CHAPTER
4

The Process of Creativity

In This Chapter

• Learning and applying the stages of the creative process
• The difference between divergent and convergent thinking
• How mistakes often lead to creative results

Setting out to generate creative ideas or having inspirational thoughts strike you unexpectedly is but one aspect of the creative process. Remember in Chapter 1 when I posed the question “What good is an idea if it isn’t implemented?” In this chapter, you learn that creativity is a process that requires motivation and goes beyond ideas.

While it’s true that sometimes you have no conscious goal of creating anything and then an idea shoots through like a bullet headed straight for the bull’s-eye, you still have to decide if you’re going to act on it. After learning about the process, I show you how it relates to different types of creative thinking. I close with examples of how everyday products came about “accidentally” when the creators’ intention or thinking changed.

From Idea to Execution

Chances are, you’ve experienced an “out of the blue” idea, or one that seems to come from nowhere. Maybe it came as you were dining alone, just appreciating your meal and not thinking of anything in particular. Or maybe you were in the shower and suddenly thought of a solution (believe me, I’ve heard many people reference how ideas came to them while in the midst of applying shampoo and soap!).

What happens when you get that idea? You’ve probably heard the analogies of an idea striking you like lightning or a light bulb coming on. Or perhaps this concept brings images of a wacky scientist with his “Eureka!” moment. As for me, I tend to make my right hand into a fist and exclaim, “Yes!” with a big smile on my face when an idea or insight suddenly hits. Whatever the case, it’s possible for ideas to come in an instant and give you that sudden rush of inspiration; however, that doesn’t necessarily lead to any follow-through.

Sometimes, the ideas live to see another day; they are cultivated, placed in an incubator, and evolve as they go through different processes until the end goal is finally reached. Other times, the ideas never see the light of day; instead, they vanish as quickly as they appear.

Why do some of your ideas make it and others don’t? It could be a difference in motivation. For the ones that don’t make it, maybe the project isn’t meaningful enough to you or you’re feeling blocked, unable to take action for any number of reasons (I will explore these reasons more in Chapter 6). However, for those ideas you choose to pursue, they go through a process. It’s possible you’ve taken your thought from idea to implementation in a way that flowed so smoothly you didn’t even realize there was an actual method you employed.

That’s the creative process, or CREATE:

• Clarify your intention
• Round up ideas
• Explore and experiment
• Analyze and act
• Take a breather
• Execute, evaluate, evolve, and enjoy

At times, you may glide through this process easily; other times, you may have difficulty keeping to it. Like a boat on rough waters, at those difficult moments, you decide to jump ship before you reach your destination. So how can you stay focused when you go from that “Eureka!” moment to something you’ve implemented?

The stages of the creative process.

The following takes you through each stage of the creative process. As you read through the various stages, you may recognize which ones have presented the biggest issues for you in the past and which ones are your strengths. With that knowledge, you can improve upon those weaknesses and embrace your strengths, giving yourself that extra push to get your ideas off the ground.

CREATIVITY KEY

While the process I’m about to describe serves as an effective model for how creativity unfolds, it in no way means you must apply the stages exactly as described. The more you create, the more you will develop your own style and process that works for you.

Clarify Your Intention

I’ll begin with the premise that started this chapter—that ideas can materialize without any intention. Imagine you’re having lunch with a friend for the simple pleasure of reconnecting and catching up on each other’s lives; the thought of creativity isn’t even in the background of your mind. During your conversation with her, however, she says something catchy. You think to yourself, “Hmmm, that’s a great line! I could do something creative with that.” What do you do with it? Is your intention to write a song using her words as the hook, paint a picture that conveys the feeling, or write a funny poem using that line? Whether an idea comes to you suddenly or you have yet to begin the idea-generating stage, the creativity process doesn’t really take off until you figure out your intention. For this example, let’s say you decide to write a funny poem using her line; that’s the intent you have for the idea your friend inadvertently gave you.

Sometimes, like with the funny poem, you deliberately decide you want to create all on your own. You may already have an idea, however sketchy or firm, or want to spend some time developing some ideas. Your intention to create on purpose could be due to a creative urge that’s been vying for your attention, because you’re feeling inspired and want to experience more beauty in your life, or out of a motivation for gain (such as a promotion at work). What you intend to do with your decision to create, in turn, ties into your inspiration or motivation. Therefore, the more you can clarify your intention, the more success you are likely to achieve. This success could mean anything from “I just want to experience more feelings of appreciation and beauty” to “nothing short of a promotion will satisfy me.”

But what do you do when you’re being asked by someone else to create? For example, imagine you’re working for a membership-driven organization and your boss wants you to come up with ideas to increase membership by 20 percent within six months. That’s a specific expectation, and as a result, you define your intention based around that expectation. In this case, it could be to create a new membership benefit or perhaps a whole new program.

So whether or not you already have an idea or you have yet to generate one, clarifying your intention can help you understand what you want to do and why.

INSPIRATIONAL INSIGHT

“When I say artist, I mean the man who is building things. … It’s all a big game of construction—some with a brush, some with a shovel, some choose a pen.”

—Jackson Pollock

Round Up Ideas

The next stage in the creative process is to gather ideas or further develop the one with which you started. This may involve working with other people in a collaborative process or using people as a sounding board so you can bounce ideas off of them. In turn, ideas may come to them, and you can continue to play off of each other. You also can round up ideas by going online and doing an internet search on your topics or going to the Pinterest website, which features images that may lead to more ideas. This stage can actually present you with the most opportunities for fun and using your imagination if you allow it (for more on idea-generating techniques you can try out, see Part 3 and Chapter 14 in the workplace section).

When in this stage, resist the temptation to limit yourself to one or two ideas. This is especially important when you’re taking on a new challenge. Have you ever been involved with a committee of volunteers or co-workers and in the middle of the discussion, someone blurts out, “That’ll never work” or “We’ve always done it this way”? It’s like riding a bicycle and enjoying the scenery, appreciating all of the new and different surroundings you never noticed before, and then suddenly getting a flat tire—your progress stops right then and there. The same happens with statements such as these; they limit the natural progress of an idea or ideas.

You also may find you need to let the ideas you’ve gathered sit for a while. Take your time and allow them to continue to develop.

Explore and Experiment

So now that you’ve gathered enough ideas to play with, it’s time to do just that. This is a testing stage, one that can be a lot of fun as you go from one idea to the next trying them out. It’s also an important stage because if you bypass it and act hastily, you may find you waste a lot of time, money, or other resources if the quickly selected idea ends up not working out.

How you specifically explore and experiment with your ideas depends on the nature of the project, but here are some suggestions:

• Look at the ideas from different points of view, especially if other people are involved. If the project is not confidential, this is a good time to bounce the ideas off of other people for their feedback.
• Share your thoughts with a friend or two to see if the topic or your approach to the subject sounds interesting. This is particularly helpful if you’re considering ideas for a creative activity that doesn’t involve other people, such as writing a book.
• Do some hands-on work. For example, if you’re a sculptor, you may want to play around with clay, modeling different shapes to get a better idea of which direction to go.
• Select a test market. For example, if you’re working for a restaurant, before adding a new dish to a menu, you may offer it first to a select area to gauge the response.

Analyze and Act

Once you’ve tried out your various ideas, the next stage is to analyze them and formulate your action plan. After careful analysis, you may decide to go no further because you’ve determined your idea is not cost effective, you aren’t able to pull together the proper resources, the timing is bad, or another sound reason that tells you to go back to the drawing board. While a simple modification may be all that’s necessary, you may need to start fresh or trash the idea altogether.

Sometimes your exploration reveals that you have a great idea worth pursuing but you stop progress in its tracks. You may love generating ideas and experimenting with them as you imagine the joy they might bring to other people, but for some reason, you don’t follow through. It could be due to a lack of motivation or one of the many blocks outlined in Chapter 6. For example, I have spoken with plenty of folks who have talked about writing a book. They come up with ideas, try them out, and then single out the book’s primary purpose. And then … they never write. Their dream of becoming a published author dies with their unexecuted ideas.

Therefore, for those ideas that survive the first three stages, you must begin to formulate your action plan. This involves everything that needs to happen for your idea to become a successful reality. Such actions include determining the various steps that need to take place and who’s responsible for them, setting realistic deadlines, and tapping into existing resources or buying the necessary tools and components.

CREATIVITY COMPASS

At the beginning of a 13-week creativity course I facilitate, I ask participants to state their intention. One young man with an entrepreneurial spirit spoke up and said the reason he was there was because he had a lot of ideas but he rarely acted upon them. His intention was to get better at finishing those projects he started. At the course’s midway point, he missed two classes in a row, another example of not following through. I contacted him and once he confirmed he was okay, I reminded him of his intention. Fortunately, all it took was a gentle reminder of his stated purpose and he returned to finish out the course strong. Today, he is a very creative, successful entrepreneur.

Take a Breather

If you’ve gotten this far, it means you’ve set your intention, explored your ideas, analyzed those ideas, and come up with an action plan. At this point, it’s always a good idea to step away from your project and literally and figuratively take a breather. Putting some distance between you and your project can shed new light on it when you return. How much time you take varies, but generally speaking, step away long enough to refresh yourself without taking so much time that you become disconnected or unenthused when you return.

It’s possible you may not see a need for any changes once you come back to it. On the other hand, you may get more ideas that make you feel even better about what you’re doing. Depending on the length of your creative endeavor, you may want to give yourself more than one timeout throughout the process.

Execute, Evaluate, Evolve, and Enjoy!

This is the final stage in the creative process. When you execute, you are fully engaged in your actual creation and doing whatever it takes to complete what you started.

However, as you go along, it’s important to continue to evaluate your progress as a kind of “check-in.” Are you sticking with your original plan, or is there a need for changes? This is where “evolve” comes in; even this late in the game, it’s possible your project will need to be altered in some way to meet your current needs. As long as your venture continues to move forward, you are on the right road!

Hopefully, you are enjoying yourself during this process, even if your main focus is on the end goal. (Remember, your motivation can be both intrinsic and extrinsic, as I discussed in Chapter 3.) Still, once you have completed your creative process, don’t forget to celebrate. After all, if you find joy in what you’ve done, you’ll be ready to take part in the creative process all over again!

INSPIRATIONAL INSIGHT

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”

—Albert Einstein

Embracing Your Roles in the Creative Process

As you read through the six stages of the creative process, did you find that you identified with one of them more than the others? For example, are you good at coming up with ideas but find it hard to act upon them? Or do you feel generating ideas is your weakness—that you would rather play the role of analyzer instead? Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, so it’s likely you feel you’re better at some stages more than the others. That’s why it often works to be part of a creative team in which the members play to their different strong points.

For example, the immensely imaginative Walt Disney, who created an entire entertainment mecca filled with fantasy and fun, described creativity as “imagineering,” or a mix of imagination and engineering. Without ideas that spring forth from imagination, creativity won’t manifest; without the engineering or executing of those ideas, creative expression also will die. In order to make his ideas come to life, he had to adopt many different roles.

Two of Disney’s animators referred to the following as the three roles he played in the creative process:

• Dreamer: The one who uses visionary insight to come up with ideas for different ventures.
• Realist: The one who produces what’s needed to turn ideas into reality.
• Spoiler (or critic): The one who uses evaluation skills that polish the dreamer and realist’s productivity.

As you can see, each one demonstrates a different type of thinking strategy. Just like you may have felt more comfortable in certain stages of the creative process, you may identify more with one of Disney’s three roles. Are you comfortable as the dreamer? Do you take pleasure in getting lost in the “island of ideas” and actually delight in tossing silly and serious notions around? Do you enjoy brainstorming sessions, in which you rattle off a list of thoughts, however crazy they may seem at the time? If you relate best to the dreamer role, you derive excitement from this process of generating ideas. But what if you’re more interested in taking those ideas that will work and turning them into reality? If that’s true of you, you relate best to the realist role. You thrive on figuring out how to make ideas concrete creations. Or maybe you’re the one who likes to question and find reasons why the ideas won’t work or how they can be improved; if that’s the case, you’re more comfortable with the spoiler role. For example, as the spoiler, Disney was known to scrupulously analyze every piece of work to ensure his projects were as close to perfection as possible.

As you go through your own creative processes with each project you pursue, you will probably find yourself enacting some version of these perspectives. If you’re feeling weaker in one of these areas, you can work to strengthen it by first becoming aware of your discomfort and then seeing if you can identify what’s behind your uncomfortable feelings. For example, if your strength is as the “dreamer” but you’re not as skilled in executing the ideas (the “realist”), perhaps it’s due to a lack of experience or confidence. This could be addressed with more training or working with a mentor. By honing in on the reason and getting the support you need, little by little, you will begin to feel more at ease with the other role. As previously mentioned, you also can balance the process by teaming with others who complement your skills.

CREATIVITY COMPASS

If you like to work independently, as I do most of the time, it still pays to find at least one partner who can take the pressure off you in your perceived areas of weakness or to help with any parts you simply don’t enjoy. For example, at a time before every company had a website, I looked into creating my first website for my public relations company. I had plenty of ideas for its content, look, and feel, but I lacked the technical skills to create it. I partnered with a graphic designer and a webmaster and spared myself a lot of aggravation in the process. In the end, I was very happy with my decision, my partnerships, and the finished product.

Engaging in Whole-Brain Thinking

Much has been written about the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. While the left side of the brain is considered to be for things that are logical, linear, analytical, detail-oriented, practical, and organized, the right side is considered to be aligned with imagination, images, sensual, big-picture thinking, passion, and appreciation. Therefore, the truth that was being presented for many years was that those who possessed more of the right-brain characteristics were said to be more creative.

More recently, however, cognitive neuroscientists have been researching what actually happens when the brain is engaged in the creative process, and according to a Scientific American Beautiful Minds blog post by Scott Barry Kaufman on “The Real Neuroscience of Creativity,” they are discovering that these standard explanations are outdated.

Their findings are showing that the typical left brain–right brain perspective falls short of providing the full landscape of how the creative process actually unfolds in the brain. In other words, creativity is not simply a right-brain process.

You can probably see that for yourself after reading about the creative process, which requires both imagination (right-brain) and analytical (left-brain) functions. This means both hemispheres are important for creativity because they are both involved, depending on the stage of creative development. While this doesn’t negate the differences between how the brain’s left and right hemispheres process information, it does mean the creative process requires “whole-brain thinking,” or use of both sides of the brain.

Still, that doesn’t mean each stage of the creative process is both analytical and imaginative. There are actually two different ways of thinking that can help you with stages that require clear-cut thinking and stages that need a more open approach. They are known as convergent and divergent thinking. Let’s take a closer look at what both types of thinking are and how they can help you in the creative process at different stages.

An illustration of the convergent and divergent thinking processes.

DEFINITION

Convergent thinking is analytical, deductive, logical, and usually focused on one right answer. Divergent thinking is novel and creative, and looks in different directions and at many possible solutions.

Convergent Thinking

When faced with a problem, consider how you think much of the time. If you find your tendency is to take bits of information and look for a single solution, you’re thinking convergently. You’re using logic, analysis, scrutiny, and judgment to find a clear-cut answer. This type of thinking makes sense when one answer will do the trick. For example, if you’re taking a multiple-choice test or a true-false test, you’re looking for one correct answer, meaning convergent thinking is what’s needed.

In terms of the creative process, convergent thinking is useful when you’re focusing in on your intention during the first step of the creative process. It also works when it comes time to analyze your ideas (stage three) and formulate and execute your action plan (stage six). However, convergent thinking would hamper a situation in which you’re wanting to look at multiple solutions. For example, if you’re looking at ways to drum up new business, you wouldn’t want to limit yourself by thinking there’s only one answer. Once you’ve thought of many ideas, you can put this type of thinking to work and begin weighing the pros and cons.

Divergent Thinking

One way to remember how to define divergent thinking is to think “divergent = diverse.” This way of thinking contrasts with convergent thinking because it requires you to think more abstractly and openly, which yields a variety of solutions, ideas, and thoughts. In the creative process, divergent thinking works well when you’re rounding up your ideas, as well as when you’re exploring and experimenting. For example, if you’re writing a novel, there is no end to the number of story lines and characters you could consider; there is no one answer to the type of plot and people your book contains.

The brainstorming process or anytime you want to open up to something new and different also capitalizes on using divergent thinking. Have you ever participated in a creativity starter that asks you to write down how many ways a cotton ball can be used? You probably can rattle off some of the typical uses first, such as removing makeup or nail polish, but coming up with the more obscure answers requires divergent thinking. Thinking divergently allows you to go beyond the obvious and can lead you to innovative solutions.

However, keep in mind that just as creativity should no longer be viewed as solely a right-brained process, neither should it be defined as only needing divergent thinking. The creative process capitalizes on convergent thinking as well.

Creating by Accident

When you make a mistake, do you see it as an opportunity to learn from it or a failure, a letdown? Some people have such high expectations that when some type of gaffe is made, they berate themselves for not doing better. What if you make a mistake and rather than criticizing yourself, you look at the situation in a different way? Making mistakes has actually led to making millions for some when a shift in point of view occurred. Some of the most popular products people use came about this way. The creation of the Slinky toy is an example of divergent thinking in the face of an accident. In 1943, navy engineer Richard James was looking to create a meter that could monitor power on navy ships. He inadvertently knocked down one of the springs used to stabilize the meter and watched that now famous, end over end, gentle walk. Once he demonstrated to his wife, Betty, what happened, she got the idea for a new toy and ultimately named it the Slinky. Had she gotten stuck on her husband’s original intention, the thought of a toy would not have even entered her mind. This exemplifies what can happen with open thinking and a little ingenuity.

Kellogg’s corn flakes cereal, penicillin, the microwave oven, super glue, Post-it notes, Velcro, the pacemaker, Coca-Cola, potato chips, Play-Doh, champagne, saccharin, chewing gum, popsicles, and chocolate chip cookies also are examples of discoveries that came about “by accident” through the use of divergent thinking. This is where keeping your mind open to more than one possibility can lead to unique solutions.

INSPIRATIONAL INSIGHT

“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.”

—Neil Gaiman

The Least You Need to Know

• Creativity is not limited to the generation of ideas, which can strike suddenly or may be hatched over time. Rather, it’s a process that involves many stages.
• You may favor or feel more comfortable in one of three roles in the creative process: dreamer, realist, or critic. This is why teamwork often works well during creative ventures.
• Convergent (logical) thinking and divergent (more innovative) thinking are both used during the creative process, which requires whole-brain thinking rather than strictly right-brain thinking.
• When you’re willing to change your original intentions and thinking, you open yourself to the possibility of creating something you never imagined. There are dozens of examples of how accidents changed intention and blossomed into great creations, such as Velcro and Post-it notes.