How To Become More Creative
The importance of creativity and how to channel it in your life
If you're going to make it, you'll need creativity. It's one of those concepts which applies to every niche. Otherwise: how do you solve problems, quickly pivot, create new content, or capitalize on opportunities?
Creativity can be taught (to an extent). If it doesn’t come naturally to you, there are ways to hone your creative juices to new heights.
Learn how patterns develop, connect, and can be broken. Find meanings in seemingly unrelated information and structures. Distill broad concepts into their basic constituents then rebuild them. Imagine things you've never seen before.
A lot of creative force comes from experience. The more you know, the more you can connect certain dots. People should try to learn as much as they can. Indulging in every rabbit hole they find interesting. (Within reason.)
With experience also comes knowledge on what NOT to do. The best creative ideas aren't random. That’d be chaos.
It isn’t enough to learn the window dressing of how something works. You have to find out why it works.
Adding raisins and mayonnaise to a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich is technically creative, yes. It’s still a hideous undesirable abomination. Finding the right hidden threads between concepts (even if they don’t seem to be related) is a skill. Mere mimicry of a concept will fall flat.
Many ideas, especially in the modern world, are combinations of other ideas or otherwise use established structures. Authors may take several of their favorite books or screenplays, mash up different pieces, and create a new book like a phoenix rising from ashes.
Inventing a truly unique and original idea is basically impossible. Don’t obsess over it. What’s more unique is your “voice” since everyone’s life can vary so much. “You are what you eat” applies to the brain too.
With any idea, chances are that someone else thought of it too. There are billions of humans and over 50,000 years of history here. What matters more than originality is how you use an idea. An idea by itself is worthless - taking action is where the value exists. Most people do nothing with their ideas.
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