The word creative is often associated with fields that lend themselves to its use. Creative artist, creative, cook, creative writer and so on. Often, the word is attached in other fields when someone excels of a proportion outside what is normal. An accountant is creative when they save a lot of money by flexing numbers appropriately (or not so appropriately…) but what is that creativity? How does something earn the title “creative…?”
By my standards, I think of creativity not as something intrinsic to a process or a vocation but rather the thing that happens when you overcome a particular obstacle in a way that is refreshing, surprising and outside the box. For example, in painting you often hear about creative use of color. As artists, we work with approaches and processes that we have grown accustomed to, much like the accountant. Our process lets us solve the problem of using paint to make an image while the accountant solves the problem of making numbers add up. What happens is that, like any system of human use, it can grow repetitive and, well, boring; not a good thing for art. You often use the same colors in much the same proportion because they are familiar in the repetition you have grown accustomed to. When you are growing too familiar with your process you might place obstacles in your path to force a change. To jar your color sense into a new direction you might arbitrarily add a vibrant, unfamiliar color into some duller part of the painting and force yourself to rework and change the colors around it. You have purposely put an obstacle in your way; that strange new color, and you have a created a problem that needs solving. Creativity happens as you step forth into new color territory in working to make old color and new color work in harmony. You have found that creative use of color. Most likely, you’ve engaged in the process with all your concentration in order to make bold, different and unfamiliar choices to solve this problem. A solution that works can be called creative because you have brought something new to your process that may (or may not) stay with you but the struggle has refocused your efforts. Your normal process, if unchallenged, will never demand such effort, and thus, creativity.
A creative person finds ways to inherently make or find obstacles that forces them onto that narrow ledge of uncertainty only navigable with great effort and concentration. The calculated risk of that narrow ledge becomes an inherent part of a process of doing work and they intuitively call on creativity each and every day they sit down to make something. Some professions demand such a process; the arts being a prime example. All professions will benefit from such a process but the rigor and monotony of some tasks exhaust and dull the intensity needed to step onto that ledge. There are many times that the art process stagnates and you’ll resist those precarious places with all your might. I think the infamous “writers block” might stem from an inability to take that leap of faith into the territory of risk.
In the end, I think creativity can truly be intrinsic to any task; you just have to be open to it. It takes risk and it takes hard work but the reward of overcoming some obstacle with some new approach brings awareness and fosters curiosity.
Even a little curiosity is a very big thing.
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