What’s Creativity?

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There are many definitions of the word creativity. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, creativity is the ability to produce original and unusual ideas or to make something new or imaginative.

For me, the definition of creativity is along the lines of:  “The use of the knowledge that you have to do or create something”. Some of the best examples of my personal use of creativity are the moments after I broke my right wrist and my dominant hand was very weak. I couldn’t even open a shampoo bottle and I had to use my creativity in order to look different ways to open a tied shampoo lid, or a jar or anything that needed some force from my right hand. To open the shampoo bottle, I smashed the lid fast but not that strong into a space between the window and the wall of the shower. To open jars, I hit the lid into a table or I stuck a knife in the lid, so the air could get in (I still use those jar open techniques nowadays 😅). 

I obviously use my creativity in my work and in this blog where I take my ideas and turned it into different topics to write about.

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Do we all have creativity?

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Yes, we all have some source of creativity, with the exception of the people with a condition called “Aphantasia”. People that have this condition, which is less than 3% of the global population, can’t visualize imagery*.

*Imagery: it is a mental image or a mental picture. 

For example, if you see a car and you tell someone with aphantasia “that car would look amazing in red” they won’t have the ability to picture a red car in their mind. 

There are many levels of aphantasia. That’s why there are some cases of people that are very successful in creative professions because they found a way to compensate for their “lack of mind’s eye” which is another name for aphantasia.

#FunFact: Probably you guys will be surprised. I’m colourblind and this condition also has levels. I know that the name is a bit deceiving but I can see colours. in Spanish, my condition is called “Daltonismo”, in French “Daltonisme” in honour of John Dalton who was the one that discovered it. I don’t really know why in English it isn’t called “Daltonism” since the word colour-blind confuses a lot of people 😅.

 I can see colours but my brain sends me the wrong information and mix them, for example instead of the colour blue I usually see purple and vice versa. I also mix the grey with light blue and pink and like those many other combinations. Others with a higher level of colour-blindness can only see shades of grey. 

This condition does not affect my work nor my creativity. If you are colour-blind, I’m sure you will find ways to compensate for it, as I did.

Why is important or where do we use it?

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We use creativity in everything no matter how mundane or monotone the action is. When you see someone in a factory or a restaurant doing something very quickly no matter how systematic it looks, the person used their creative process to make that action as efficient as possible. 

Being an artist or someone on a creative profession like marketing or advertising doesn’t mean that we are the most creative ones. 

We are all creatives in our own ways, the only difference is that some of them stand out the most or make a living out of it, the best examples are scientists or inventors, they used their imagination and supported by facts and theories or trial and error in the inventors case, create and discover things that nobody else could before they did.

No matter how logical or rational your work looks, you are using your creativity in more ways than you think.

Can Creativity be Taught?

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Yes, but not by going to a creativity class, you can improve it or gaining creativity by learning something called “Creative Thinking Processes.” We learn this, by past and current experiences, exploring different topics, researching, questioning the why and how things work, imagining and applying your knowledge into different things.

My creative process when writing this blog or at work is the following:

1) When I try to write about things that I already know, I’m able to work from my comfort zone, so I don’t need to use my creativity that much, I only use it when I try to find a way that what I write sound like something interesting to read.

2) At work, I have to write about what our clients want, so I have to do more research to feel like I’m the expert on what I’m writing about. The best example of this is about a recent client from the music industry that asked us to write some content for them. I wrote about what keeps you motivated when composing music. Since I’m not a musician and I don’t know that much about the industry, I first search on Google about the creative process of musicians and then I interview one of my colleagues that is a DJ, who also writes his own music. By mixing my research and his insights, I was able to write about something outside my expertise in a very effective way.

3) The best way to let you know how do I do my writing, is to explain the ritual and procedures that I follow: if I want to post something on Friday, I start brainstorming on Monday and Tuesday, on Wednesday I start writing it in the morning after class, at night I do the editing and the next day I read it or I ask someone else to be the first reader, so we can look at it with fresh eyes, Thursday night I put the pictures and I post it on Friday around 12:00 am on my blog and in the morning on my social media platforms. The more complex the topic is, the more difficult the rituals, research and procedures are.

4) What I’ve learned in the past few months, is that consistency is the key when creating content. If you have a writing schedule and you force yourself to write something every day or every two days, depending on how much content you want to work in, no matter how good or how bad the results are, if you keep your consistency your ideas will follow.

5) I always try to walk from point A to point B, in different ways. By taking different sources of transportation, walking in different streets, visiting different coffee shops and/or restaurants on my paths. Adding to that, I also read about different topics which lead me to search other related articles of somewhat related issues/subjects, all the mentioned above, I do to change my perspective, my environment, getting new thoughts and ideas that might help me to write something in the future.

To summarize, my current creative process is to write about what I know if I can’t, I do the research to write and to sound knowledgeable about the topic, I have my own writing schedule, I rest my mind doing, going and reading about different things from time to time and most importantly consistency, consistency and consistency

Closing thoughts and my advice.

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I’ve heard often enough, things like: “You must be creative since you work on a creative sector” many times, not always directed to me, or people saying “I wouldn’t be able to do certain things because I’m not creative.” To those who think like that, I want to tell them that, creativity is like a muscle, if you don’t work on it you won’t be able to use it properly. The more exercise that muscle, the better results you’ll have.

Being successful in the creative sector, isn’t just creating ONE wonderful thing or come up with just A great idea that gives you fame, but all the failures that you faced in the journey to fame/success. Behind every successful person, there are thousands or a hundred mistakes and falls, the important thing is that they persevered until they reached the top.

I hope that from my first blog post about allergies in honour to my sister to the content that I’m writing now about creativity, you have enjoyed my consistency, my improvement and my ability.

I hope you like today’s post, comment below if you also have a creative process and where do you think you use your creativity on a daily basis, have a great weekend and write you next time 🙂