative, we need to refresh our brains. You can do this by going for a walk, soaking in a bath, riding a bus or train, daydreaming, or meditating. You can also do this by finding a repetitive task that doesn’t require any thinking. For example, I find mowing the lawn or blowing leaves to be such an activity. I can clear my thoughts and open my mind to whatever wants to pop into it. This works so well that it helps to keep a pad and pen handy so you can jot down emerging ideas.

Next schedule time to be creative. After your brain clearing activity spend some time doing one of your favorite creative activities: drawing, painting, sculpting, dancing, play-acting, composing music, coloring in a coloring book, sewing, knitting, making recipes, gardening and garden design, woodworking, or writing (poetry, stories, or in your journal). If you get an idea while on your brain clearing activity, then spend some time working on that.

A Creativity Habit Can Influence All Areas of Your Life

Once you’ve established a habit of creativity you’ll find yourself using it throughout your day in all or most of your activities: work, play, hobbies, cooking, cleaning, and raising children. Your daily practice will prepare you to recognize opportunities for fun and fortune.

My habit of creativity has bled into other areas of my life such as cooking where I will modify a recipe or create my own from scratch. I’ve also found that I’m a better problem solver and I discover little short cuts and efficiencies that smooth out my day.

You can find ways to be creative everywhere. When you make a beautiful home environment for you and your family that is creativity; and when you plan a party for your friends that is creativity too. When you step back and look at what you've made, your creation can give you a sense of accomplishment, and a feeling of pride. The success you experience can also increase your self-confidence .

A Creativity Habit Can Make You More Productive

Your creativity habit may help you in your career by giving you money making ideas or enable you to be more productive. According to a study by Adobe, companies that encourage creativity are 3.5 times more likely to outperform their competitors in terms of revenue growth. The Harvard Business Review found that companies encouraging creativity were more likely to report a strong market position and competitiveness than their non-creative counterparts.

An additional way you can build your creativity habit is to nurture your curiosity as a daily exercise. Use your curiosity to question authority and challenge the status quo, and come up with new ways of doing things.

Spend your time breaking out of your routine and schedule some fun creative activities. To sum it all up: clear your mind, find the silence, and allow your mind to expand and create.

https://www.newportacademy.com/resources/empowering-teens/creativity-an…

The Link Between Creativity and Mental Health

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8305859

Being Creative Makes You Happier: The Positive Effect of Creativity on Subjective Well-Being

https://doi.org/10.1080/07421656.2012.683748

The Influence of Art Making on Anxiety: A Pilot Study

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-04641-001

Everyday creativity in daily life: An experience-sampling study of “little c” creativity.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281426150

Creative Days: A Daily Diary Study of Emotion, Personality, and Everyday Creativity

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2018/07/25/heres-how-creativit… Here's How Creativity Actually Improves Your Health

https://www.lifeline.com/blog/aging-well-the-health-benefits-of-creativ…

Aging Well: The Health Benefits of Creativity

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320947

What are the health benefits of being creative?

Kaczmarek B. Current views on neuroplasticity: What is new and what is old?. Acta Neuropsychologica. 2020;18(1):1-14. doi:10.5604/01.3001.0013.8808

Robert Wilson is a writer and humorist based in Atlanta, Georgia.

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‘My own inner critic is a bully’: Julia Cameron on creative demons and updating The Artist’s Way

Creativity guru Julia Cameron has long inspired others. Now she’s sharing her own secret weapon

Mention the name Julia Cameron to an artist, actor, writer or creative and a reverential gasp will go up, followed by an outpouring of praise for her life-changing Morning Pages (MPs) practice. Cameron’s version of journalling became a word-of-mouth sensation with the publication of The Artist’s Way (1992) . In this workbook, the now prolific author, poet, songwriter, filmmaker and playwright invites anyone wanting to unblock their creativity to follow her precise instructions: wake up, write what is on your mind, fill three A4 pages (no bigger, no smaller) in longhand, and then stop. Repeat every day.

With MPs, you’re not flexing for the next Anna Karenina, you’re getting rid of all the stuff clogging your mind, what actor and MPs fan Michaela Coel calls the “gunk”. It could be: “I forgot to buy kitty litter,” says Cameron, 76, on one of her many promotional videos, or a plan for revenge – also OK because: “You are becoming acquainted with all the dark corners of your psyche.” MPs are a “clearing exercise”, says Cameron. In Jungian terms: “You are meeting your shadow and taking it out for a cup of coffee.” When you get back to your day, or your desk, the gremlins of self-sabotage, distraction, fear and all the many negative thoughts that thwart creativity have been acknowledged and set aside.

All kinds of stellar achievers, from actor Reese Witherspoon and US self-help guru Tim Ferriss to pop star Olivia Rodrigo and writers Anna Burns and Elizabeth Gilbert are declared fans. So is her daughter Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, who practises MPs. Julia was married to Martin Scorsese in the 1970s – long enough for her to make substantive edits on the screenplay of Taxi Driver (1976). But while the fans have been doing their MPs, as well as using Cameron’s two other unlocking tools – walking alone twice a week and going on a solo Artist Date (visiting a gallery, say) – Cameron went quiet on us.

“I went 30 years silent,” she tells me from the wood-panelled library in her adobe home on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico. “I was afraid.” From a global guru who long ago conquered alcohol and cocaine addiction, this admission is unsettling. What was she afraid of? “I was afraid of sounding too woo-woo. By that I mean, of taking a footstep off our rational path and talking about something that could only be known through intuition.” She is referring to guidance, a tool she briefly mentioned in The Artist’s Way and which she has been using ever since, but which, she says, “I kept secret.”

Now, with her new book, Living the Artist’s Way: an Intuitive Path to Creativity , she’s decided to explain how guidance works and, in doing so, to share the self-doubt she frequently experiences. “Guidance,” she writes, “is direction that comes from a higher source of wisdom than we ordinarily encounter,”’ or as she has said elsewhere, it’s about “Asking to hear and to trust that you have a source of inner wisdom”. Knowing that readers might think this all sounds woo-woo makes her feel vulnerable. But the evangelist in her wants to share her secret weapon, so she’s willing to take the risk.

As we talk and I try to nail this bestselling guru’s new tool, Cameron speaks as she writes: slowly and with deliberation. She repeats phrases and she comes at the same point from different directions. Cameron has been sober for 46 years. She writes prayers and spiritual poems and invokes the Serenity Prayer used in AA support circles. There is a sense when listening to this gentle soul that for her, every moment, thought and action is lived both with intention and in the knowledge that to step away from this path of learned resilience would be to step towards darkness and chaos. Repetition of words and phrases are incantatory: they mould the mind, they work on it like a salve, as do her almost devotional daily routines, which include walking with her Westie terrier, Lily.

The practice of guidance goes like this. “After you’ve done MPs, you’ve opened yourself up and that’s when you ask for guidance,” explains Cameron, “although you can ask for guidance at any time during the day.” When you “write for guidance”, you ask pointed questions about anything (“Romance, finance – no topic is taboo”), then you listen for the answers, which you write down. Later, you are encouraged to refer to them, which you are instructed never to do with MPs.

“The process of writing out our response is very important, because otherwise we ask for guidance, we hear it and we forget it. But if we have a written record of guidance, we can go back to it a couple of weeks later and say, ‘Oh, it was right!’” She refers to guidance in the second person, the guru seemingly invoking a deity or higher force. Later, when talking about how “we don’t want to talk about the higher power in definitive ways,” she tells me that she once addressed guidance directly. “I finally said, ‘Well, who are you?’ I was told, ‘We prefer to remain anonymous.’”

Cameron isn’t religious, though she was raised as a Catholic in the Chicago suburb where she grew up. “I thoroughly rejected Catholicism and I found that left me with a gap and I needed to believe in something. And so I found myself praying as if maybe there were a presence and, over time, I became convinced that there was. A turning point for me was when I got sober and was told I had to believe in something and I thought about it and decided that I believed in the line from Dylan Thomas – ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.’ I thought, well, I can believe in that, in a creative energy underlining the universe.”

She taps into that energy and the Transcendentalists’ belief in the interconnectedness of all things. “Like right now I am sitting in my library and there is a good window that looks out on the mountains and looking at them gives me a sense of faith.” Faith is a habit, she says, a “spiritual muscle” that she has worked hard at. She loves to walk, mindful that all the creatures she and Lily encounter – bears, deer, coyotes, rabbits, snakes and the lizards that Lily longs to eat – “have their place”. As she walks, she “pays attention, finding in the now a sense of benevolence and optimism”.

Sometimes she writes for guidance on gritty stuff, like anger. For the new workbook she interviews people who practise MPs about their thoughts on guidance and its reach. One interviewee proved “troublesome”, however, and Cameron excises him from the book. “I asked for guidance,” she writes, and was promptly told: “‘ You are correct to cut him from the book. He is arrogant and wants more credit than he is due.’ I thought of mailing him a dead mouse.”

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Far from woo-woo, this is delicious, gloves-off fury. Cameron stands by it. “I think anger is a signal that we have a boundary,” she says. “As we work with our anger we find ourselves saying, ‘Oh, perhaps it was justified.’”

Nigel is someone else she locks horns with. Nigel is her inner critic and Cameron, an Anglophile, says that he “is a British interior decorator”, no gesture made to his imaginary nature. Nigel has been “hissing in her ear” since she started writing, aged 18. She writes at one point that, as a teacher, “I want to be brilliant,” which suggests Nigel has finally been hounded out. She shakes her head. “He’s alive and well. He continues to be critical and I continue to fight back and say to him, ‘Oh Nigel, thank you for sharing,’” and she does a simpering voice. “I get a little bit sarcastic back. Nigel is a bully and, like most bullies, if you stand up to him, he backs down.”

In the early days in New York, back when she was starting out and writing for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice , she ran with a tough, egotistical crowd. Today, even though she is a self-help phenomenon, her own ego seems remarkably in check. “Again, it comes back down to sobriety,” she says, “and being told to let a higher force right through me. When I was told that, I said, what if it doesn’t want to?” She smiles at the recollection. “And they said, just try it, and I tried it, and my writing straightened out and I began to be useful and I found myself saying, ‘Oh, being useful is actually rather nice.’ I don’t think of myself as a self-help star. I think of myself as a helper.”

Living The Artist’s Way: An Intuitive Path to Creativity by Julia Cameron is published by Souvenir Press at £18.99. Buy a copy for £16.52 from guardianbookshop.com

• Self and wellbeing
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15 episodes

Conversationalists is an interview series based on conversation and human connection. By sitting down with people in different paths of life, we intend to shed light on the creative humanity in their differences. Through authentic conversation, we provide a platform for people to express their passion & creativity. Initially conceived in June 2022, Conversationalists was founded by Marcus Pruitt. Pruitt is working with other creatives to achieve that goal by bringing out people's inner conversationalist. One interview at a time.

Conversationalists Conversationalists

• Society & Culture
• MAR 13, 2024

A Conversation with Honcho OSO About Being Prepared, Dynamic & Well Rounded

Honcho OSO and I sat down towards the end of 2023 to talk about his music, life and aspirations. We had been meaning to have a conversation, but things didn't line up until he was in the studio one night. I took the train up, got the cameras rolling and we produced what you see here. If you want to check out Honcho Oso's music, click here. If you want to find us on other platforms, click here.

• MAR 8, 2024

A Conversation with LILBOYROC About Being a Nice Guy

LILBOYROC is one of the more interesting artists bubbling out of Chicago. He's been working for years, transitioning between sounds and finding himself along the way. Alongside his journey, he's been with a lot of women, learning about the hardships of being a nice guy along the way. These moments inspired his track, "Mr. Nice Guy," in which he talks about learning how to live life for himself and name drops some of the women who he's been with in the past. Once I heard the track, I knew we had to have a conversation. If you want to check him out on other platforms, click here. If you want to check us out on other platforms, click here.

A Conversation with Carter Slade About Turning Creativity Into a Career

Turning creativity into a career has always been the dream of the free-spirited. In 2023, it is more possible than ever. With increased access to technology, people have begun chasing their dreams now more than ever. Carter Slade is one of those people. I've been following him since he was Jiggly J/Superstar Jig, and his name change has tracked with his career elevation. Slade is jumping to new heights, and this conversation helped show how high he's really going. If you want to check out Carter Slade, click here. If you want to check us out on other platforms, click here.

A Conversation with Rapper Gagi About Making Music, Staying In His Own Lane

Back in April 2023, Gagi and I had a conversation about how he makes music. I've been friends with him for a while, so seeing his progression as an artist throughout the years made the conversation that much more endearing. He's been making music through college and beyond, and he's making a wave for himself. Love to my brother! If you want to check out his music, check out the link here. If you want to check us out on other platforms, click here.

A Conversation with The Reng About Learning & Creating Music

During my last month in Bloomington-Normal, I made sure I sat down with Alex Rengers, aka The Reng. He's a producer/musician that I learned about through Bigelow T. Seeing the chemistry that they had made me want to have a conversation with him. I know T's good energy, so I figured Alex would be, too. And I was right. Throughout our conversation, I was able to get a good grasp of who he is as a musician & artist. I'm rooting for him, and hopefully you are as well. If you want to check him out on other platforms, click here. If you want to check us out on other platforms, click here.

A Conversation With Connor Rogan About Photography & Humanity

Back in February, I got the chance to sit down with a longtime friend, Connor Rogan, to talk about his journey as a photographer. Throughout his journey, he has been interested in capturing the humanity of his subjects and how raw they are in their spaces. Being able to talk to him about that helped shed some light on my own journey as an artist & creative, and I hope it can do the same for you. If you want to check out some of Connor's work, click here. If you want to check us out on other platforms, click here.

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The city told a homeowner to hide his boat behind a fence — his creative and hilarious response went viral

Is this guy the B.O.A.T., or what?

A Seaside, Calif., man ordered by the city to to hide his boat behind a fence has gone viral with his hilarious and creative response to the washed-up request.

Etienne Constable was surprised to receive a sternly-worded letter from his local code enforcement office, informing him that large vehicles parked in driveways must be hidden from view.

So he built a fence — and had a local artist turn the barrier into a mural of his prized possession.

“I’m not a rule-breaker but I like to make a political statement as necessary as well as a humorous statement and a creative statement,” Constable told local TV station KSBW .

“I thought, ‘This is ridiculous,’ and my first reaction was to leave a nasty, nasty message at the city hall,” he told the  Washington Post.

“And then I thought, well, I might as well build a screen … I’ll do what they want, but I’m not going to do it their way.”

After running his grand idea by his neighbors, Constable hired muralist Hanif Panni to paint a photorealistic image of the ship, named Might As Well, on his new, 6-foot tall fence in the driveway.

“I’m a big proponent of public art in spaces,” Panni told KSBW. “It engages people in ways that reaching out and having conversations doesn’t sometimes.”

While the city has yet to respond to the cheeky artwork, images of the painting have gone viral and drummed up quite a bit of buzz online.

“I’m all in favor of generating a discussion and making people smile,” Constable told KSBW. “The reaction is extremely more than we ever expected and we’re both just tickled about it.”

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In the galleries: Transformations in 20th century abstraction

Also: Symbolic landscapes, a creative approach to familiar terrain, and a personal journey of life with breast cancer.

Pure color appears to pool, flow, pulse or simply mark the boundaries of a void in the latest retrospective of American abstraction at Pazo Fine Art’s Kensington location. “Living Colors” offers a single item by each of 10 artists, half of whom spent at least part of their careers in Washington. Seven of the pictures were made before 1976, but the selection ranges from a print of nested yellow squares by Josef Albers, patriarch of color-field art, to a brand-new minimalist canvas by Matthew Feyld.

The first artwork visitors encounter is the darkest and boldest, and among the largest. Howard Mehring’s 1964 “Magenta Double” is one of the D.C. artist’s collage-paintings, assembled from strips cut from canvases painted with heathered allover patterns. Two magenta columns, confined by thick black bars, float on a dark green field, the hard-edge geometric forms softened by the stippled color. The picture is essentially flat, yet beckons the eye into seeming depths.

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Equally symmetrical and even bigger is Thomas Downing’s 1972 “Split Possession,” which arrays dots in seven colors (including white) on a bare-canvas expanse. The precision is gently offset by the edges of the dots, which bleed ever so slightly into the fabric.

Among the other highlights are paintings by Helene Herzbrun and Vivian Springford in which free-form blue areas are exquisitely aqueous, and Terry Parmelee’s “August,” whose overlapping orange circles oscillate on a yellow backdrop. The titles of this work and Dorothy Fratt’s “Bird on a Wire” hint that the pictures are portrayals of the natural world, however highly stylized. Most of the show’s artworks, however, distill the universe to nothing but color, shape and texture.

Living Colors Through May 18 at Pazo Fine Art, 4228 Howard Ave., Kensington. pazofineart.com . 571-315-5279.

The four sprawling 3D pieces in “Pressing,” a two-artist show at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art, are symbolic landscapes that represent environments both organic and man-made. They also convey history lessons, albeit of different sorts.

Local artist Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann is known for intricate collage-paintings that overflow their boundaries. She invokes her Taiwanese heritage with sumi-ink painting that combines improvisational abstraction with renderings of flowers and plants. These include the four most often depicted in traditional Chinese art: cherry blossom, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum.

Mann’s assemblages in this show also incorporate mosaics of stones, tiles and small bits of glass, whose hardness contrasts the many fragile paper elements, including streamers that drape onto the floor. These vines and tendrils join with the other elements to conjure overgrown gardens, teeming with wild possibility.

There is soil in Rena Detrixhe’s “Red Dirt Rug,” but it nurtures no plants. The large floor piece appears as tidy as Mann’s artworks are unruly, although grainy edges reveal that the installation is indeed made of dirt. The Kansas City artist has stamped decorative motifs, inspired by a residency in Oklahoma, into the red powder. Among them are native plant and bird species and art deco motifs from Tulsa buildings.

Under the rug, in a sense, are such deliberately obscured events as the Trail of Tears, during which Native Americans were driven from the Southeast to Oklahoma, and the 1921 white supremacist massacre of Black residents in Tulsa’s Greenwood District. Detrixhe’s creation will eventually be swept up, but the fraught historical bedrock that supports it will endure.

Pressing: Rena Detrixhe and Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann Through May 19 at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art, 12001 Market St., Reston. tephraica.org . 703-471-9242.

Maureen Minehan

The landscapes in Maureen Minehan’s “There and Back” investigate the vast realm between very little and nothing at all. The D.C. photographer’s Multiple Exposures Gallery show often features images of a single man-made object — a house, a pier, a lifeguard’s chair — in a natural setting. The solitude is emphasized by darkness, ephemeral light or mists that bid to obscure the scene altogether.

The vignettes, all observed on Maryland’s Eastern Shore or the Delaware coast, are stark and mysterious, although there is a humorous interlude: two tiny people, the only humans to inhabit any of the photos, sit on a beach next to a banner that proclaims, “yoga.” The word is legible, but much of the image is beguilingly soft. That’s characteristic of these pictures, which include several for which Minehan probably used long exposures to blur breaking surf into a cottony white-blue expanse.

The subtle textures weren’t all captured through the lens. Minehan prints on fibrous paper and sometimes uses computer manipulation to incorporate gently hued brushstrokes derived from watercolor painting. These meld with the photographed skies to accentuate hazy clouds and diffused sunlight. The effect is faint, but in pictures of mist, shadow and emptiness every small addition is world-shaping.

Maureen Minehan: There and Back Through May 19 at Multiple Exposures Gallery, Torpedo Factory, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. multipleexposuresgallery.com . 703-683-2205.

Anna U Davis

It’s nice that the title of Anna U Davis’s Brentwood Arts Exchange show, “Road to Recovery,” is reassuring, since many of the images are harrowing. The Swedish-born D.C. artist is a breast cancer survivor whose depictions of medical procedures are jarringly vivid, even if her renderings are far from realistic. In “The Sting,” a technician injects wasps into a woman’s breast as the patient’s face, pressed against the edge of the picture and turned toward the viewer, contorts into a scream.

Davis shows her work frequently in the area, so her style may well be familiar. She paints in a simplified, cartoonish manner and contrasts her subjects with mosaic-like areas of collaged cut-paper pieces. Davis’s characters are gray-skinned people she calls “Frocasians,” inspired by her own interracial family. Her bright-colored pictures tend to be large, and the ones in this group have black backdrops that make the figures pop, or sometimes appear about to engulf them in darkness.

Among the more disturbing paintings is “Waitingroom,” in which five men sit on a couch, all of them attached to IVs and dripping blood from their feet. Several of the others portray a solitary woman, whether burning with internal fire seemingly ignited by the pills that surround her or taking refuge under blue strands that spray from a shower head. In Davis’s telling, even moments of respite can cascade with pain and fear.

Anna U Davis: Road to Recovery Through May 18 at Brentwood Arts Exchange, 3901 Rhode Island Ave., Brentwood. pgparks.com/brentwood-arts . 301-277-2863.

Hello Positive Mindset

20 Creative Indoor Gardening Ideas for City Life

Posted: May 12, 2024 | Last updated: May 12, 2024

Living in a city doesn’t mean you have to give up on greenery. Indoor gardening can bring a slice of nature into your urban space, improving air quality and adding a touch of tranquility. Whether you have a small apartment or just a little corner to spare, here are 20 creative indoor gardening ideas that can help you cultivate your own urban oasis.

1. Hanging Herb Garden

Use hanging planters to grow herbs like basil, thyme, and mint. This not only saves space but also keeps fresh flavors within arm’s reach in your kitchen.

2. Terrariums

Create miniature landscapes in glass terrariums. These can be filled with a variety of small plants like mosses, ferns, and succulents that thrive in humid environments.

3. Vertical Wall Planters

Install a vertical planting system on an empty wall to grow a variety of plants. It’s a great way to maximize limited space and can double as living art.

4. Window Box Farm

Fit window boxes on the inside of sunny windows to grow vegetables and herbs. Perfect for urban gardeners who crave a mini farm.

5. Hydroponic Systems

Set up a hydroponic garden to grow plants in a water-based solution, which is efficient and clean, perfect for keeping indoors without the mess of soil.

6. Air Plant Displays

Air plants don’t require soil, so you can creatively display them in hanging glass pods, mounted on walls, or in shells and rock gardens.

7. Under-Stair Plant Nook

Transform the often-wasted space under stairs into a green nook with shelves for potted plants.

8. Kitchen Counter Garden

Utilize your kitchen counter to keep small pots of culinary herbs or a compact hydroponic system for lettuce and greens.

9. Succulent Coffee Table

Turn your coffee table into a living piece of furniture with a built-in planter. Succulents work well as they require minimal water and maintenance.

10. Plant Room Dividers

Create natural room dividers with freestanding open shelves populated with plants. They provide privacy and purify the air.

11. Bonsai Collection

Maintaining bonsai trees is a relaxing hobby that can also decorate your indoor space with their unique and miniature beauty.

12. Spice Rack Planters

Repurpose an old spice rack as a home for small plants or herbs. Place it in a kitchen or balcony area for easy access.

13. Bathroom Jungle

Turn your bathroom into a tropical paradise with moisture-loving plants like orchids, ferns, and philodendrons.

14. Aquarium Turned Terrarium

Convert an old aquarium into a terrarium. This can be a striking visual element in any room.

15. Macramé Plant Hangers

Add a boho touch with DIY macramé plant hangers. These can hold pots and are ideal for creating levels of greenery.

16. Vine Canopy

Grow indoor vines such as pothos or ivy to create a green canopy over a window or along a ceiling beam.

17. Citrus Trees Indoors

Grow dwarf citrus trees in large pots. With adequate light, these can produce fruit and add a fresh scent to your home.

18. Mushroom Growing Kit

Experiment with a mushroom growing kit. It’s an unusual and fascinating way to grow your own gourmet mushrooms at home.

19. Pallet Living Wall

Recycle an old wooden pallet into a living wall. It can house a variety of plants and is an eco-friendly addition to your home.

20. Zen Garden Corner

Set up a small indoor Zen garden with sand, stones, and a few easy-to-care-for plants for a relaxing, meditative space in your home.

Transform Your Space

These indoor gardening ideas not only greenify your space but also help you reconnect with nature. Regardless of your skill level or home size, there’s an indoor gardening project that can bring life into your urban dwelling.

Not All Tea Is Good for You: List of Teas to Avoid and to Stick To

Not all teas are healthy and some might actually harm your health with poor ingredients. But how can you tell the good from the bad? This guide aims to help you make informed choices without turning you into a tea expert overnight. Not All Tea Is Good for You: List of Teas to Avoid and to Stick To

America’s Spiritual Revolution: Turning Away from Christianity to Embrace Alternatives

As church attendance declines, Americans are exploring diverse spiritual paths, from stargazing druids to unconventional deities like Wi-Fi gods and extraterrestrials. Explore the quirky and sometimes controversial new religions capturing attention as people seek meaning beyond traditional Christianity. America’s Spiritual Revolution: Turning Away from Christianity to Embrace Alternatives

25 Must-Try Global Delicacies

From Bangkok’s bustling streets to Parisian cafes, every corner of the world offers something special for your taste buds. And you don’t have to travel far; even in the USA, you can find a world of flavors. Here are 25 global delicacies every foodie should try, including some local favorites! 25 Must-Try Global Delicacies

16 Affectionate Gestures to Keep the Romance Alive

Sustaining romance in a relationship needs deliberate actions and research-backed gestures to foster intimacy. Here are 16 evidence-based romantic gestures, with steps to integrate them into your relationship and revive the spark. 16 Affectionate Gestures to Keep the Romance Alive

21 Top Christian Attractions to Explore in the U.S.

The U.S. is rich in spiritual destinations, offering awe-inspiring sites for both believers and curious travelers. Explore the 21 most popular Christian attractions across the country, where architecture, history, and faith converge. 21 Top Christian Attractions to Explore in the U.S.

The post 20 Creative Indoor Gardening Ideas for City Life first appeared on Hello Positive Mindset .

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock / Alliance Images.

For transparency, this content was partly developed with AI assistance and carefully curated by an experienced editor to be informative and ensure accuracy.

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Pick your grunge style. What will you wear to The Creative Ball?

The Creative's Steven Knight gives advice about what to wear to The Creative Ball.

What do I even WEAR to The Creative Ball? What is grunge and glamour?

No worries babes, we've got you and your wardrobe covered.

Today we're covering grunge fashion and its many sub genres of style: from soft and pastel to metal and Y2K grunge, it's all here. Check out the visuals for some inspiration and keep reading to learn a little about each kind of grunge fashion.

Soft/Pastel Grunge:

It's exactly what you think it is. If you're a fan of plush pastels and soft fabrics this is your go to. It takes the edgy blacks and metals from grunge fashion and sands it down into something cheeky and cute. Bows, ribbons, oversized fit, skirts and stockings and hairclips. If you were a Claire's baddie, this one's for you.

Punk Grunge:

When most people think of grunge fashion, they're imaging the punk aesthetic of the '90s and that's OK, because there's some crossover here. Leather jackets and studs are a must, give us fishnets and blacks, eyeliner and big, big hair. Plaid is a definite for this look, and adorn your outfit with lots of statement pieces and buttons. Did you have a studded belt in the early '00's? Whip it out!

Gothic Grunge:

This style is so, romantic if not sharp and edgy. Flowing fabrics that really cinch your body. Corsets and floor length skirts, fine jewelry and chokers, metal body chains and motifs like skulls, roses and more. Dramatic makeup and thigh-high boots, platforms even, we want to see you go for it, Morticia Addams.

Y2K Grunge:

Most of us have been there, done that, having lived through the '00s, but the younger Millennials and especially Gen Z have really latched on the fashions of the late '90s, early '00s. Boots with the fur is a must here, fluffy ear muffs, mesh tops and bottoms, baggy, baggy jeans, mixing in the occasional neck tie and tank combo or those bandana tops... you know what we're talking about. It's not a phase and never was.

Metal Grunge:

Very similar to Punk Grunge but more emphasis on layering here, with less focus on the metallics and adornments. It's all about your attitude, no matter what you're rocking. Black on black on black. Ripped, tattered fabrics, and boldly colored hair.

Fairy Grunge:

We see you. You love your earth tones and flowy fabrics. There is some crossover with cottage core fashion here, so if ethereal and rustic style is where your heart lies, you'll be right at home here. The goal is to look otherworldly, one with nature, and don't be afraid to put on a pair of fairy wings for this one.

• The Creative Ball 2024 will be May 18 at Horseshoe Casino and Hotel.
• Tickets are on sale for $75 and are available at www.eventbrite.com .
• To learn more about The Creative and The Creative Ball visit www.thecreativemag.net .