A Step-By-Step Guide To Creative Behavior

Creative behaviors help realize creative potential.

How many of us have wished most fervently 'to be more creative'? Unfortunately, there's no instant Rx for creativity - no pills that rev up your artistic instincts, no surgery to enhance your scientific intuition or business acumen. But there is a life style, so to speak, and a handful of healthy strategies for maximizing creative potential. It's important to realize, however, that no matter how or where you wish to focus your energies - personally or professionally, at home or at work - 'to be creative' is not in any case a psychological destination or a permanent state of affairs. It is, rather, a behavioral process, a habit of intention, a fortuitous act. This New Year's, resolve 'to behave more creatively' and your wish 'to be more creative' just might come true.

All creativity involves problem finding and problem solving. So first, find a problem that has no obvious solution.

There are many ways to find problems. Pay attention to things that don't make sense, take too much time to do, cost too much to take care of, or seem too difficult. Turn well-known principles and practices inside out and backwards. Collect problems you experience, read about or hear of. The more problems you know, the better the chance you'll find one you can solve. Don't expect to solve every problem you would like to solve: even the greatest geniuses are truly creative only occasionally!

Next, explore each problem. What do you know about it? Is the problem due to not knowing enough? Not having the right resources? Is there a time and money limit constraining its solution? The better you understand what you want to do, but can't, the more likely you are to solve your problem. The problem will tell you what you need to learn or do to solve it. Sometimes you'll find that isn't something you want to do. Find another problem.

Whatever problem you tackle should be one that really excites you, because creativity always takes time and immense effort. Your problem will also tell you what the criteria are for recognizing a solution to it. Know what you are looking for and how you will recognize whether you are successful before you start. If you can't do this, you probably won't succeed.

Creative behaviors involve exercising imaginative skills.

Think simple. Use basic principles. All creativity is built on prior creativity. So recreate or reinvent for yourself creative ideas and solutions from other people. Most creativity consists of a novel combination of previous creative endeavors. So the more you understand the principles by which other people have reached their creative solutions, the better the supply of principles you have to draw upon in your own creative endeavors. Think across disciplinary lines; use the insights or techniques from one field to take on the challenges of another. Creative individuals are often versed in several kinds of knowledge and expression. Be a polymath.

Take up hobbies. Play with them. Play is a fun way to develop imaginative skills, craft techniques and personal knowledge. Go meet creative people and find out how they work and think. Or read about them. Or try to copy creative inventions: learn how to paint abstractly, write new poetic forms, make a clever piece of hardware. Copying is good! Even the greatest geniuses learned how to be creative by copying other people. The more things you can recreate, the better your chances of creating something new.

Most importantly, fill yourself up with experience. Creative people are passionately curious people. They think and learn and practice their craft all the time. Don't get discouraged. Most creative ideas don't come when you are working on them. They come when you are relaxing: on vacation, in the shower, exercising, pursuing a hobby, even dreaming. Fill yourself with your problem and everything you know about it, all the things you have tried that haven't worked, and presto, sooner or later your subconscious mind will spit out unexpected and potentially fruitful ideas.

Don't push too hard: let your intuition guide you. Don't be discouraged if you fail and fail again. Trying things that don't work is part of the creative process. Learn from your mistakes.

Persist. Enjoy creativity for its own sake. Behave more creatively and something wonderful will emerge!

© 2010 Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein