Garnering Creativity

Given the serendipitous nature of how some of the best works in our time came to be, I like to ponder if a "skill" like creativity can be honed. While we occasionally create something new in a moment of epiphany, I believe creative works can be systematically constructed as well.

Honing creativity

If one views creativity as originating from having the ability to think out of the box and episodes of transient apophenia, then one could find a way to systematically approach creativity.

Here’s how (via habitual approach):

• Practice curiosity. Ask questions. Overtime, it will become innate, and you can learn to ask different questions when trying to cook up solutions to a problem. New questions = new perspectives = new ways to tackle problems.

• Increase your “idea pool" to draw from. Read about interesting stuff. Learn about other people's creative ideas. Then, by randomly applying these knowledge and experiences in different avenues, one increases their chances of creating something “new”.

• Be random. Practice clanging. Embrace your wild emotions. It will eventually affect your thinking to be as random, and henceforth creative

Or a more systematic approach:

1. Research thoroughly about the topic at hand. Find out all the possible and already tried solutions to a problem.

2. Think with 5W1H to figure out new perspectives or questions to throw a curveball and tackle the question in a different way.

3. Read up on other unrelated fields for their solutions to dual problems, and see if those ideas can be applied to your field.

4. Gain inspiration from daily life encounters.

Bounded vs unbounded creativity

I used to have so many wild thoughts, jumping between disciplines and having inter-generational imaginations. All this creativity was slowly diminished by my educational system. The very idea of having to learn facts, treat them as truth, and remember and apply them — is innately uncreative to me.

Think back to comic books, fantasies, and imaginations. The ability to dream and imagine is creativity. Of course, true unbounded creativity without being rooted in reality might not be "useful" for problem solving, but it is creativity in its purest form. To wander, to be purposeless, and to just endlessly imagine and create… 

One benefit of the a rote learning educational system is the ways it teaches you to be precise in your intent and structure your thoughts to work towards your goals. At the cost of having better mental discipline and focus, I lost part of my genuine wonder. I stopped questioning, ideating, and imagining.

The old wild creativity I had was unbounded. I could create amazing games for people, I had wild prank ideas, etc. This creativity is random, great for being spontaneous, and creating artistic works that had no real purpose.

Yet, when it comes to more academic and focused questions, e.g. in tackling a physics research problem, this unbounded creativity was inefficient. My creativity was not channeled to the problem at hand, and was too random in nature. Without keeping the constraints of physical reality in mind, one also spurs into imaginary-land, dreaming up a fictional sci-fi event rather than an actual solution to a scientific puzzle.

Now comes the problem of balancing radical ideating with focused thought. Trying to narrow my scope of focus on a specific problem inherently limits my creative boundaries. I try to still preserve the childish wonder I have, but find the balance to focus the wonder and creativity on a research question.