Summary

The article emphasizes the importance of fostering creativity in our daily lives and education to generate original ideas and bring value to our professions.

Abstract

The article "Mastering The Art of Good Ideas" discusses the importance of creativity in our lives, highlighting that our world is more creative than we often imagine. It argues that our educational systems tend to stifle creative thinking by encouraging 'correct' thinking rather than exploration and imagination. The author suggests that creativity is not an innate trait of geniuses but a skill that can be trained through regular practice, such as writing down ideas, demystifying the concept of creativity, finding opportunities in problems, and perceiving reality through different perspectives. The article also stresses the need to integrate creativity into our daily routines and culture, rather than reserving it for times of crisis. By combining our passions, knowledge, and abilities, we can find our unique singularity and make a difference in our respective fields. The author encourages creating a stimulating environment with imaginative individuals, like children, and warns against the pursuit of perfection that can lead to procrastination. Ultimately, the article calls for action, stating that ideas must be brought to reality to have any significance.

Opinions

The author believes that our education system overly emphasizes 'correct' thinking, which limits creativity.
Creativity is seen as a learnable skill, not an exclusive trait of geniuses.
Writing down ideas is crucial to prevent them from being forgotten.
Creativity should be demystified and recognized as a practice accessible to everyone.
Problematic situations are opportunities for creative solutions, especially in our rapidly changing world.
Each individual's unique perception of reality is a resource for creativity.
Creativity should be a daily practice, akin to exercising and eating healthily.
Combining personal passions, knowledge, and abilities leads to one's unique contribution or 'singularity'.
Surrounding oneself with imaginative people, such as children, can enhance one's creative environment.
The pursuit of perfection can lead to procrastination and should be avoided in favor of taking action and accepting failure as part of the creative process.

Mastering The Art of Good Ideas

A guide to make creativity part of your culture

The reality of our world is much more creative than what we sometimes can imagine.

That was what one of my professors said in a conference a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about how we tend to not think creatively enough, and we are taking the easy way most of the time.

The idea for this article came to me after we finished and exercise at that class; the exercise was pretty simple, we were asked to close our eyes and imagine a triangle, after that, we were asked in which direction was pointing the triangle, and the interesting part came with that, most of my class said that they imagined the triangle pointing up.

The explanation that we received was that most of us had been conditioned to think in the “correct way”; this comes back to kindergarten where when we were asked to draw a tree the “only correct way” was colouring green leaves and a brown trunk.

The phase that I wrote at the beginning meant that when we look to our world there is much more than only green leaves and brown trunks, there is an infinity of colours and shapes.

And with all that you can say “Are you saying that we shouldn’t go to school?”. I’m not saying that what I’m saying is that we should pay more attention to the creative side, so we don’t end finishing college with a lot of information in our heads but no sense of exploration. Being imaginative is important because we need to be capable of associate experiences and information so we can come with more original ideas, and with this bring a sense of value and differentiation to our professions.

How can we train our creativity?

Photo by Rhonda Native Florida Folk Artist on Unsplash

As I said before, creativity is something that we learn to use, and usually, we are too comfortable using the easy ways instead of trying a little bit harder, don’t get me wrong easy ways are good too, but we have to learn how to see the world with our own eyes.

Write down your ideas

There are just a few people that write down their ideas, and the thing is that the ideas that we don’t write disappear, they just evaporate; like they never existed. I bet than more than once you felt that you had the perfect idea for something, it doesn’t matter for what, it could be an incredible idea for a party, it could be the perfect project for school or the perfect birthday gift, but unfortunately, we didn’t write it, and we just forget it, we lost that perfect idea.

It’s important to write our ideas because even if we don’t have the possibilities to make it happen today, that doesn’t mean that is not going to be possible tomorrow.

Demystify creativity

We have to stop thinking of creativity as something that only the geniuses and the chosen ones have.

Creativity doesn’t have anything to do with mystic powers, it is about regular people, like you and me, people that care about things, passionate people and have a lot to give.

Find opportunities on problematic situations

We live in the fastest era of this world, everything is changing all the time, and we have to adapt to all those changes. Right now, we don’t manage interactions the same way, we have a lot of new tools with social media, and that is a game-changer.

We are in a dynamic context, and that means that we have to think ahead, be prepared for everything so we can take obstacles as opportunities instead of being threats to our lifestyle.

Perception of reality

Every single one of us has their one perception of reality, and we have that to our favour because that means that we can reinvent it based in the way that other people can see the world.

What I’m trying to say is that very often the concept of creativity is seen like some lonely work, which is pretty beneficial if you have more people to work with; this potentiates the creation of new paths that help to improve and create better ideas.

Creativity as part of your culture

Creativity has to be part of your daily basis, instead of only recurring to creativity at times of crisis and problems. In my opinion, when you need an idea is when more difficult is to get one, and this has to do with ourselves not being used to think good and creative ideas.

We have to transform our conception of the concept of creativity; we need to start thinking of being creative as an important daily activity, like doing exercise and eating healthy.

Find your singularity

If we try to combine our passions with our knowledge and our abilities, we are going to find our singularity, something that makes a difference between us and the rest of the people working in the same areas.

This is what I was talking about in the beginning; One of the advantages of being creative is that you can start making a difference from the generic view that everyone has and your perspective and way to do things.

Creative environment

You should surround yourself with people that stimulate your creativity, in my particular case I find my brother pretty useful for this purpose. I think this is because they are pretty young, one of them is a ten-year-old.

In my opinion, kids create a pretty stimulating creative environment, because they still using their imagination.

Our goal is to recover the ability or your capacity to play, so you can start using this ability to have different ideas.

Avoid postponing

When we are in the eternal search of perfection, the only thing that we are doing is postponing our ideas and project to touch reality. This could be easier than having the possibility of failure and frustration that comes with it.

Perfect is the enemy of possible

I know that while our ideas still potential and not reality, we’re not going to feel frustration, but is necessary to get out of that place of fear, frustration and failure is part of the creative abilities that you need in your daily basis.

Doing not just thinking

The final part of all of this is that you can’t stop just thinking about new ideas and projects, of course, that is necessary and we have to think our new ideas but we also have to take them to reality, doing them for real and giving them the end that they deserve.

The idea that never gets to be done is like it never existed, there is no difference between an idea that never got to be done and an idea that never existed, at the end both of them don’t exist.