-- Andrei Voznesensky
In the professional jungle, there are a billion dangers that threaten the creative mind’s ability to generate original ideas. Among them are a few true creativity killers; attitudes, actions, people and situations that have the power to almost instantly evaporate our creative juices…rendering even the most powerful creative superheroes mere mortals. We’re talking about Creative Kryptonite.
Climb aboard. We are on the hunt for the most notorious creativity killers of our times. Hold on to your right-brain. It’s going to be a wild ride. For this Quest into the dark side, I have enlisted the brain power of a very diverse group of creative professionals. I asked them to give me the real deal on what kills creativity. These industry innovators include award winning creative directors, writers and designers, a nationally renowned fine artist, a filmmaker, a children’s book author, a sculptor, a comedienne, and even a former director of creative development for Walt Disney Imagineering. Throughout this column I refer to them collectively as the Creative Brain Trust or CBT. Their words are as varied as their work, but several very clear and unified themes emerge; themes that can help us to recognize the most pervasive and insidious of creativity killers.
Fear defeats more people than any one thing in the world.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Now Fear This…
Fear is the Adolph Hitler of creativity killers. It is responsible for suppressing and destroying more brilliant ideas than all of the other creativity killers combined. It is a core ingredient of the most potent creative poisons. Fear limits the volume and dilutes the quality of the ideas we generate. It radically constricts the judgement of creative directors, bosses and clients.
The most common fears facing the creative professional are fear of risk, fear of failure, fear of judgement and fear of looking stupid. As one member of the CBT offers, “Fear kills creativity even before it begins. It creates ‘fear of trying’ and spawns the ‘I can’t syndrome.’ Most people can’t because they don’t.”
One of the things that makes fear such a powerful enemy of creativity is that it is contagious. It’s a virus that can infect every stage of the creative process and every person along the path from initial idea through client approval. It can progress from a sniffle to an epidemic in the blink of an eye.
There is no cure for the fear bug. When your job requires you to explore the unknown on a daily basis, fear is a fact of life. Those who thrive in the creative world are not immune to fear, they have simply learned to control it, work around it and work through it. Some of the best and brightest have learned to harness its energy and redirect it into the work; a kind of a creative Jiu Jutsu.
Learn to tame your fears and you will be one giant step closer to generating your best ideas.
More of the Same
Whenever I hear someone utter the rationale “…because we’ve always done it that way” I am forced to suppress the urge to throttle the speaker. For creative professionals it is both insult and injury wrapped in one backward reaching statement.
The essence of creativity is the pursuit of something different. The antithesis of creativity is to keep doing what has always been done.
The visible signs of this creativity killer are routines, adherence to history and an unwillingness to look beyond the tried and true. This myopic thinking applies not only how we approach our challenges, it applies to the people with whom we choose to surround ourselves. Writer and columnist Walter Lippman got it right when he said, “When we all think alike, nobody thinks very much.” By working with people who are different from ourselves, we are forced to think differently
Most of the members of the CBT agree that diversity is a cornerstone of creativity. That includes diversity of action, diversity of exposure, diversity of stimuli and diversity of interaction. If you want to chart a new path in your thinking, shake it up, kill the routine and fight the urge to surround yourself with people like you.
Premature Judgement
“Do not remove a flea from your friend’s head with a hatchet.”
– Chinese Proverb
Good judgement is an essential part of the creative process. Premature or overzealous judgement can be creative venom, even when that judgement is self judgement. As one member of the CBT put it, “Introducing judgment into the creative process prematurely is like administering chemotherapy to a patient before he has been diagnosed with cancer.” In the proper doses and with the right timing, both can be very helpful. Applied prematurely or to an extreme, they can kill the patient or process.
When working to foster creativity, Doug Hall, international innovation guru and panelist on ABC’s recent hit “American Inventor,” insists that creative people “respect the newborn.” By this, Hall means give a new idea a chance to breathe. Coddle it. Nourish it. Play with it. Try to understand its full potential, whether on its own merits or as a spark for other ideas. Hall demands that judgement be deferred until later in the creative process so that every idea has the full opportunity to grow and thrive.
Premature judgement and heavy handed criticism can kill great ideas in their infancy. They can also mortally wound the creative spirit. Judge no creative work before it’s time. And when it’s time to judge, swap out the sledge hammer for a velvet coated gavel.
When working to foster creativity, Doug Hall, international innovation guru and panelist on ABC’s recent hit “American Inventor,” insists that creative people “respect the newborn.” By this, Hall means give a new idea a chance to breathe. Coddle it. Nourish it. Play with it. Try to understand its full potential, whether on its own merits or as a spark for other ideas. Hall demands that judgement be deferred until later in the creative process so that every idea has the full opportunity to grow and thrive.
Premature judgement and heavy handed criticism can kill great ideas in their infancy. They can also mortally wound the creative spirit. Judge no creative work before it’s time. And when it’s time to judge, swap out the sledge hammer for a velvet coated gavel.
Tossing Kittens
One gifted CBT member who sends her thoughts from Tokyo, notes that sometimes creativity killers can disguise themselves as something cute and harmless; a wolf in kitten’s clothing: “It’s a creativity killer when someone throws a kitten onto the conference table. You know the ‘kitten’...it's cute, it grabs everyone's attention, we all want to play with it, pet it, talk about it....and it has nothing to do with what we are trying to figure out. It's just neat and cute and soft and easier to work with than the problem at hand. You have got to gently sweep those adorable bundles of fun off the table and remember what you are actually looking for. The kitten can become a dangerous little tiger when you leave the table with it roaring ahead as the answer to your project. Three weeks and $30,000 later you present it to the client and suddenly it’s ......’Why are you bringing me a damn kitten?’”
Avoid suicide by kitten. Sidestep major distractions and scenic side roads and keep the creative focus where it needs to be. It’s perfectly OK, even advisable, to step away from a strenuous creative challenge and take a break to refresh your brain. Just take care not to delude yourself into believing that the digression is the core of your solution.
Deadlines that Kill
Nothing kills the creative brain like the stress of an unrealistic deadline. As one creative director offers, “If you want to close the minds of your creative team, finish your list of elaborate demands with the words ‘…and they need it by this afternoon.’”
Tight deadlines are so common they are a cliché and yet they continue to inspire high levels of stress and anger among the creatives.
Most creative pros will admit that sometimes amazing ideas arrive almost instantaneously. More often than not, great concepts require a bit of thought, research and time.
“It takes time to create original work,” offers one frustrated CBT contributor, “It’s not like we wave a magic wand and then pull this stuff out of our butts” She adds, “If you want creative brilliance, give us some time to explore the possibilities. If you want a pile of schlock, force us to come up with something by tomorrow.”
Tight deadlines are so common they are a cliché and yet they continue to inspire high levels of stress and anger among the creatives.
Most creative pros will admit that sometimes amazing ideas arrive almost instantaneously. More often than not, great concepts require a bit of thought, research and time.
“It takes time to create original work,” offers one frustrated CBT contributor, “It’s not like we wave a magic wand and then pull this stuff out of our butts” She adds, “If you want creative brilliance, give us some time to explore the possibilities. If you want a pile of schlock, force us to come up with something by tomorrow.”
Buzz-kill Bosses and Murderous Meddlers
"Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."
- Albert Einstein
- Albert Einstein
CBT members describe, in vivid detail, all of the variations of “other people” who kill creativity on a daily basis. Call them creativity serial killers and mass meddlers. They include:
- Buzz-kill bosses who “know” what will work and what will crash and burn.
- Overly attentive managers who treat the creative process like supervised play time and who want to make sure that things don’t get out of control.
- Controlling clients who want us to be design robots who will brilliantly repackage their weak ideas.
- Pushy people who pile so many specific demands into their project requests that there is no room for original thought.
- Creative wannabe clients who dissect our ideas and stitch together Victor Frankenstein versions made in their own image.
- Cranky clients and multiple personality managers whose moods and demands change with every iteration of a project
There are more variations than the cast of super-villains in a Marvel comic book. And they are a reality of almost every creative environment ever known to mankind. If we want any hope of maintaining and developing our creative gifts, we need to be able to serve and neutralize this frustrating array of human hindrances. Remember, if they don’t kill us, they make us more creative.
The Enemy Within
The Enemy Within
Every creative person has, at one time or another, been her/his own worst enemy. We have all created our own problems and snuffed our own creative sparks. Here are a few of the more common ways we commit creative hari-kari.
Running on empty. It doesn’t matter how we’re wired if our brains are really tired. Lack of sleep and fatigue can cause the creative mind to refuse to jump through flaming hoops. Get some sleep. Nourish yourself. Take a break. Regenerate and rejuvenate.
The little engine that couldn’t - “I think I can’t…I think I can’t...I can’t think!.” Self doubt is that little mental voice that causes us to second guess our work and our worth. A good friend once gave me some simple advice on how to deal with my inner negative voice. He said “Put a gag on it and do the work.”
Do nothing. Stagnation and inactivity have the power to bore the creative spirit to death…or at least into a coma. Get up. Go out. Do something different. Learn something new. Stir the pot.
Speaking of pot - Alcohol and substance abuse have been known to murder more that just a few brain cells. They can kill creative energy, dull the mental blade and impair our judgement. Many a stupid idea looks glorious through the haze of intoxication. If you can generate great ideas on drugs, you can generate great ideas without drugs. Just say no…at least until the project is done.
Lack of discipline – One of my favorite illustrators strongly emphasizes that creativity requires a lot of work. “The best creative work requires discipline. It forces us to look beyond the easy answers to find the best solutions. There is no substitute for doing the work. You have to do 100 bad paintings before you can get a good one, so you might as well get started”
Only You
Nobody can crush our creative spirit without our permission. Several of the brilliant minds who contributed to this column make it very clear that the power to elevate or destroy our creative efforts lies squarely in our own hands. As one seasoned pro puts it “You can blame it on your environment. You can blame it on others. You can blame it on the bosanova. But when it comes right down to it, the only thing that has the power to kill the creative spirit is you.” He adds, “If you REALLY want to do it, you will find a way.”
Until next time, stay inspired!
Until next time, stay inspired!
BK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bob Kodzis is a lot of things to a lot of people… He is an awesome husband and wonderful father – two of his favorite roles in the world. He is an entrepreneur whose company, Flight of Ideas, serves hundreds of organizations; cool companies like Kennedy Space Center and The Federal Reserve Bank and great causes like the American Cancer Society and the Arthritis Foundation. He is one of the best creative meeting facilitators you will ever meet. He runs meetings with great focus, creativity, energy and humor and knows how to manage group dynamics with grace and charm, while keeping group momentum and morale high. Bob is a professional improviser and a regular performer at SAK Comedy Lab – hosting and performing in improv shows on a weekly basis. He is also a powerful keynote speaker who inspires and entertains thousands of people every year. Bob is an award winning visual artist and street painter who draws huge works of art on the sidewalk. He is also a philanthropist who doesn’t always have money to give, but he gives what he has to dozens of organizations and individuals in need every year. Bob also writes. But you probably already know that if you’ve gotten to this point the article. He also loves to write about himself in third person. Bob can be reached at bob@flightofideas.net or visit his cool website http://www.flightofideas.net/
Other Blog Posts by Bob Kodzis: How to be a Creative Genius: Traits of the Greats, Why You Need to Change, Eight Great Ideas to Enhance Your Creative Spark, The Passion Principle
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